5 new podcasts to listen to this week
These are our top podcast picks.
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Your support makes all the difference.Why not start the new year listening to some informative and thought-provoking podcasts? It’s a win-win.
1. Hack Your Body, Heal Your Mind Podcast
Streaming platform: Audible
Genre: Health
Have you noticed that when you do something positive to your body your mood automatically lifts too?In a new Audible podcast called Hack Your Body, Heal Your Mind, host Kimberley Wilson, a psychologist and nutritionist, will be exploring the powerful connection between physical and mental health, sharing actionable tips that listeners can integrate into their daily routines to boost energy, focus, and overall wellbeing, and offering accessible science-backed advice to improve both body and mind.
As a psychologist, Wilson listens to her patients talk a lot about stress, anxiety, insomnia, lack of focus, procrastination, and all the other mental challenges of everyday life. She used to see all of these issues as problems of the mind, but over time learned it has everything to do with our bodies, too.
Our minds and bodies are more connected than we think, and the latest science is emphasising just that. If you would like to turn over a new leaf in 2025 and learn more about how to improve your focus, energy, and overall mental health, checking in with Wilson for this eight-part podcast series may be your next best step.
(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)
2. The Big Drink Rethink Podcast
Streaming platform: All streaming platforms
Genre: Health and wellbeing
Have you noticed that the drinking culture in the UK is changing? Are you curious about why it’s happening and what it means to your world?The Big Drink Rethink Podcast – launched in February 2024 and within five months downloaded 42,000 times – is hosted by alcohol mindset coach Anna Donaghey. It features thought-provoking conversations with the people at the heart of this shift, sharing different perspectives on alcohol and practical tools to help people make the right choices for themselves.In this week’s episode, Donaghey chats with former Derbyshire chief superintendent and author Maria Fox, who shares her experience about the other ripple effects alcohol can have from a social and economic perspective.
Donaghey also shares some shocking statistics to provide context to their conversation, including 1.5 million people being admitted to hospital concerning alcohol in one way, shape or form – 24,000 people a week.
The Big Drink Rethink Podcast opens up the conversation regarding alcohol a little further and points out how our relationship with it can easily go from good to bad if we don’t watch out.(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)
3. The Oprah Podcast
Streaming platform: All streaming platforms
Genre: Culture and society
About a year ago, Sesame Street character Elmo posted a question on Twitter, “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?” and unleashed a flood of feelings from millions of people. But for American host and television producer Oprah Winfrey, it revealed that a lot of people are not OK.
In this week’s episode of The Oprah Podcast, Winfrey talks to Dr Vivek Murthy, the outgoing US Surgeon General, about a challenging human emotion a lot of us have dealt with.
Before launching the podcast just over three weeks ago, Winfrey mentioned that “connecting with people about what matters to us, as we all continue to reach our highest, truest potential, is what I’m most interested in offering at this time in my life”, and it’s what has continued to underpin each episode so far.
The Oprah Podcast says it is all about having conversations with thought leaders, authors, and everyday people that open up the aperture of your heart to remain compassionate, empathetic, and curious about the people and world around you.
The beginning of a new year can sometimes set us off in a negative direction. Maybe you are currently feeling isolated and not a part of the world – in that case, some of Murthy’s prescriptions for fighting loneliness and building a lasting community may do some good.
(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)
4. Political Currency
Streaming platform: All streaming platforms
Genre: Politics
Political Currency with former chancellor George Osborne and former shadow chancellor Ed Balls has launched a podcast mini-series – produced by Persephonica and called Inside No. 10 – interviewing former prime minister David Cameron about the first six months of taking the reins in 2010.
The aim of the series is to take listeners behind the scenes and into the rooms where important decisions that impact the nation’s pockets are made.
Using their knowledge and experience to explain how good politics follows economics – and exposing how the powerful become powerless when faced with market forces and political currents they can’t control – Osborne and Balls ask Cameron about how the first coalition budget was executed and if the strategy he adopted with Osborne took things too far.
Cameron admits that throughout his tenure, he wanted to make difficult decisions and said: “I would rather be a prime minister who had the permission to take the action where I thought it was necessary”.
It’s interesting to hear more about why our political leaders make the decisions they do and if they have any regrets. Political Currency isn’t just for people who are just interested in politics, because politics impacts every aspect of our lives.
(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)
Spotlight on…
5. Ladies Who Launch
Streaming platform: All streaming platforms
Genre: Business
I gasped when English singer and TV show host Rochelle Humes announced that she would be launching an empowering podcast, serving up the aspirational journeys of women who have made their mark in the world of business.
Ladies Who Launch is where Humes – the founder of skin and haircare brand My Little Coco – will be sitting down with the most incredible businesswomen and speaking to them about how they have redefined success and proved that anything is possible.
In the inaugural episode, Humes chats to the ultimate girls’ girl, British businesswoman and entrepreneur Emma Grede, CEO and co-founder of denim company Good American, a founding partner of Skims, and co-founder of Safely.
They speak about her East London upbringing and how it informs the way she does business today, why “shy kids don’t get no sweets”, working hard and coupling that with resistance, the scarcity mentality around women, and the Fifteen Percent Pledge that’s making a real change for black-owned businesses.
My biggest takeaway from this episode was when Grede spoke about why she doesn’t have imposter syndrome. She credits this learned confidence to her mother: “You’re not better than anyone else, nor is anyone better than you.”
From the great intro music to the beautiful conversation, Ladies Who Launch is truly the girls’ group chat for business and beyond. I’d encourage you to join the conversation and maybe take your own leap too.
(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)