Podcasting is an incredibly intimate medium. We feel like podcast hosts are our friends; though the relationship is one-sided, it feels like they are speaking directly to us. It also means that a sad podcast can hit us in the feels even harder than weepy novel or tearjerking movie.
These 10 podcasts go to the sad place, but in the most beautiful, human ways. From songs that changed lives, to cultural moments that opened up the floodgates, to stories about love and loss and addiction and suicide, even a narrative about a mission to a red dwarf star 7.8 light years from Earth: These stories don’t pull any punches. Consider this your trigger warning—these shows require tissues.
Soul Music
Image: Podcast logo
Songs can evoke strong memories and potent emotional responses, and every episode of Soul Music will diminish you to a puddle of tears. Each focuses on a different song, as people from around the world describe their strong connection to it. It’s not so much about the history of the song itself (though that’s covered); it’s more about telling personal stories about why and how a certain song changed someone’s life. People talk about death, separation, loss—and happy things too—using songs like “Purple Rain,” “Once in a Lifetime,” “I Will Survive,” and “Redemption Song” as a conduit. Soul Music is a reminder that a song is never just a song, and that music is often a companion in our saddest moments.
Crybabies
Image: Podcast logo
Crybabies hasn’t dropped an episode in years, but if you have access to Stitcher Premium, you can dive into an entire archive of stuff whenever you feel the need to let the tears flow. Writer Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief, The New Yorker) and actor Sarah Thyre (Strangers with Candy, Late Night With Conan O’Brien) ask writers, actors, musicians, comedians about the cultural things that make them cry. THe resulting conversations are intimate, funny, and, naturally, sad. The beauty lies in each episode’s specificity—who would have thought that Nat King Cole’s “Smile” makes Molly Shannon cry, or that a specific Volkswagen commercial drives Moby to tears, or that Guy Branum could give an entire lecture on the emotional impact of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”?
Julie: The Unwinding of the Miracle
Image: Podcast logo
The late Julie Yip-Williams tried to remain as present as possible in her life, even as she watched herself die from Stage IV colon cancer. Julie is a podcast that chronicles Julie’s process of preparing for her death and revisiting the events of her extraordinary life. Assembled from hours of personal and revealing conversations, and touching on themes of immigration, love, and the paranormal, Julie is a show that will heal hearts and remind you to never take your time on earth for granted. Think of it as a companion to her posthumous memoir, The Unwinding of the Miracle.
Last Day
Image: Podcast logo
Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer’s podcast company Lemonada was born from a twin personal tragedy—they each lost a sibling to addiction. On Last Day, Stephanie and Jess examine the last day of their brothers’ lives, and attempt to learn how to cope with their loss from behind the microphone. As the first season progresses, they strive to understand how to grieve in a world that often doesn’t allow us to slow down. This show is the heart of what Lemonada is about—making terrible things suck less by giving us someone to wade through the muck wit. After the first season, Last Day goes on to consider other things that kill us, including suicide and gun violence. It’s a hard listen, but filled with personal stories, beautifully told, that will remind you to squeeze your loved ones a little tighter, because you don’t know when it’s someone’s last day. (“Addiction 17" is an episode about trauma with Dr. Gabor Maté that I have revisited many times.)
Unread
Image: Podcast logo
On an evening in December 2019, at 7 p.m., Chris Stedman received an email from his friend Alex. It said: “listen. i am writing to let you know that when you receive this scheduled email, i will no longer be alive. here’s Alice’s recordings.” Attached was a link to a private SoundCloud account. Alice was a woman Alex met in a Britney Spears fan group. Chris knew this. Alice sounded just like Britney Spears. Unread is Chris’ attempt to understand his friend’s suicide and get to the bottom of this Alice character. Could it be Britney Spears? Why did Alex send him that link, and what did his letter mean? How could his friend just have disappeared? Chris decides to track down the elusive Alice in the hopes that she can help him understand what happened to his friend. Unread unfolds like a mystery, and coalesces into a beautiful portrait of the pain and secrets we hide and the constant struggle to understand one another.
The Bright Sessions
Image: Podcast logo
The Bright Sessions is a science fiction podcast that follows a group of therapy patients whose mental health issues intersect with their superhuman abilities. The show documents their experiences even as it delves into the life of their mysterious therapist, Dr. Bright, and explores why she is conducting these sessions. Each character is perfectly isolated so listeners get to really know them as they change, improve, and experience set-backs. Though fantastical, these characters feel utterly real, and their struggles speaks to life’s messiness, and considers the ways we might cope with the cards we’ve been dealt.
Wolf 359
Image: Podcast logo
Wolf 359 follows Doug Eiffel, a crew member aboard the U.S.S. Hephaestus, orbiting just outside of the red dwarf star Wolf 359, 7.8 light years from Earth. (Don’t you feel lonely just reading that?) The more the listener learns about Eiffel and his crew, the stranger and more dire their situation seems, and that’s before everything starts going awry. Doug doesn’t have a lot to do, nor much companionship, so he starts creating extensive audio logs about the day-to-day happenings onboard the station. Doug’s situation gets stranger and stranger and the plight of the Hephaestus grows more dire. Wolf 359 is smart, exciting, occasionally hysterical, and deeply sad. There’s nothing quite like it.
36 Questions
Image: Podcast logo
36 Questions follows a wife’s attempts to reconnect with her estranged husband using the tool that made them fall in love on their first date: the New York Times‘s piece “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love.” Episodes chart the couple’s attempt to fall back in love and include songs and outstanding performances from Jonathan Groff and Jessie Shelton. The chronicle of their separation will get the tears flowing, but things get even more emotional as they work to get back together. Share this one with your partner or a loved one, and bring extra tissues.
Sorry About the Kid
Image: Podcast logo
How do you move past losing the person you love most in the world, and how do you hold onto your favorite memories about them? Alex remembers everything about the day in 1990 a speeding police car killed his brother, but nothing about the time they spent together when his brother was still alive. Thirty years later, on Sorry About the Kid, Alex excavates his childhood grief by talking to family, friends, and the therapist who was there when his brother died. It’s all in service of reclaiming those memories back and teaching himself how to grieve, and move beyond incredible trauma.
Strangers
Image: Podcast logo
Lea Thau, a former director of The Moth, puts her interviewing skills to use to tell stories of real-life magical encounters on the Peabody Award-winning Strangers. The show explores unexpected connections between people—the events and circumstances, from infidelity to organ donation, that can bring us together. These are the moments when two people who seem to have nothing in common are able to see the threads that connect them. Listen and you too may find yourself connecting with others in surprising ways, and understanding things about yourself that you never knew before.
