The Top 10 Podcasts of 2025 Mentioned in 24 Year-End Best-Of Podcast Lists

Here are the podcasts that appeared on the most year-end best-of lists and what it all means for listeners, readers, and cultural critics

What is a best-of list and why does it matter for podcasting?

Welcome to PWTA. Lauren and Arielle here, this time with an exploration into a phenomenon we’ve been experiencing — as both readers (listeners) and as marketing strategists who pitch our clients to be featured — for a long while: the “best of” podcast list roundup.

Come talk about these shows with us on Friday, January 30th here on Substack (or watch the replay).

Give us your hot takes on the best podcasts of the year! Here’s the info.

We often complain that not enough people write about podcasts, but boy do they come out of the woodwork at the end of the year. It’s a time that we brace ourselves for the barrage of best-of and roundup podcast lists!

The New York Times is on it, Vulture had two lists this year, we loved Samantha Hodder’s write-up on Bingeworthy, and the Crime Writers On…team members each had their own list of the best true crime, which they compiled into one mega list.

Lauren wrote a list for Lifehacker, then dedicated two issues of Podcast The Newsletter to the best episodes of 2025. And of course, Tink’s Audio Delicacies was a treat, or like 100+ treats.

So now you have TOO MANY lists, right? Too many people writing about podcasts? Impossible. And there’s even this website that aggregates all of the lists across media — yearendlist.com.

Well, here’s the one list you should definitely be talking about.

Introducing… The Listies

✨The Listies✨ is the list of the shows that made it onto the most best-of lists. Welcome to The Listies! (Or, Lauren here, I just called it that, maybe Arielle will edit this out. Note: I will not, I like it).

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So, which shows appeared on the most best-of podcast lists? We’re sharing the podcasts below, along with notes and commentary from us. And since we can’t get to everything here, we're getting into the list on a Substack Live event. We’ll touch on things like:

• How did THIS podcast get such pickup if it dropped late in the year?

• Oh, this one absolutely deserves to be there

• A few notable absences

• How are there no independently-produced shows here?

Join us on Friday, January 30th at 11:30am ET HERE to discuss. Or watch the video anytime after.

P.s. for our methodology and disclaimers, (because we couldn’t gather perfect data — there’s no such thing!) skip to the “More On The Listies” section below.

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Quick 2024 podcast list recap

We did this exercise in 2024 and things were way more spread out. Some notes on those podcast lists and the most-mentioned shows:

• The show that was on the most lists, Empire City, only made 5 lists

• In second place were both Hysterical and The Wonder of Stevie, with 4 each

• Tested and The Lonely Island were on 3

• In the Dark, Strangers on a Bench, and Noble were each on 2

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The Best of 2025: The 10 Most Frequently Mentioned Shows

Pulling from the 24 best-of or roundup lists we found, these are the shows that appeared the most:

1. Fela Kuti: Fear No Man - 10 times

2. Heavyweight - 9

3. Good Hang with Amy Poehler - 7

4. Final Thoughts: Jerry Springer - 7

5. Wisecrack - 6

6. The Retrievals (Season 2) - 6

7. Embedded: Alternate Realities - 5

8. Sea of Lies - 5

9. Pablo Torre Finds Out - 4

10. Camp Swamp Road - 4

Here’s what we noticed about the top 10 shows of 2025:

• There are no indie productions

• 2 Audible Originals

  • Final Thoughts: Jerry Springer

  • Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

• 3 were series published within existing feeds / were series within ongoing feeds

  • Embedded: Alternate Realities (series)

  • The Retrievals Season 2 (season)

  • Camp Swamp Road (series)

• 4 were hosted by women

• 0 fiction shows

• 7 were also mentioned in Lauren’s Lifehacker article

So… who makes these shows?

• Meadowlark’s Pablo Torre Finds Out

• The Journal’s “Camp Swamp Road”

• NPR Embedded’s “Alternate Realities”

• CBC’s Sea of Lies

• Serial Production’s The Retrievals Season 2

• Tenderfoot TV’s Wisecrack

• Prologue Projects / Audible Original’s Final Thoughts: Jerry Springer

• Paper Kite Productions / The Ringer’s Good Hang with Amy Poehler

• Pushkin’s Heavyweight

• Higher Ground / Audible Original’s Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

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More on The Listies

AKA the disclaimers and methodologies section — because perfect data is impossible to come by…

We make a distinction between editorially-curated best-of lists and top charts roundups. We didn’t include lists like “Spotify unveils top 50 shows of 2025,” because those are based on download numbers or follower counts.

We included as many lists as we could find, but there’s no chance in the world that this is exhaustive. It’s possible some great lists were hidden by search engines because their keyword strategy wasn’t top notch. There were also lists we didn’t include because they were written by brands or companies or were too niche in scope.

The following notes are more about SEO and keyword strategy than anything else really, but it’s still interesting to note:

• The word “best” appears in 18 of the 24 titles of the lists we looked at

• 12 of the 24 lists tell us the number of shows they included (i.e. “top 10 shows of the year”). Numbers range from 8-100.

• Some outlets published lists early in the year and then did not return to update them (Spotify), while others did (Vulture).

• Some lists (maybe intentionally?) don’t say that they’ve selected the best, per se, but rather “most essential,” “…that made us stop and really listen,” “most memorable,” and “narrative podcasts we loved.”

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Visualization of best-of podcast list data

That’s the roundup of the podcast roundups

So, what do we think about these findings? What do we have to say about these shows? Well, lots. You’ll have to join us live to find out. But don’t worry if you’re not around at that time — we’ll share the replay. And we want to hear from you!

A few questions we’d love to get your take on:

• Have you listened to any / all of these top 10 shows?

  • Which were your favorites?

• Does placement on a best-of list impact whether or not you decide to listen?

• Which indie podcast should have made the list?

• Which fiction podcast should have made the list?

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THANK YOU FOR READING THIS. PWTA readers, in our book, you’re the best of the best of newsletter readers🤗

P.s. here’s Lauren wearing an Arielle mask. And the real Arielle next to her. We were at the Podcast Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which now includes Arielle! Lauren gave the induction speech. Watch it here, starting at the 10-minute mark.

Oh! And you can chat with us anytime by becoming a paid subscriber.

Thanks, BYE! Love ya!

Lauren & Arielle

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