15 Of The Best Interview-Based Podcasts

The Adam Buxton Podcast

If you were a fan of the Adam and Joe show on Radio 6, then you need The Adam Buxton podcast in your life. With friends in high places, Adam’s episodes with Louis Theroux, Simon Pegg, Charlie Brooker, Jon Ronson – and, of course, his old showmate, Joe Cornish – are some of the funniest and forthright interviews around (listening to Theroux singing ‘Yes Sir, I Can Boogie’ is a particular highlight).

Visit Adam-Buxton.co.uk

Appearances

Last year British Vogue launched its first-ever podcast. Hosted by Academy Award-winner and contributing editor Steve McQueen, in each weekly instalment McQueen and a notable guest – including Oscar-nominated actor Daniel Kaluuya; Game of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie; and model and singer Karen Elso – consider how their appearance has shaped their lives and their perception of themselves. We loved the first episode, where model and activist Adwoa Aboah reflects on falling in love, her mental health, modelling for Vogue and her sometimes complicated relationship with her own beauty.

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Ctrl Alt Delete

As millennials, we’re one of the first generations to grow up with the internet. Emma Gannon, former social media journalist for the likes of Glamour and The Debrief, has based her whole career around this idea of growing up online and what effect it has on us. On Ctrl Alt Delete, Gannon plays host to a range of creative and successful women, including Lena Dunham, Cheryl Strayed and Gemma Arterton, where they discuss things that are important to millennial women, spanning anything from careers and feminism to our love-hate relationship with the internet.

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How I Built This

Journalist Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best-known companies. His podcast How I Built This, weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists and the movements they built. The show features the likes of Urban Decay founder Sandy Lerner, Drybar creator Alli Webb and Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter. This is the place to go for in-depth careers advice. We loved a recent episode with hallowed San Francisco restaurant Chez Panisse’s head chef and founder Alice Waters.

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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

Elizabeth Day’s philosophy in life is we should all embrace failure – the biggest moments of crisis in our lives make us who we are. This principle has spawned four series of her podcast How To Fail, in which she speaks to a vast number of people from different background about how they handle failure, from politicians to comedians to people who have been pulled back from the brink of suicide. Sometimes funny, sometimes inspirational and sometimes heartbreaking, Elizabeth aims to take the taboo out of failing. Her new book, of the same name, is also worth a read.

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In The Third Person

Hosts Mike Skinner (of The Streets fame) and rapper Murkage Dave invite different inspirational celebrities into their studio to get them to explain what they do and why they do it. The podcast features the likes of Alexa Chung, Dizzee Rascal and Jamal Edwards – but it’s the first episode with Liam Gallagher that really grabbed people’s attention. The Oasis frontman revealed he can’t sing if he doesn’t have his autocue and will literally read anything anyone puts on it: “If they put fucking fish and chips [on there], I’d sing that as well. It’s terrible, leaving my fucking shit in other people’s hands, but yeah, I need the autocue, man.” Interesting…

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Katie Piper’s Extraordinary People

In Extraordinary People, Katie Piper – writer, broadcaster and star of Strictly Come Dancing – chats with inspirational people who have turned incredible adversity into powerful positivity. We like her episode on Madeleine Shaw, author, nutritional therapist and mother, who shares her past ordeal with disordered eating, plus some great advice on how to form a positive mindset towards food and create healthy boundaries on social media; and her interview with Alice Liveing (aka Clean Eating Alice) who shares her experiences of escaping an abusive relationship and her journey through health and fitness.

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Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations

This is the place to hear Oprah Winfrey’s personal selection of her interviews with thought-leaders, best-selling authors, spiritual luminaries and health and wellness experts. Most recent is a chat with philanthropist and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Melinda Gates. Believing that all lives have equal value, Melinda and her husband, Bill Gates, have donated more than $50bn to improving equity, health and education in the United States and around the world. We also like a recent episode with Grammy-, Golden Globe-, Tony- and Oscar-nominated actor Bradley Cooper, who discusses how he has emerged as a visionary filmmaker.

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Success Stories

We couldn’t write this piece without giving ourselves a little shout-out, could we? Interviewing some of the most prominent and inspirational women in business today, SheerLuxe’s Success Stories podcast walks you through how our favourite girl bosses made it from humble beginnings to the very top – showing that it doesn’t matter about your age or your background, we all have it in us to be successful. Thea Green, Jo Malone and Amber Venz-Box are just some of the women who have walked through our doors to tell us about how they made it big – get ready to feel inspired.

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TBD With Tina Brown

The esteemed editor (Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The Daily Beast) and best-selling author talks with actors, politicians, journalists and the newsmakers of tomorrow’s social debates. Recent highlights include Amber Tamblyn, a co-founder of the Time’s Up movement, who talks with Tina about her provocative new feminist manifesto ‘Era of Ignition’ and why the best rage is proactive; and Rosamund Pike who shares her deep dive into the role of Marie Colvin, the relentlessly brave foreign correspondent she portrays in A Private War. Plus, Hillary Clinton discusses how women candidates must be prepared to fight, what it feels like to be targeted by Putin and the risks of President Trump’s overtures to North Korea.

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The Griefcast

‘Podcast of the Year’ at the 2018 British Podcast Awards, The Griefcast focuses on funny people talking about death and grief. Hosted by Cariad Lloyd, some of our favourite episodes see her talk to writer and journalist Anna Whitehouse aka Mother Pukka (Parenting the S**t Out of Life, Dirty Mother Pukka) about the five lives she lost on the journey to becoming a mother; and writer and journalist Poorna Bell (Chase the Rainbow,) who speaks about her husband Rob, who took his own life in 2015, strength and how to survive awkward conversations.

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The Lifestyle News Hound

The Lifestyle News Hound takes a fresh look at all things lifestyle, relevant and innovative to salute women over the age of 40. Hosted by Emma Forbes and Gemma Sheppard it is both inspirational and aspirational with love, laughter and wisdom. Recent episodes we’ve enjoyed are with Trinny Woodhall; Kara Rosen, the juicing guru at Plenish Cleanse and a former New York Magazine executive turned London-based juice entrepreneur who built her business from scratch; and Cassandra Stavrou, the co-founder of Propercorn, which sells 3m packs of award-winning popcorn every month.

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The Sunday Salon

The Sunday Salon, which launched this year, is a podcast celebrating modern classic literature and the women who write them. Hosted by journalist Alice-Azania Jarvis, each week she chats to a female author about her work, her career, how she writes, what she reads and everything in between. Tune in each Sunday to hear from guests including How Do You Like Me Now? author Holly Bourne, Ordinary People’s Diana Evans, The Reading Cure’s Laura Freeman, and former Cosmopolitan editor Farrah Storr, who’s just taken on the top job at Elle.

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The Tip Off

If you’re curious about the complicated detective work that goes into doing great investigative journalism, this is the podcast for you. The Tip Off takes us behind the scenes, as each episode digs into an investigative scoop, hearing from the journalists behind the work as they tell us about the leads, the dead-ends and of course, the tip offs. Expect car chases, slammed doors, terrorist cells, meetings in dimly lit bars and cafes, wrangling with despotic regimes and much more. Particularly good is an episode on Ashley Fantz, who often covers police press conferences as part of her day job at CNN. A few years ago, she attended one that set her on a months-long journey, forensically piecing together the evidence to reveal the systematic destruction of vital police evidence.

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WTF With Marc Maron

In September 2009, Marc Aaron changed the podcast landscape when he started WTF with Marc Maron, a weekly show featuring revelatory conversations with the likes of Robin Williams, Keith Richards, Ben Stiller and then-president Barack Obama. It became a worldwide phenomenon, with more than 6m downloads each month and 250m lifetime downloads within its first six years. His most recent interviewee is Jane Fonda, and recent favourites include Christina Hendricks, Aidy Bryant, Mandy Moore, Steve Coogan, Maggie Gyllenhaal and The Beastie Boys.

Visit WTFPod.com