These are the best podcasts of 2021

Podcasts are ideal to listen to when you are doing chores around the house are busy. While folding laundry, cooking, cleaning the bathroom or cleaning out the shed, it is very pleasant to listen to a podcast. But horizontally on the couch is of course also an excellent starting point. Need inspiration? In this list - with the best podcasts of 2021 - you will probably find something to your liking.

Welcome to your fantasy

Tanned torsos, subtle bows and filled thongs: the Chippendales concept was and is a success. But don't let that fool you completely. The Chippendale world is one of power, drugs, money and murder. Investigative journalist, historian, and fitness instructor Natalia Petrzela takes us back to gritty early 1980s LA to strip this story completely.

Listen to Welcome to your fantasy

The Deventer Media store

Do you remember the Deventer murder case? A brutal murder of a rich widow, the convicted bookkeeper, a mysterious handwritten note in the garden. A suspicious handyman and an elderly graphologist couple who got things rolling. This podcast examines the role of the media. The public got the idea that the convicted perpetrator, Ernest Louwes, was innocent. Listen to the story of Michael de Jong (family friend and suspect) and other people involved, including Maurice de Hond.

Listen to the Deventer Media store

The Turning / The sisters who left

This English podcast is about the nuns who followed in Mother Teresa's footsteps and were subjected to the strictest rules imaginable. Mother Teresa herself is the great example, and she has elevated self-punishment to a great art. So you are expected to torment yourself for Jesus, to keep working when you are seriously ill, and never to touch anyone. Thus young girls with great ideals were crushed between the monastery walls.

Listen to The Turning / The sisters who left

Outside the walls

What's it like when you've been incarcerated (off and on) for years? And then you 'suddenly' find yourself outside? Can join real life? Podcast maker Marjolein Knol followed two-time murderer Harry and frequent offender Bram for a year, and already knew them when they were still incarcerated. What you hear are difficult questions and big stories. There is a lot of understanding and sincerity showing through between the lines. Will Harry and Bram make it or will they end up behind bars again?

Listen to Outside the Walls

cassie while

Do you fear death or are you comfortable with it? Radio maker Laura Stek falls into the first category, while artist and co-host Babs Bakels has been fascinated by death from an early age. Kassiewije makes you think about death, it is full of interesting facts and good music, and at the same time is also a kind of group therapy against death anxiety and corona trauma.

Listen to Kassiewije

on vprogids.nl you can find even more awesome podcasts.

sorry for my brother

One brother successfully completes a study, the other brother ends up in juvenile detention. The brothers Nabil and Nahib Hamidi fled Afghanistan when they were little to build a life in the Netherlands. That special story is bundled in the podcast 'Sorry voor mijn brother', in which Nahib and Nabil talk about their memories of their homeland, but also about their first acquaintance with the Netherlands.

Listen to Sorry for my brother

The Bird Spot Cast

What do you get when you put an expert next to a rookie? Very amusing conversations. Even when it comes to birds. In the Bird Spotcast, Arjan Dwarshuis (world record holder bird spotting, really) and his childhood friend Gisbert van Baalen, who holds the world record not knowing anything about birds, set out together to spot birds. We mainly spot a good duo.

Listen to the Bird Spotcast

Television

Alex Mazereeuw and Michel Doodeman reminisce. In Televisië, the duo discusses Dutch TV programs that, as they say themselves, have been forgotten, rightly or not. The podcast hosts watch an episode and 'analyze' it as if you were sitting at the pub table with friends on a Friday night.

Listen to Television

El Tarangu

It is 2003 when Lucien van Impe, six times mountain champion and the last Belgian to win the Tour de France, receives an unexpected phone call. Does he fancy a dinner with an old rival? Lucien agrees. Not much later he is three o'clock, a plate of mussels and hundreds of memories further. The other man at the table is the Spanish rider José Manuel Fuente, aka: 'El Tarangu'. The men take a picture together. Nothing special, right? Until you find out that Fuente already passed away in 1996.

Is El Tarangu secretly hiding in Geraardsbergen or is a madman pretending to be this legendary mountain goat? Audio collective Schik (Bob and Laura H.) finds out who is lying in this six-part Dutch podcast and takes you into the shadowy world of cycling.

Listen to El Tarangu

The Blankenberge Tapes

A Tinder date and two murders, those are the ingredients of this podcast in a nutshell. This starts in 2013, when 27-year-old Hannah Rentmeester was found murdered in the dunes. Robert Josse, her boyfriend, is immediately the prime suspect in this case. However, he seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Then a link is made with an almost identical murder case, which took place ten years earlier. The puzzle pieces are slowly but surely falling into place. Pieces of the puzzle that seem to form one image: that of a gray Belgian coastal town Blankenberge. In three episodes, detectives and those directly involved tell their side of the story with a sinister denouement.

Listen to the Blankenberge Tapes

on esquire.com you will find even more pearls of podcasts.