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A quarter of all people in Germany already listen to a podcast at least once a month.
That is what the Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg found out.
Are you one of them already?
Or are you still about to enter the podcast world?
If you're looking for podcasts worth listening to, or if you're looking for good reasons to check out podcasts this year, we've gathered some suggestions.
The podcast boom in recent years has led to a veritable explosion of the offer.
Spotify has around 70,000 podcast formats in German - including irregular hobby productions and weekly blockbuster programs, sprawling insider conversations and elaborate audio reports.
Colleagues from the audio department show why it is worth immersing yourself in the podcast universe.
They reveal their highlights from the past year, eleven journalistic podcasts that they liked to hear and recommend.
We also present highlights from our own podcast productions.
1. Noise
How real the effects of fake news can be was observed in the USA on January 6, 2021. When hundreds of people stormed the Washington Capitol to prevent Joe Biden's appointment as president. These people were driven by Donald Trump's tale of lies, an allegedly stolen election. Fake news, of course.
There are also fake news and disinformation campaigns in Germany.
This was particularly evident in the general election.
In six episodes, »Noise« deals with political noise, which is getting louder and louder.
The podcast explores various stories in which disinformation is used to exert political influence.
Some fake news campaigns only take place in the farthest corners of the internet, many on social networks, others even flicker on our television screens at prime time.
The federal election is over, but fake news about the corona crisis continues to make this podcast current and important.
Hear "Noise".
2. Welcome to your Fantasy (English)
1979. Los Angeles. Women scream, cheer, wave dollar bills. They're electrified by the chippendales, dancing, stripping, mustached men. “Welcome to your Fantasy” traces the beginnings of these male Playboy bunnies and reveals how two men dreamed of a “Disneyland for adults” and turned it into a global phenomenon. The historian Natalia Petrzela takes the listeners into an American cultural history - a story of sex, money and success as well as corruption, power struggles and a murder case.
This podcast is a colorful mix of dazzling anecdotes from former Chippendales and their fans, loud archive sounds, driving music and crazy birds from the entertainment industry - and an exciting true crime podcast.
Petrzela serves all of this with puns and anything but sticky in eight episodes.
Hear "Welcome to your Fantasy".
3. Slahi - 14 years Guantanamo
In the twelve-part podcast "Slahi - 14 years of Guantanamo", Bastian Berbner and John Goetz tell the story of Mohamedou Slahi, the son of a Mauritanian camel herder, very impressively.
It could be the story of a climber: he comes to Germany on a scholarship, studies, becomes an engineer.
But in the end, a phone call from his cousin is his undoing.
The story of the Guantanamo prisoner Mohamedou Slahi is enormously captivating: what happened to him there?
Has he done what he's been accused of?
But Berbner and Goetz don't stop there: They also tracked down the people who tortured Slahi there.
The podcast not only investigates what torture does to the tortured person, but also how torture changes the torturer.
The two reporters turn the tables, and the listener is left with the question: Who got the upper hand here?
"Slahi - 14 years Guantanamo" listen.
4. Aitutaki Blues - The last trip with my mother and Alzheimer's
Claudia Schreiber has a dream: a trip to Aitutaki. She had heard of the small island in the Pacific 30 years ago when she read about the first woman mayor on the mini-island. Since then, Aitutaki, a paradise of palm trees and white beaches, has been Claudia's place of longing. Today she is in her early 60s and has Alzheimer's disease. Her 28-year-old son Lukas Sam Schreiber tells how his mother loses orientation and memory. As the disease progresses, the two travel to dream island somewhere between New Zealand and Hawaii.
Except for a little rattle of propellers and the sound of the sea, there is little to hear from Aitutaki herself in this podcast, but what is much more important: the island is space and time for mother and son for deep, very private conversations.
"Aitutaki Blues" is a podcast full of sadness and tenderness, fear and happiness, despair and confidence.
In seven episodes, mother and son speak so openly that it sometimes strikes you: About the force of illness, about mistakes and fulfillment in life and the hope of a self-determined death.
If you listen, you get goose bumps, sometimes you laugh with mother and son.
Listen to "Aitutaki Blues" at Audible.
5. The Neighbors - The Andreas Darsow Case
In the multi-part investigative report »The Neighbors«, Leonie Bartsch and Linn Schütze rework the Andreas Darsow case.
Darsow was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2009 for the murder of his neighboring family.
He still maintains his innocence to this day, and experts also criticize the conduct of the litigation.
The reporters travel to the Hessian province, get the impression of flourishing crime, they talk to Darsow's family, the witnesses from back then, and they come to the conclusion: The chain of circumstantial evidence that led to Darsow's conviction is not working.
This is due to a systemic gap in the German judiciary.
Bartsch and Schütze moderate the podcast »Mord auf Ex« and embed this three-part series in the format.
They tell about their research themselves - it bumps sometimes, the two of them are not professional speakers.
Nevertheless, her report is absolutely worth listening to: "The Neighbors" shows what can happen when the police and the court commit to a perpetrator very early, despite the lack of evidence.
"The neighbors" hear.
6.544 Days (English)
It all starts with an avocado and a crowdfunding.
Because in Iran there are no avocados, the vast majority of people do not even know the green fruits.
You're missing out, at least Jason Rezaian thinks.
The American with Iranian roots started a crowdfunding campaign in 2010 to build an avocado farm in Iran.
A crazy idea that Rezaian will regret years later.
The campaign fails, Rezaian has new goals: In 2012 the freelance journalist will become the Iran correspondent for the Washington Post.
There are now more important subjects to him than avocados.
What he does not know: the US secret service CIA has started a program to monitor hostile regimes.
Code name: "Project Avocado".
It is unclear whether this leads to a misunderstanding or whether the Iranian regime is using the avocado trail as an excuse to hold Jason Rezaian hostage.
In any case, he was arrested in 2014 and ended up in solitary confinement.
The suspicion: he was an American spy.
The journalist fears his release for 544 days.
In the podcast he tells how his wife had illegal alcohol stocks disappeared shortly before his arrest, or what perfidious means the regime used to put him under pressure.
In addition, high-profile interviewees such as ex-Foreign Secretary John Kerry talk about the negotiations behind the scenes.
As the host, Rezaian comments on his story with biting humor, even though it has what it takes to become an international political thriller.
Listen to "544 Days" on Spotify.
7. Decoder Ring (English)
Culture is what determines how we work, think or love.
And: Culture is so all-encompassing that it can be taken for granted - and therefore often becomes invisible and remains unquestioned.
This is where the fabulous “Decoder Ring” podcast comes in.
Our everyday culture is dissected in weekly episodes of 30 to 60 minutes.
Be it the genre of (deliberately meaningless) hotel art, the (profit-oriented) invention of the hydration myth or the (surprisingly surprising) history of the Segway.
This podcast will provide you with stories to tell!
Hear "Decoder Ring".
8. StoryQuarks
With »StoryQuarks«, the WDR succeeds in what some podcast editors are chatting about in Germany: a high-quality format in which both form and content are polished to perfection.
As the name suggests, it is about science topics that are told using very personal and emotional stories.
The episode "Lifelong Maths" is particularly suitable as an introduction to a prisoner who, as an autodidact, works his way up to become a recognized mathematician in prison.
Hear »StoryQuarks«.
9. Aack Cast (English)
Cathy is the main character of a cartoon that appeared in various newspapers in the USA every day, from 1976 to 2010. A woman who struggles with career and relationships, usually desperate about it and sometimes says "Ack". This podcast tells about Cathy and her creator Cathy Guisewite, about a woman in a men's comic world, about the changing social climate in the USA and, most recently, a feminist backlash. Don't worry: you don't have to grow up with Cathy to celebrate this podcast.
Because Jamie Loftus unpacks everything that can make a podcast: personal, tentative, never completely finished storytelling.
It's crazy when the comic Cathy first appears in the podcast and later in the dreams of Jamie Loftus.
The anthem she commissioned for Cathy.
The personal mission to defend the two Cathys against criticism.
The interviews that she conducts and comments on afterwards.
What is being negotiated, the relationship between generations, from boomers to Gen Y, goes far beyond comics and the USA.
Hear "Aack Cast".
(Anyone who is still strangling with Cathy: Jamie Loftus reported about her year in a gifted club in a similarly gorgeous manner. That too is great podcast cinema.)
10. 19 02 20 - One year after Hanau
Nine young people were killed in a right-wing terrorist attack in Hanau on February 19, 2020.
How could that happen?
Could the attack have been prevented?
These are the questions that the relatives of the victims have been asking themselves ever since.
They demand that the case be dealt with and that political conclusions be drawn from it.
In a total of six episodes, journalist Sham Jaff and reporter Alena Jabarine pursue the open questions: They reconstruct what happened on the evening of February 19, 2020, research files and talk to relatives, survivors, activists and experts.
The podcast tells from a very personal perspective about the night of the crime and how we dealt with what we experienced.
It's about right-wing terror in Germany, the failure of authorities and racism in society.
Listen to »19 02 20« on Spotify.
11th Merkel years
Last name: Kasner, childhood places: Quitzow near Perleberg and the Fichtengrund house on the Templiner Waldhof, role models: "Pop singers, gymnasts, figure skaters, dancers, world travelers and magicians".
Who doesn't immediately think of Angela Merkel?
It is these details about Merkel - about the person behind the Chancellor - that make the six-part podcast "Merkel Years" surprisingly exciting.
In it, Deutschlandfunk journalists Steffen Detjen and Tom Schimmeck explore the "improbable path of Angela M."
Of course, this portrait also traces the broad lines in Merkel's career: Pastor's daughter and physicist, Kohl, Stoiber, Merz and Schröder, the euro and financial crisis, "We can do it" and Corona. But the "Merkel Years" focus less on the big lines, but rather emphasizes the finer, more personal contours of the Chancellor's biography. Detjen and Schimmeck take the listeners into the Templin Forest, literally on Merkel's most personal footsteps. Former teachers and fellow students have their say, Merkel herself again and again in original treasures from the DLF archive. In this way, the political life of the former German Chancellor is reconstructed based on the personal developments of "Angela M." in an approachable and irritating way at the same time. Hear "Merkel Years".
Ronja Bachofer, Imre Balzer, Jelena Berner, Adrian Breda, Paul Heuer, Ole Reißmann, Regina Steffens
Bonus: Our podcast episodes from last year, which we are particularly proud of
For two days, the colleagues from SPIEGEL Daily were able to accompany everyday work in the corona intensive care unit at Berlin's Charité - as only the second team of reporters since the beginning of the pandemic, at the beginning of the fourth wave.
And what reporter Regina Steffens said, sometimes in a whisper, shocked me.
I've got used to the fact that new maximum incidence values are part of our everyday life.
But this episode made it clear to me that we urgently need to prevent it.
It is not for nothing that “Inside Austria” is one of the Apple podcasts recommendations of the year. Because here you not only hear the whole insane story of Austria's youngest chancellor; one also learns many background details that encouraged its steep ascent and caused its sudden fall.
Sarajevo - this place appeared again and again in the »Tagesschau«. As a child, I first perceived the war in Yugoslavia as news, then as a historical event. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I could understand what had happened in the middle of Europe. SPIEGEL reporter Walter Mayr, on the other hand, witnessed the disintegration of Yugoslavia first hand. He observed on site how this horrific war broke out and has been following developments in the region ever since. From this episode I have understood how much what has happened has had an impact on the people and why the EU must remain vigilant.
Living Smarter always has good tips for everyday life, but this episode blew me away.
During a walk on the Elbe, I listened to the brain researcher Boris Nikolai Konrad and his explanation of how he can remember many things: On his regular trips through the city, he links individual details of the environment with information in his brain.
Just like I think of this episode every time I pass the Hamburg overseas terminal.
A recognized researcher of violence as a wise climate warning?
For Harald Welzer only logical, he says: "If the chances of survival change, then violence is always an option." I hadn't read anything from him before, but this podcast episode made me wiser - thanks to Harald Welzer's astonishing insights and clever questions of the host Sebastian Spallek.
I don't know a single winner of the TV show "The Masked Singer" because I just don't care which celebrity is dressed up. I'm only interested in the costumes: the astronaut or the meerkat with dungarees. Even more, since I knew, thanks to this episode, how much passion the trained make-up artist Marianne Meinl creates her costumes. I've already made a note of one tip from her for the coming year: glitter is the solution to virtually every problem.
This podcast explains again and again what politics means for our everyday lives.
Also because very different voices have their say: A 21-year-old has to apply for Hartz IV for back rent payments, an activist wants to socialize 250,000 apartments and a landlord's representative warns of expropriations.
What a just housing policy could look like is one of the pressing questions - how difficult it will be to answer is shown by this episode.
Compiled by
Olaf Heuser
and
Lenne Kaffka
.