There are so many new podcasts to fall in love with this month. Test out the spark with the NPR One team's recommendations from across public media.
The podcast episode descriptions below are from podcast webpages and have been edited for brevity and clarity.
B.A. Parker has been trying to find her place in the banjo world. So this week, she talks to Black banjo players like Grammy nominee Rhiannon Giddens about creating community and reclaiming an instrument that's historically already theirs.
Listen to, "Finding Black community while playing the banjo," and check out the Black History Month collection on the NPR app.
Never in American history has it been so easy to gamble, legally at least. We've got casinos, sports betting, online poker, keno — but it was all made possible by state lotteries, which brought gambling out of the shadows and into the public square — into the government itself. "Scratch & Win" follows the unlikely rise of America's most successful lottery. We begin in 1970s Boston, with state bureaucrats going toe to toe with mafia bookmakers, and each other, as they struggle to launch the state's greatest innovation: the scratch ticket. But the story reaches all the way to the present moment. How do we feel about the gambling industry that lotteries helped summon into being? And should the state be in this business at all?
Start listening to part one, "The Instant Ticket."
This year's Oscar nominations are out, and if you liked Emilia Pérez, Anora, Wicked, The Brutalist, and A Complete Unknown, then you're in luck. As always, there's an eclectic mix of heavy favorites, left-field surprises, and the dreaded snubs. We give a broad sense of this year's major storylines, while also lamenting a few decisions we found baffling.
Start listening to, "We break down the 2025 Oscar nominations," and check out the Oscars collection on the NPR app.
Last summer, something monumental happened. One of Uncuffed's founding producers, Greg Eskridge, came home after more than 30 years in prison. In this episode we'll bring you back to that emotional day last summer when he walked out of the San Quentin gates, free at last.
Start listening to episode one, "Day One."
One of the main causes of the 2021 blackout in Texas was the failure of natural gas infrastructure. Still, that industry has avoided increased oversight to protect against future failures. In fact, natural gas remains one of the least regulated parts of our energy system. In this season of The Disconnect: Power, Politics and the Texas Blackout, we explore the history of Texas oil and gas regulation, how the industry — with the help of state officials— became largely self-regulating and what that means for energy reliability in Texas.
Start listening to, "The Long Con."
It's Been A Minute is launching a series called "All the Lonely People," diving deep into how loneliness shows up in our lives and how our culture shapes it.
This week: is the men's loneliness epidemic overblown? There's been a lot more attention on loneliness in the past few years, with special attention on men's loneliness. And some men definitely are lonely: according to a recent Pew survey, 16% of men say they're lonely all or most of the time. But so are 15% of women. So why are we so concerned about men? What launched the narrative about men's particular loneliness? And if the problems men are having don't boil down to loneliness, what do they boil down to? Brittany is joined by Vox senior reporter Allie Volpe and Harris Sockel, writer and content lead at Medium, to break it all down.
Start listening to, "The men's loneliness epidemic might not exist."
LA Made: The Other Moonshot - LAist
When Joanne Higgins was growing up in Compton in Los Angeles, she heard her godfather, Charlie Cheathem, tell stories about his key role in the Apollo mission to the moon. As an adult she realized that his experiences — and those of other Black engineers — had been left out of the history books. She set out to record for the first time the accounts of these men whose crucial contributions to the early days of the Apollo mission have been overlooked — or taken credit for by others — despite their ingenuity and determination.
Start listening to part one, "Ignition Starts."
The New Yorker Radio Hour - WNYC Studios
Staff writers and contributors are celebrating The New Yorker's centennial by revisiting notable works from the magazine's archive, in a series called Takes. The writer Jia Tolentino and the cartoonist Roz Chast join the Radio Hour to present their selections.
Start listening to, "Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive."
Consider This is launching a series of bonus episodes each Saturday featuring short-form audio documentaries. The first one has medieval monks, rapturous crying fits, pingpong and a little bit of time travel.
For centuries, scholars only had one version of the life of Margery Kempe, an English mystic who lived in the 14th and 15th centuries — until a ping pong match revealed her story in her own words.
Start listening to, "'Margery,' the medieval memoirist."
NPR's Jessica Green and Jack Mitchell curated and produced this piece.
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