It’s week two of my Podcast posts – now it’s time for the grown up lot! (Find the Kids Top 5 here.)

Here are my TOP 5 PODCASTS!

5.  The Black Tapes

The Black Tapes is a fictional podcast presented in the style of a documentary radio show. It follows the presenter Alex Regan as she researches into the work and life of a paranormal investigator called Dr. Richard Strand who is on a mission to debunk all claims of supernatural activity.

But things start to get weird as Alex finds links between some of Strand’s ‘Black Tape’ cases – cases he has never solved – and all of a sudden what started as a simple character profiling documentary turns into something entirely different.

The Black Tapes is really well produced and SUPER CREEPY at times. It is also really obsessive – once you start, you will probably want to binge listen! Make sure you start at episode one and go from there.

4. My Dad Wrote A Porno

Pretty much what it says on the tin. Very much not child-friendly but utterly hysterical – this podcast is all about a truly terrible porno written by one of the presenter’s Dad. They read it out a chapter at a time to their friends and hilarity (and horror) ensues.

If you have ever read dubious ‘erotic fiction’ that is so bad it’s good (not in a sexy way, just in a hysterically bad way) then you know vaguely what to expect. Throw in the added horror of it being written by a family member and it is comedy perfection.

(I sometimes wonder if Tori and Arthur will feel the same as the presenter when they get older and inevitably find my blog and read some of the (deliberately!) dubious smut I’ve written!!)

Expect bad language and explicit content. And maybe don’t listen when you are trying to drive because it has rendered me incapable of breathing for laughing and had me in floods of amused tears on more than one occasion.

3. No Such Thing As A Fish

This is the QI podcast by the ‘QI Elves’ and it is brilliant. They come up with new facts every week, discuss them and talk around them. It’s informative and funny and always comes up with something you never knew you needed to know.

This Podcast sometimes includes mild language and can cover adult topics.

2. Lore

‘Because sometimes the truth is more frightening than fiction.’

Lore is a podcast that explores the darker side of human history – from witch hunts and werewolf theories to creepy photographers hoodwinking people out of money by taking photos of ‘ghosts’. The presenter Aaron Mahnke researches all different topics and tells them as stories that are almost always alarming purely because of their humanity. People can be horrifying, evil and more scary than the creatures we invent to explain things we don’t understand.

Lore has also been turned into an Amazon TV series (one episode of which really horrified me – don’t watch it on your own in the dark!) and there is a series of books that go alongside it.

1. Myths & Legends

I love this one because it is full of all the things I adore – myths, legends and folklore. But done properly – not the Disney-fied versions we are force-fed every day, the original versions that are invariably darker, crueller and infinitely more bizarre.

The stories come from all over the world, too – so there is often something new that you’ve never heard before to discover. I particularly enjoy the African folklore (Turtle is a right character!) as they are mostly all new to me.

I tend to binge on this one and then get sad when I catch up and have to wait for new episodes to come out!

(The makers of this podcast also do a second one, called Fictionalwhere they retell classic stories that are available in the public domain. I quite enjoy the style of these and they keep me amused on car journeys. I’m also never going to read things like Dante’s Inferno if I’m going to be truly honest with myself, so having easily accessible condensed retellings is a great alternative. )

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