The best podcasts in July 2019—Against the Rules with Michael Lewis and Richard Herring

 

Against the Rules with Michael Lewis, Pushkin Industries

The US journalist behind Moneyball and The Big Short has released a new podcast about the modern idea of fairness, sparked by Lewis’s observation that sports referees—arbiters of fairness—are some of the most detested people in sport. In fact, referees are some of the only people whom it’s widely deemed acceptable to hate. Lewis seeks to defend those who strive to be neutral and uphold fairness, including judges, financial regulators, and even sticklers for correct spelling and grammar.

 

Richard Herring’s Leicester Square, Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP), Go Faster Stripe

RHLSTP, as it’s known to its fans, is probably the best comedy interview podcast going. It’s been around for a while but has really hit its stride with guests including comedian London Hughes, Jon Ronson and Brian Blessed. Herring’s a deliberately shambolic interviewer, with long, rambling encounters propped up by a bizarre list of “emergency questions,” but this style has a way of bringing out surreal anecdotes and stunning revelations from his guests. The interview with Louis Theroux, who is on uncharacteristically open and wise-cracking form, is unmissable.

 

Awake at Night, UN Refugee Agency with Melissa Fleming

This hope-filled, bubble-bursting podcast from the UN Refugee Agency has recently been recognised at the British Podcast Awards, and rightly so. The theme is what it’s like to be a humanitarian worker providing medical and legal aid to refugees and others in some of the world’s most dangerous places. Some of the scenes the contributors have seen keep on haunting them, causing them to risk their lives and leave their own families behind to help where they can.