If you see me walking around or if you have installed a spy camera in my flat, you will almost certainly spot AirPods in my ears.

Podcasts

Most of the time, if the activity I’m busy with doesn’t require attention from my brain, I listen to a podcast.

This year Overcast - my podcast app of choice - - has added the much-requested feature of showing statistics for the year.

From the image above, it’s apparent that this year I’ve sought refuge in my comfort topic, maybe at the cost of neglecting other topics I’m interested in.

Here’s the Top Ten:

  • The Empire (film) Podcast: It’s no surprise that this is my most-listened to (and most-appreciated) podcast for the year. Probably, if I had statistics that go far back in time, I would find that it has held that position for the last ten years. Together with the Empire Spoiler Special Podcast (the ‘paid subscription’ tier, which even on its own occupies the fifth place), they are guaranteed to make me feel better about life, the universe and everything, thanks both to the quality of the discussion and the fact that the hosts (Chris Hewitt, Helen O’Hara and James Dyer), besides being professional film journalists, are friends who clearly enjoy each other’s company;

  • The Evolution of Horror: On the other hand, Mike Muncer is the podcaster whose voice I have listened to the most during the year, as he’s the host of the podcasts in positions two, three, and four (and he sometimes appears in both the Empire podcasts): I have mentioned countless times EOH in my weekly film roundups, so it makes sense that the two podcasts with that name (the ‘public’ stream and the ‘Patreon’ episodes) amount to almost as many hours as Empire’s. And I am not even following this year’s season, ‘Nature Bites Back’;

  • The Detective & the Log Lady: a Twin Peaks weekly rewatch podcast where Mike Muncer and Stacie Ponder talk about one episode of the legendary series by David Lynch and Mark Frost. Ponder is a first-time watcher, so it’s great fun to listen to her remarks and conjectures about the show’s trajectory. I don’t think I would have been able to rewatch most of the second season without this incentive;

  • The Final Girls: another weekly podcast about horror films, this time fully from a feminine point of view, as writer Anna Bogutskaya discusses horror tropes with women co-hosts. This is a podcast I started listening to this year (when it was dealing with the topic of Serial Killers), so I also have quite a big backlog of episodes to listen to;

  • Indagini: an Italian podcast, which releases two episodes a month, and my only concession to True Crime, as journalist Stefano Nazzi doesn’t delve into morbid details, but focuses on the official investigations - and in most cases the ensuing trials - that followed some of the most well known murder cases in Italy;

  • Accidental Tech Podcast: the first America-hosted podcast in this list, this comes up in the eighth position, but Overcast for some reason counts ten more hours of the same podcast as a separate stream, so, in total, it might deserve one position higher. I have cut down a lot this year on my consumption of ’tech’ podcasts, mostly because I’ve become annoyed with Apple’s behaviour and I don’t want to hear hours of discussions on that topic. ATP is hosted by Marco Arment (the developer of Overcast), Casey Liss (who last year released Callsheet, a front-end app for The Movie Database that allowed me to ditch IMDb), and software developer John Siracusa. The podcast sometimes gets very technical - especially when discussing microchips -, but the hosts know what they are talking about, and - despite being Apple users - show a level of critical thinking that many other podcasters don’t have;

  • Loremen: a change of topic, for one of my under-represented interests, meaning folklore. British comedians James Shakeshaft and Alasdair Beckett-King exchange stories about local legends and ghost appearances, always with a very sceptical approach and a lot of jokes (usually involving references to Back to the Future and David Bowie impressions);

  • Nuovi Incubi: in the tenth position, another Italian podcast, and we are back to horror films, again from a purely feminine point of view as super-prepared and super-enthusiast horror fans Marika Paracchini and Lucia Patrizi discuss a film every two weeks. This season is all about found footage; their latest episode, about Lake Mungo, was emotionally intense.

Honourable mentions:

  • Morning: this daily press review podcast by Francesco Costa - in Italian, despite its title - would probably be in the Top 10, if it wasn’t accessible only by subscribers of Italian online newspaper Il Post and didn’t require a specific app to be listened to;

  • One Song: a podcast by Diallo Riddle and Blake Robin dissecting one song per episode;

  • Eggplant: the Secret Lives of Games: a group of game developers and experts of that sector discusses the creative processes behind the creation of (mostly video)games

Music

If I’m in the office and I need to isolate from the world around me, then I might be listening to some music.
On the rare occasions I did that, I didn’t want to be distracted by trying something new, so I tended to hit Apple Music’s ‘Favourites Mix’ or ‘Paolo’s Station’ buttons instead of finding new music, thereby creating a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy where the ‘Replay 2024’ playlist is once again filled with those same songs.

Therefore, my Top Artists for 2024 are such new acts as David Bowie, Radiohead, Electric Light Orchestra and Queen.

My Top Songs tell a different story:

  1. Red Wine Supernova by Chappell Roan: I heard this song while I was in a shop, and it’s so catchy I had to Shazam it, and apparently I’ve listened to it 17 times in the last couple of months. The only new-ish song (and artist) I encountered during the year
  2. Satisfied from the musical Hamilton (and its twin song Breathless) is at my number 5
  3. Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches: I love the sort of perfectly timed anarchy in this song
  4. That piece of music at the end of Netflix film’s It’s What’s Inside by Andrew Hewitt: which I listened to repeatedly while trying to remember what it reminds me of

My Top Albums are albums I didn’t listen to, from the beginning to the end, even a single time in the year:

  1. Hamilton: An American Musical (Original Broadway Cast Recording) in preparation and in the aftermath of watching the show in the West End
  2. Les misérables (Paris, Théâtre Mogador, 1991)same as for Hamilton
  3. Elevator Music: Fatboy Slim for one of those occasions where I wanted to cut out noises from the office
  4. The Commitments (Soundtrack from the motion picture) because sometimes you need to Try a Little Tenderness on yourself