Two super hosts team up for a fun new series: best podcasts of the week

History’s Greatest Fails

How to Fail’s Elizabeth Day teams up with historian Dan Jones for this new series about screw-ups from times gone by. Fast forward through the university reunion (they were at Cambridge together) and it quickly gets entertaining. Their first episode challenges Shakespeare’s vision of a villainous Richard III, while a future episode will consider the “Ross and Rachel of early modern history”, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

Strangely

You may have heard about the surgeon who amputated his own legs, but you might not be so familiar with Neil Hopper’s eunuch-maker origin story. It’s just one of many rabbit holes that Poppy Damon and Luke Jones tumble down in their series about bizarro news stories, which manages to be both informative and irreverent. HJD
Widely available, episodes weekly

Passenger Seat

Pennsylvania-based writer Tom Joudrey has been working on this podcast for more than two years, and the result is an unsettling, slow-burn tale that rivals many a big-budget production. In 2012 in Ohio, Jennifer Hurst was the victim of a chilling kidnapping. Who was behind it, and why would she end up thanking her captor in the courtroom? HJD
Widely available, episodes weekly

Big Bro With Kid Cudi

Insight … Kylie Jenner chats the Kardashian life with rapper Kid Cudi on his show Big Bro. Photograph: Jamie McCarthy/WireImage

The celebrity podcast industrial complex grinds on, with this new show hosted by rapper Kid Cudi. His first guest is Kylie Jenner (pictured above), who occasionally lets the extremely PR-ed Kardashian guard down as she chats about her family, pivoting to acting in the Charli xcx-starring film The Moment, and one Timothée Chalamet. HJD
Widely available, episodes weekly

Northern News

Widely available, episodes weekly

Fresh from her turn on Last One Laughing, and her other very funny podcast Single Ladies in Your Area, Amy Gledhill reunites with Ian Smith to report on all the weird and wonderful northern news headlines you might have (read: definitely) missed. They’ll be joined by guest correspondents such as Stevie Martin, Alison Spittle and Phil Wang. Hollie Richardson