Best Relationship Podcasts

You might think the podcasts listed here have only to do with love and sex, but we are talking relationships in the broadest strokes. If you are interested in relationships between couples, your relationship with society or your relationship with yourself and your career, there is something here for you.

Two podcasts that deal with navigating deeply committed relationships or romance in general, are Esther Perel’s podcast, Where Should We Begin?, and Anna Faris and Sim Sarna’s podcast, Unqualified.

Perel is a licensed therapist and her podcast consists of recordings of actual therapy sessions, with the permission of patients, of course. These delve deeply into the heart of not only long-term marriages, but what it takes to truly communicate with each other, especially if something has gone terribly wrong. The first season of her podcast  is online.

On a lighter, but just as hopeful note is the hilarious and warmhearted podcast Unqualified. You can subscribe on iTunes or stream most of the episodes online, but you will be entertained as Anna Faris and Sim Sarna interact with celebrity guests and take phone calls from the audience, a really cool addition to the show.

Podcasts that deal with people and their relationships to society and self include:

NPR’s Hidden Brain, where the host, Shankar Vedantam, examines many of our everyday fears and questions through a deeply sociological approach. Why do we get jealous? How do you get out of a rut? Why does baby talk exist?

Another NPR podcast is Alex Baldwin’s Here’s the Thing. He sits down to discuss people’s careers and their relationship to those careers over the course of an hour. There is nothing like a good origin story to pull you in and draw you out.