5 new podcasts to listen to this week

If you are looking for new podcasts that explore history fails, how AI could transform access to healthcare, and the intersection of life and music, then this week’s podcast picks are for you.

1. Conversations with Candice

Streaming platform: All streaming platforms and YouTube

Genre: Life and society

In this episode, Candice Brathwaite reflects on the tendency to seek validation from others and how this can shape behaviour and self-perception. The discussion centres on the weight often given to external opinions, particularly from people not closely involved in our daily lives.

Conversations With Candice is a personal development podcast hosted by the author and broadcaster, exploring themes such as identity, relationships and self-worth. The series is structured around the idea of rebuilding different areas of life, from boundaries to emotional resilience.

The podcast does what it says on the tin, offering conversational, personal insight rather than prescriptive advice. It also touches on broader pressures, including ambition, burnout and the expectation to manage multiple roles at once.

For listeners interested in accessible and insightful content, this podcast gives a calm, measured perspective on confidence and personal boundaries without positioning itself as a definitive guide to self-improvement.

(By Lara Owen)

2. Deep Feedback

Streaming platform: All streaming platforms and YouTube

Genre: Music, culture and society

On this week’s episode of New Strange’s Deep Feedback, host Elijah, who is a London-based artist, writer and DJ, sits down with electronic producer and DJ Hagan to unpack why it’s difficult to subscribe his music under one genre.

True to the podcast’s mission, built for a “post-follower” and “post-like internet”, the conversation is rooted in an idea that the true impact of your work is what it creates next, the art it sparks, behaviours it shifts, and discussions it starts.

Elijah and Hagan also explore the privileges of being a musician who can travel around the world and what it was like recording new music, fusing Ghanaian traditional sounds with British sounds, such as UK funky house, in the English countryside at Devon Analogue Studio.

Hagan’s introspection shines throughout the episode, as he opens up to Elijah about striking the balance between full-time work and the work of an artist, and why it’s important to approach that tension with grace.

If you are looking for an eclectic podcast with expansive conversations across black British culture, electronic music, the creator economy and even pro-wrestling, then add Deep Feedback to your podcast rotation.

(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)

3. For The Yearners Podcast

Streaming platform: All streaming platforms and YouTube

Genre: Music and culture

For The Yearners, hosted by musician and photographer Daniel, also known as db Cxptures, is a new music podcast done differently.

In the debut episode, Daniel, also founder of ThisChord, a community-driven platform that explores the intersections of music and life, chats about the death of the “A&R listener” – a term he uses to describe the majority of music listeners today – and how consumption of it has changed.

Daniel chats about how X used to be a great place for music discourse, why the online fandom of Stan culture has negatively impacted music, what the past 20-30 years of consumption looked like, why 2008 made the most significant change for music, and the revolutionary launch of peer-to-peer file-sharing service Napster.

He goes on to explore the important aspects of the musical experience, including listening to new music on physical media such as CDs and cassettes, and the cons that come with the rise of on-demand streaming models.

Daniel explains the dangers of being an “A&R listener” – who consumes music to be the first to have an opinion, rather than enjoy it – and what we can all reconsider when we engage with new and old music.

For The Yearners Podcast is a well-researched and honest ode to the transformative power and beauty of music. Tune in.

(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)

4. When Science Finds a Way

Streaming platform: All streaming platforms and YouTube

Genre: Science

When Science Finds a Way is a podcast series from global health foundation Wellcome, hosted by botanist-turned-Hollywood actress Alisha Wainwright.

In each episode, Wainwright explores some of the most fascinating stories behind scientific discovery with scientists, innovators and community leaders, who are working together to solve some of our biggest health challenges.

To launch the fourth season, Wainwright is joined by digital psychiatry specialist Dr John Torous, clinical psychiatrist Dr Andrea Cipriani, and digital mental health expert Dr Jana Alagarajah for a two-part episode.

Wainwright and Torous first discuss how training AI on data from our devices could help us diagnose people with mental health conditions.

Cipriani chats about how AI could optimise patients’ prescriptions, and Alagarajah explains why innovation in the Global South could shape future care for the rest of the world.

If you have always wondered how scientific breakthroughs bring about a better world, and how AI could transform access to mental healthcare, then listen to When Science Finds a Way. It’s whip-smart and curious.

(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)

Spotlight on…

5. History’s Greatest Fails

Streaming platform: All streaming platforms and YouTube

Genre: History

One of the most controversial monarchs in English history, Richard III still polarises opinion – either he’s been viciously maligned, or he was a power-hungry tyrant who supposedly had his two nephews murdered so he could claim the throne.

This last Plantagenet king of England ruled for just two years until his death on the battlefield in 1485. Buried without ceremony, he didn’t get a chance to shape a lasting legacy, which many historians view as a failure.

Yet he remains fixed in the public consciousness – and the discovery of his remains in a Leicester car park in 2012 ushered in a whole new era of Richard-mania, so he is the perfect figure to kick off a new six-part podcast series, History’s Greatest Fails.

Co-hosted by historian Dan Jones and author Elizabeth Day, it aims to re-evaluate whether Richard deserves all the vitriol, offering a modern perspective on the shifting notion of failure.

Navigating the brutal world of ‘kill or be killed’ 15th-century politics wasn’t for the faint-hearted, and Richard had no problem with this part of the job description, yet he was also an excellent strategist and visionary, opines Day, while Jones explains that William Shakespeare’s enduring depiction of Richard as a villain was him “taking this historical failure and using it for artistic purpose” – and it kept audiences hooked.

A lighthearted, albeit rather rambling listen, yet the fascinating story of Richard is sure to keep listeners tuned in.

(By Caroline Duggan)