5 Episodes Worth Clearing Your Queue For This Week

The Black Pod Awards wrapped in Oakland last weekend. Trophies handed out, thank-you posts making the rounds in every group chat that tracks this stuff. None of the five shows below were up for one. That's not a knock on the ceremony, it's just math: one night catches a dozen shows a year, and the directory is tracking thousands of episodes a week. Here's what actually dropped worth making time for.

Way Up With Angela Yee

Angela Yee doesn't really have an off week (new episodes land almost daily), but last Wednesday's sit-down, Romeo Hunte On Money In Fashion And Working With Beyoncé & Zendaya, is the one that earns the "money" half of the show's usual money-and-culture mix. Hunte, introduced for his work dressing Beyoncé and Zendaya, walks through what it actually costs, financially and otherwise, to build a career styling people at that level, and where the math stops working in a designer's favor.

Pour Minds Podcast

Drea Nicole and Lex P run the show like a standing wine-down session between two single Houston natives now working through dating and friendship from their new home base in Atlanta. Their newest clip, Sit Down, only went up yesterday and is worth the quick watch on its own, then worth following back to the full show. Their most recent full episode, Nutly and Cheese, is the fuller version of that same energy: two friends comfortable enough to actually finish an argument on mic.

Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay

Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay run through Black culture, politics, and sports twice a week, and last week's Nikole Hannah-Jones Questions a Major Decision About Her Daughter's Education is Higher Learning doing what it does best: sitting with a guest whose credentials (Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer for The 1619 Project) don't turn the conversation into a lecture. Lindsay's line of questioning is usually the difference-maker on this show, and this one is no exception.

Good Moms Bad Choices

Erica and Milah built this whole show around not performing perfect motherhood, and How to ACTUALLY Become the Woman You Want to Be leans into that directly. Less "10 tips" content, more the two of them talking through what actually gets in the way of the person you say you want to be. If you've never listened, this is a fair place to start.

SHE WELL READ

Best friends Alana Baumann and Samra Michael built SHE WELL READ around a seasonal pick their audience votes on, with bonus episodes filling the space between seasons. The newest one, Horses Not Zebras, is one of those off-season conversations: shorter, looser, still built on the idea that being well-read is a way of life and not a chore. It's an easy way into a show that's been quietly going for over six years.

Five different shows, five different reasons to press play. Pick whichever one matches your mood and give it your next commute. That's the only ask this week.