A "ghost hunt" at a Japanese air base. Photo: misawa.af.mil

Our top three podcasts to subscribe to today

Ed Miliband, "Slow Radio" and ghost stories for cynics
December 14, 2017
Reasons to be Cheerful with Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd

Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd

After his anarchic week filling in for Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 this summer, Ed Miliband co-hosts a vivacious podcast about contemporary issues and radical ideas, from universal basic income to transgender rights. The discussion is detailed and thought-provoking, and although Miliband may not have been destined to become prime minister, he makes for joyful, puppyish company alongside the more practised hand of Geoff Lloyd, including casually calling Theresa May a cyborg and contemplating the politics of parliamentary toilet breaks.

Slow Radio

BBC Radio 3

With so many excellent podcasts out there focusing on debate and storytelling, Slow Radio is a snippet of quiet and a breath of fresh air, almost literally; each podcast is a meditative moment of reflection. Most of the episodes released so far have been recorded in a monastery, capturing opportunities for thought, prayer and contemplation, but don’t miss the atmospheric episode captured on a tin shanty boat on the Tennessee River in heavy rain, with the call of frogs all around.

Haunted

Panoply

Even the most hard-headed of sceptics can appreciate the thrill of a good ghost story, especially with the nights getting ever darker and spookier in the depths of winter. This mesmerising podcast is a series of ghost stories for cynics. Danny Robins takes a different real-life ghost story in each episode and tries to work out what really happened in each case: what the witnesses think they saw, and what might actually have been behind the creepy goings-on.