Compelling podcasts: from couples therapy to funny voices

Where Should We Begin? With Esther Perel

Episode 3: Speak French To Me

This series is a true exercise in eavesdropping: 10 episodes, each a real-life, anonymous couples therapy session, with therapist Esther Perel. It is in turns heartbreaking, nail-biting, and sometimes too intimate for comfort – but all in the name of speaking earnestly to the human condition and holding up a magnifying glass to the ins and outs of romantic relationships.

In this episode Perel talks to a couple who are emotionally and romantically connected, but not sexually attracted to each other. The route out, for them, seemingly, involves the husband in the couple role-playing a French alter-ego, Jean-Claude. While this sounds absurd, it is deeply emotional to listen to, and the revelations the couple make along the way are crushingly intimate. It also looks at the lasting impact of purity culture, and how childhood abuse carries into the relationships we make as adults.

The Indoor Kids with Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V

Gordon

Voices with John DiMaggio

Gabriel Byrne: ‘Sex pests’ and ‘abject sexism’ rife in RTÉ in 1970s

---

Must-listen podcasts: from the power of no to Christmas laughs

---

Tommy Tiernan: ‘I love going to Mass. It’s all about the losers’

---

Animated version of McCourt’s Angela and Shane MacGowan on RTÉ’s Christmas menu

---

This podcast is a long-running conversation between a married couple about video games and movies – Nanjiani and Gordon have gone so far as to make a film about their relationship (The Big Sick) and are interesting and funny enough to sustain this format. The first 20 minutes of this episode is a catch-up, then they interview DiMaggio. They're casual and natural interviewers – DiMaggio is the voice of several iconic cartoon characters (Jake The Dog from Adventure Time, Bender from Futurama) and therefore has some great stories to tell. It's the kind of fast pace, whip-crack listening that almost makes time speed up. Listen close for how delighted Gordon is every time DiMaggio pulls a voice out of nowhere. Yes, the Indoor Kids is certainly for indoor kids, but if video games and cartoons are a part of your life, this is a great, fast-paced chat show.

NEW PODCAST OF THE WEEK

Family Ghosts

Lookin’ Good, Charlie

Sam Dingman hosts this storytelling podcast, which examines how when family members die, they leave imprints of themselves on who we are. This episode looks at fatherhood and masculinity, and how our parents hand down our identity – and what that means if a parent suddenly dies. Dingman hosts, and the story is told by Mark, whose father died when he was 14. Certainly this is a story about loss and adolescence, but it’s also about body hair, being othered and what being a man really looks like.

The rhythm of the story is littered with wonderful little reveals and some truly heartening and funny moments – the list of what makes a man, for example, including “opening a bottle with a lighter for a woman”, and Mark’s long, arduous battle with his chest and stomach hair. It feels like listening to an especially fascinating acquaintance telling a long story in a pub, through the lens of a 1990s American high-school comedy.