Storytelling at Its Finest: Nicholas Quah's Essential Narrative Podcasts of 2025
From NPR's investigative deep dives to Higher Ground's musical explorations, this curated collection features the year's most compelling narrative podcasts as selected by industry expert Nicholas Quah. These are the shows that redefined audio storytelling in 2025.
10 shows
Embedded
NPR
NPR's home for audio documentaries brings untold stories to light through deeply reported narrative series. We go to hidden corners of the headlines to explore what's been sealed off, undisclosed, or overlooked – and the people at the heart of those stories.
Fela Kuti: Fear No Man
Higher Ground
In a world that's on fire, what is the role of art? What can music actually do? Can a song save a life? Change a law? Topple a president? Get you killed? In Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, Jad Abumrad tells the story of one of the great political awakenings in music: how a classically trained 'colonial boy' traveled to America, in search of Africa, only to return to Nigeria and transform his sound into a battering ram against the state—creating a new musical language of resistance called Afrobeat.
A Tiny Plot
Snap Judgment
Using broken refrigerators, mattresses, and dishwashers, residents of Union Point Park barricade their tent city. And they fight for an extraordinary idea: their own plot of land, where they could live in community and set their own rules. A Tiny Plot is a new 5-part series from KQED's Snap Studios. Host and Reporter Shaina Shealy takes listeners inside an encampment in Oakland for an against-all-odds story about scarcity, community, and the complexity of building something new from the margins of a broken system.
On the Media
WNYC Studios
On the Media uses media as a lens to understand the world. The show offers context, historical parallels, and media analysis rather than quick takes. Hosted by Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger, the program explores nuances regularly missed by other outlets, helping listeners understand where to focus attention.
Scratch and Win
GBH News
The show explores how legal gambling became ubiquitous in America, following the unlikely rise of America's most successful lottery. Beginning in 1970s Boston where state officials confronted organized crime while developing the scratch ticket innovation, the narrative extends to contemporary questions about the gambling industry that lotteries helped summon into being.
Shell Game
Kaleidoscope
A podcast about things that are not what they seem, hosted by journalist Evan Ratliff. Season 2 tells the story of enterprise and entrepreneurship in the AI age. Or: how Evan tried to build a real startup, run by fake people.
Uncover
CBC
Crime. Investigation. Revelation. Uncover brings you explosive, high-caliber true crime year-round. From CIA mind control to serial abuse, mysterious disappearances to wrongful imprisonment.
The Retrievals
Serial Productions & The New York Times
C-sections are the most frequently performed major surgeries in the world. So why do so many patients feel severe pain during them? Season 2 of the award-winning podcast The Retrievals is an investigation into this underreported problem — and the new effort to solve it.
The Devil You Know with Sarah Marshall
CBC
In the 1980s and 90s, Satan and his followers were accused of brainwashing children, sacrificing babies, and infiltrating North American society on a massive scale — yet these thousands of alleged Satanists were nowhere to be found. This series explores the Satanic Panic through interviews with believers, skeptics, bystanders, and wrongfully-convicted individuals.
What We Spend
Audacy
Imagine if you could ask someone anything you wanted about their finances. On What We Spend, people from across the country and across the financial spectrum are opening their wallets—and their lives—to tell you everything: what they make, what they want, and—for one week—what they spend.