From exploring the sun to the dating scene, NPR’s can’t-miss podcasts from 2024

2024 was an epic year for podcasts across the NPR Network. With less than two weeks left before 2025, now is the time to catch up on a few of our favorite shows and seasons of the year.

The podcast episode descriptions below are from podcast webpages and have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Embedded: The Black Gate – NPR

In the Xinjiang region of western China, the government has rounded up and detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups, including the wife and young children of a Uyghur businessman named Abdullatif Kucar. NPR correspondent Emily Feng follows Kucar as he desperately searches for his missing family.

Start listening to episode one, “Vanished in the Night.”

Sea Change – WWNO & WRKF

Living on the coast means living on the front lines of a rapidly changing planet. And as climate change transforms our coasts, that will transform our world. We bring you stories that illuminate, inspire, and sometimes enrage, as we dive deep into the environmental issues facing coastal communities on the Gulf Coast and beyond. We have a lot to save, and we have a lot of solutions. It’s time to talk about a Sea Change. Sea Change is a new podcast hosted by Carlyle Calhoun, Halle Parker, and Kezia Setyawan. Join us as we investigate and celebrate life on a changing coast.

Listen to, “Sacred and Submerged.”

Beyond All Repair – WBUR

Imagine if one day, you are accused of something. Something horrible, violent, heinous. Something you swear you did not do, and nothing you say can convince anyone otherwise — even the people closest to you. That’s Sophia Johnson’s story. Sophia was starting fresh: A new life, a new husband, a baby on the way. But it all unraveled on January 10, 2002, when her mother-in-law Marlyne Johnson was found bludgeoned to death in her home. Days later, Sophia was charged with the murder. To this day, Sophia swears she didn’t do it. But someone says they witnessed it — her own brother. When family betrays family, who do you believe? In this story of a sibling rivalry beyond compare, WBUR’s Amory Sivertson turns the clock back. She reexamines an unsolved case, a family torn apart, and a woman who wasn’t believed. From WBUR and ZSP Media, Beyond All Repair is a 10-part true crime investigation into a cold case. The series ends with an answer.

Start listening to part one, “Boxes.”

Lost Patients – KUOW

Imagine a sprawling house in which every room, doorway, and hall passage was designed by a different architect. Doorways don’t connect. Staircases lead to nowhere. Rooms are cut off from each other. That’s how reporter Will James describes our complicated system for treating people with severe mental illness – a system that, almost by design, loses patients with psychosis to an endless loop between the streets, jail, clinics, courts and a shrinking number of hospital beds. Lost Patients is a deeply-reported, six-part docuseries examining the difficulties of treating serious mental illness through the lens of one city’s past, present and future. With real-life testimonials from patients, families, and professionals on the front lines, Lost Patients provides a real, solutions-oriented look at how we got stuck here… and what we might do to break free.

Start listening to part one, “Churn.”

TED Radio Hour – NPR

On Dec. 24, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will touch the sun’s atmosphere, getting closer to the sun than any spacecraft ever has before. NPR’s TED Radio Hour interviewed the mission’s lead scientist, Nour Rawafi, for an episode called, “Making Sense of the Sun.” In conversation with host Manoush Zomorodi, Rawafi describes the engineering feat of making a probe that could withstand the sun’s high temperatures. Through the data this probe collects, they hope to better understand solar weather… and better predict solar storms, which can disrupt GPS systems and power grids here on Earth. And for Rawafi, this mission is one for the ages… a chance to learn more about the star that we depend on for life.

Listen to, “Making sense of the sun.”

On The Media: The Harvard Plan – WNYC Radio

Reporter Ilya Marritz, in part one of our collaboration with the Boston Globe, dives into Claudine Gay’s groundbreaking tenure as Harvard’s first Black president. Gay’s appointment began with high hopes in September 2023, but soon devolved into a proxy battleground for American cultural wars — spurring escalating disputes over anti-Semitism and free speech, tarnishing her presidency as a symbol of diversity’s failings. This series slows down the whipsaw chain of events to bring listeners direct eyewitness accounts of what happened, from professors, wealthy donors, and spiritual leaders.

Start listening to, “The Harvard Plan.”

Landslide – WFAE

In the mid-1970s, the Republican Party looked on the verge of self-destruction. Until 1976. A political earthquake: A cutthroat, razor-close, deeply personal battle for the Republican nomination, and the party’s identity. It resurrected the GOP, remade it as a conservative party, and pulled the country sharply to the right. Landslide is the story of the closest presidential primary race in American history, what followed, and how it reshaped the political parties — opening the partisan rifts that divide us today. Hosted by award-winning public radio journalist Ben Bradford.

Start listening to episode one, “Trust.”

It’s Been A Minute – NPR

This December on It’s Been a Minute, host Brittany Luse is kicking off cuffing season with some of the big questions about dating in our culture right now: when is it appropriate to think about how much money your date makes? How much money do you want your partner to make, and is that okay to think about? If you do breakup, is it appropriate to share those details online? And, what do you do when you get “The Ick,” that feeling of disgust when your date does something innocuous but turns you off? Is that feeling about them or about you?

Start listening to, “‘Is it OK to ask about salary on the first date?’ How to marry romance and finance.”

Extremely American – Boise State Public Radio

The Christian nationalist movement wants to make America a theocracy — a government under Biblical rule. Christ Church, embedded in a small, rural Idaho college town, is quickly gaining influence and political interest — but how did we get here? In the second season of Extremely American, host Heath Druzin spent a year inside the movement to understand their stark vision for America’s future.

Start listening to, “Onward Christian Soldiers: Make It A Christian Town.”

Lost Notes – KCRW

In the early 1970s, LA’s Sunset Strip was the epicenter of the rock ‘n’ roll universe. Drugs, sex, private planes, limos, destroying hotel rooms – it wasn’t a myth. And at the center of it all, were groupies. It’s a story we all know – but it’s never been told from this perspective. This season, on “Lost Notes,” we bring you GROUPIES: The Women of Sunset Strip, from the Pill to Punk. The real, riotous, rock ‘n’ roll stories of the girls who lived it all, hosted by Dylan Tupper Rupert, from KCRW and Golden Teapot.

Start listening to episode one, “Lori Lightning and the Baby Groupies.”

Blindspot – WNYC Studios

HIV and AIDS changed the United States and the world. In this series, we reveal untold stories from the defining years of the epidemic, and we’ll consider: How could some of the pain have been avoided? Most crucial of all, what lessons can we still learn from it today?

Start listening to, “Mourning in America.”.

The Youth Development Center – NHPR

New Hampshire has sent its most troubled kids to the same juvenile detention center for more than a century. It’s a place that was supposed to nurture them, that instead hurt them – in some of the worst ways imaginable. It’s now at the center of one of the biggest youth detention scandals in American history. How did this happen – and how did it finally come to light?

Start listening to episode one, “The Black Box.”

Short Wave – NPR

In our wildest dreams, we’re able to warp across the universe to witness its mysteries and discover its quirks up close. In this series, we follow in the footsteps of Einstein’s thought experiments to do exactly that: blast off into space and travel to the most distant, weirdest parts of our universe. Regina helms our spacecraft, with Emily as her first mate. From liftoff, we adjust to the weightlessness of space and then make pit stops at key celestial objects, explaining basic physics principles as we go continually deeper (and earlier) into spacetime. We end with a (fun, we swear!) thought exercise on all the ways the universe could end.

Start listening to, “From The Physics Of G-Force To Weightlessness: How It Feels To Launch Into Space.”

NPR’s Jessica Green and Jack Mitchell curated and produced this piece.