Podcasts come and go but, luckily, their back catalogs remain. While some of the shows highlighted below aren’t actively producing new content, they offer a bounty of older episodes that are evergreen in their appeal.

Music

December’s Active Listening column prompted a flurry of music-related suggestions from readers. One of them, This Room Sounds Great, dropped its last episode last summer, but it was still exciting to discover this companion podcast to the Shockoe Sessions Live series.

The weekly Tuesday performances at In Your Ear studios feature some of the most exciting musicians in Richmond and the podcast provides a quick hit of background and context in conversation with the artists involved.

With 50+ episodes still readily available, the podcast acts as a handy reference on bands that regularly appear around town. The cheerful and engaging demeanor of host Reese Williams prompts some fun responses from those interviewed. Good places to start exploring are episodes on Erin and the Wildfire, Desiree Roots, or Dumb Waiter.

I was just getting into The Hustle Season, the podcast that is also a band, when the guys dropped their last episode in January. The show features a trio of musicians who not only play together but are also very active in other bands: Reggie Pace (No BS Brass Band), James Seretis (La Cocina Studios), and Kelli Strawbridge (Mekong Xpress/Prabir).

“Hustle’s” shaggy format can get rambly but the results are usually entertaining as the co-hosts comment on music news and rate song submissions in “Does It Slap?” segments. A browse through their more than 360 previous episodes is certain to uncover something worthy of a slice of your ear tiQume. I particularly enjoyed the guest appearance of Zach Wish, a local musician and engineer who has been playing guitar on tour with Seal.

For an ongoing podcast worth subscribing to, You Wanted a Hit! rewards listeners with regular doses of fond nostalgic remembrance, alternating with “WTF?” response-worthy content. New York-based Theo Beidler and Richmond DJ Real Mike Smith take turns diving into the surprising popularity of unlikely pop hits.

Mike and Theo don’t waste a lot of time on banter, focusing on doling out the results of their thorough research. Over the course of more than 70 episodes, the duo have tried to answer the question “why on Earth was this popular?” about a wide variety of songs from DJ Casper’s “Cha-Cha Slide” to Tag Team’s “Whoomp! (There It Is)” to Pinkfong’s “Baby Shark.”

I started exploring the show by picking and choosing songs that were personal faves but the detailed backstory they provided on the success of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” finally convinced me that I was going to want to hear every future episode, regardless of the tune.

Fiction

It takes a special talent to make a fiction podcast work, the marriage of compelling, sonically-oriented writing with immersive sound design being a tricky relationship to maintain. The only moderate success of high-profile “Quiet Part Loud” is a testament to the difficulty.

Released in 2022 and co-written by former Richmonder Clay McLeod Chapman, the show didn’t quite stick the landing, even with the backing of Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.

The folks at Ashland-based studio Free Jambalaya have definitely cracked the code with “Phantom Limb.” But beware: the results are a sometimes uncomfortably vivid horror/sci-fi experience.

Perusing the stand-alone stories, I couldn’t resist starting with “Skip This Episode: Please Don’t Listen to It” and wasn’t quite prepared for the intensity. The sound design was impeccable and the meta-textual story does a fantastic job implicating the listener in a nasty bit of gruesomeness. For those who don’t mind their squelchiness extra squelchy, it was certainly effective.

Other stories are not quite as (literally) visceral and all share an impressive attention to detail. While previous episodes have been dropped somewhat sporadically, the production team (writer Alex Mayberry, studio engineer Matt Treacy, audio engineer Ben Patterson and graphic designer Ben Brown) are preparing to re-release the entire “Phantom Limb” cannon in a revamped sequence, including new episodes.

In the meantime, the show has a back catalog of 30 episodes, most with a relatively short run-time that rewards the casual browse. But when you finally click and listen, you’ll want to be sure to keep the lights on.