So-called “comedy” podcasts have huge followings, but who gets to say they’re actually funny? Stellar “comedy” hosts such as Joe Rogan have never made me laugh, while other prominent comedians package abrasive political commentary rather than rib-tickling humour.

The Ambies, a glitzy event that aspires to be the “Oscars of podcasting”, describes the comedy category as “a podcast that is intentionally humorous”.

But hey, results can fall far short of intentions.

Yes, humour is subjective and often cultural. With those caveats, here’s a selection of podcasts old and new that made this female, Irish-born boomer laugh and/or lean in.

1. Diversity Work

This squirmingly listenable Diversity Work “invites you into a television writers’ room embroiled in a social media storm”, making you a fly on the wall at the most mordant workshop ever.

Turns out these writers have been hired by a TV executive, the “accurately named Steve White”, who impulsively “rebutted any accusations of -isms” by inventing a coming show that “ticked all the diversity boxes”.

A clutch of creatives are hastily conscripted to cover a range of minorities, from First Nations to disability to queer to people of colour.

The podcast charts their efforts to devise a pitch that will both advance diversity and get funding from the entitled straight white folk upstairs.

This somewhat earnest premise yields the most delicious skewering of tokenistic attempts by mainstream media to be more inclusive.

Management posts a pic of their prized cohort – but a filter darkens the skin tones of light-skinned Indigenous participants.

On it goes, lurching from cringe-inducing to savage satire, the startlingly real-sounding discussions overlaid with a reflective narrator:

It’s not often we get to speak at this level of nuance and complexity, as we’re often having to censor ourselves to be diplomatic, or spend our time educating others in the room.

It’s a tribute to all that I could not tell for several episodes if I was listening to fact or fiction.

Turns out it’s a hybrid, created, directed and edited by Asian Australian artist Pearl Tan, and co-created using long-form improvisation with nine screen practitioners “with lived experience of the challenges of being from a diverse background in the screen industry”.

Awkwardly hilarious.

2. Normal Gossip

Normal Gossip shares “juicy, utterly banal gossip about people you’ll never know”, sent in by listeners.

Take this episode, in which host Kelsey McKinney and comedian Josh Gondelman (a perfect foil) discuss the unfolding relationship of a young couple, complicated by the boyfriend’s bro flatmate.

They unpick the reality behind a padlocked fridge and zip-tied cupboards, delving into real time text messages as a party reaches crisis point.

Playing down her smarts (she’s written for Vogue, Vanity Fair and more), McKinney goes for an enthusiastic/empathetic tone that allows us to vicariously enjoy the show’s vast array of predicaments, from the vagaries of upscale dog grooming to a girls’ trip gone horribly wrong.

3. Heavyweight

Heavyweight is also preoccupied with the foibles of life, but via a very different format.

Host Jonathan Goldstein is a superb audio storyteller, whose deceptively simple premise is to dig into the life-changing moments that have preoccupied listeners.

It could be an artist obsessed with painting his ex-wife, a jury member haunted by sentencing a man to death, a man meeting the driver who ran him over to thank him.

Always avoiding cheesiness (being Canadian helps), Goldstein teases out the story till it reveals some bigger truth or catharsis, making you laugh or cry along the way – sometimes both.

Every episode is a masterclass in writing and editing for audio, done so well it feels effortless.

4. The Blindboy Podcast

“Blindboy”, the host of The Blindboy Podcast, is a polymath Irishman with a degree in activist art who wears a plastic bag over his head to avoid being identified at his increasingly popular public performances.

His almost 400 episodes to date ramble across a category-defying range, from a rumination on a wasp buzzing round a plane to the origins of offices to a philosophical discourse on the history of pigeons, or the unsuspected nexus between food poisoning and anti-Irish discrimination.

The show includes interviews, readings of his short stories and open discussion of his own anxiety and mental health issues (he was recently diagnosed with autism).

But it’s Blindboy’s brilliant capacity to extemporise on a bewildering range of topics in a classic Irish nonlinear storytelling mode, lavishly garlanded with expletives that sound as natural as poetry, that captivates.

5. Tim Key and Gogol’s Overcoat

Whimsical and delightful, the short Tim Key and Gogol’s Overcoat from the BBC is a beautifully wrought mash-up of fiction and documentary.

Host Key, a real life comedian and scholar of Russian literature, sets out to understand the mysteries of the 19th-century writer’s anarchic short story, The Overcoat. The narrator’s deadpan humour mimics the absurdist author’s takedown of the Tsarist bureaucracy he detested.

A gem that shows how innovative audio can be, outside the ubiquitous podcast chat format. For other one-off podcasts, try the three-minute storytelling from Audio Flux, a creative mini-fest of quirky personal moments.

Siobhan McHugh, Honorary Associate Professor, Journalism, Consulting Producer, The Greatest Menace, Walkley-winning podcast, University of Wollongong

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.