The 10 Best Breakup Podcasts That Got Me Through Mine

Last updated on December 27th, 2022

When something awful happens, it’s difficult to stay inside your mind. Your internal monologue becomes fraught, confused, and quite frankly impossible to listen to. After my breakup, I found that I needed a break from myself, as well as something to fill the conversational gaps left behind from my former relationship. Enter, podcasts. 

From deep dives into my cultural comforts to shows which admitted to the truly maddening state of modern love, being able to escape into these intricately crafted podcast worlds was a soothing balm for my broken heart. Admittedly, these podcasts might be specific to my ways of coping with crisis, but, there are some universal threads of wisdom throughout these recommendations.

And, although I have formed some questionably close attachments to various voices these last few months, I set aside the fear of parasocial relationships and truly relished the creative goodness which exists in the world. 

Sentimental Garbage 

First up is the wickedly funny Sentimental Garbage. Based on the premise of appreciating all the culture that is often deemed a guilty pleasure, Sentimental Garbage gives the likes of Mamma Mia and Ru Paul’s Drag Race the critical analysis they so rightly deserve. Listening to the podcast, is both a healing and hilarious experience, allowing listeners to rid themselves of all guilt ever bestowed upon them for loving what they love, whilst laughing alongside host Caroline O’Donaghue and her absolutely incredible laugh.

When in the early stages of my breakup, I turned to Sentimental Garbage’s “Sentimental in the City” series, a no-holds-bar seven-part series discussing all seasons of Sex and the City. Through the series, the show reaches a higher, and rightly deserved status, as a prism to explore the complexities of human relationships across a wide spectrum of characters and circumstances.

The series is made all the better by series co-host Dolly Alderton and O’Donaghue’s incredible chemistry, bouncing jokes off each other with ease, leading to intimate personal revelations as well as the odd embarrassing anecdote. At a time when I was feeling my lowest, listening to two women admit to their own painful encounters with love, as well as fueling hope for a brighter future, was nothing short of soothing. 

Read more: 7 Tear-Jerking Podcasts To Pull at Your Heartstrings

The Friend Zone – One of the Best Breakup Podcasts

When it comes to self-care, I used to be a bit of a sceptic. After coming out of being a full-time caretaker for my mum, I have only recently adjusted to the concept of having the free time to practice self-care. So, when it came to my breakup, I knew I had to turn to self-care but, I struggled to really understand what self-care meant, beyond bubble baths and candles.

The Friend Zone consistently prides itself on discussing real, genuine ways to care for oneself, going beyond the easy shallow work of running yourself a bath, to really thinking clearly and openly about how to make your life better in the long run. Each week hosts Assante, Dustin and Fran explore concepts of mental wealth, mental health and mental hygiene, because, as is their catch-phrase, who in the hell wants a musty brain? 

Out to Lunch 

I have always loved food. From my nana’s kitchen peering over counters at batches of fruit crumble in the autumn, to big bowls of spaghetti made hurriedly in cramped kitchens as we revised for tests the next day, cooking has always felt joyful. It’s no wonder that I found myself back in the kitchen post-breakup, reimmersing myself in the recipes I loved. 

Someone I feel who always, effortlessly, manages to capture the joy of food is restaurant critic and host of the Out to Lunch podcast, Jay Rayner. The energy and excitement of his columns are transformed as he delights in great conversation over great plates of food. With a myriad of guests, such as Derren Brown and Tim Minchin, Rayner proves that food universal love, which can uplift even the most broken-hearted.

My Dad Wrote a Porno

After my breakup, intimacy felt foreign. So, when I starting listening to My Dad Wrote a Porno, I relished the opportunity to see intimacy contorted and mocked through the medium of a very poorly written porno. The premise of My Dad Wrote a Porno really is as embarrassing as it sounds: Jamie, the podcast’s host and son of the porno writer known only as Rocky Flintstone, reads the titular porno Belinda Blinked to his two equally mortified co-hosts, friends Alice and James.

With a bizarre combination of hilariously inaccurate descriptions of female anatomy, along with a surprising amount of references to business strategies, My Dad Wrote a Porno is a wildly funny listening experience. 

You’re Dead to Me

A common thread that consistently crops up whenever I’m faced with any form of crisis or stressful period is my sporadic obsessions with obscure histories. This pattern naturally followed me in the aftermath of my breakup, as I found myself joyful sucking up new knowledge of history, like a cold drink through a straw. 

Fulfilling this obsession perfectly was You’re Dead to Me. Branded as ‘a podcast for people who don’t like history, or just forgot to learn any at school’, host Greg Jenner invites a historian and a comedian on each week to discuss a new historical period, event or individual.

Ranging from the stereotypical classroom history to the more niche and unusual tales often missed off of syllabuses, You’re Dead to Me strikes a great balance between engrossing historical details and humorous vignettes of dialogue to keep you laughing through the absurdity of ancient times. 

The Receipts

The Receipts podcast has been a mainstay of my weekly listens for the last four years, consistently providing me with laughs I have to suppress on public transport and full belly laughter in my kitchen as I cook dinner. Three friends, Audrey, Milena and Tolly sit down each week to discuss anything and everything, from relationship drama to their everyday lives trying to make it in London, all served up with a big slice of unfiltered honesty.

This unadulterated truth-telling comes into play during the “Your Receipts” episodes of the show, where the girls answer some of the wildest and weirdest listener queries I have ever heard on a podcast. With episode titles such as “He cheated, and then proposed“ to “he’s perfect, but has no front teeth“, the podcast delivers its fair share of absolutely outrageous content, as well as the odd heartfelt words of wisdom. 

Nancy 

As I began to reconsider my identity outside of a relationship, I wanted to explore my queerness in a safe space, particularly after coming out of a straight-presenting couple dynamic. Previously, I’ve found it difficult to stand in that identity of queerness but was determined to better embrace it in the aftermath of my breakup.

Through the Nancy podcast, I was able to better understand my own queerness, as well as the identities of others within the LGBTQ+ community. Hosted by Kathy Tu and Tobin Low, though completed in 2020, Nancy celebrated and shared all aspects of LGBTQ+ experiences, with a mix of queer histories, pop culture analysis and refreshingly honest conversations about what it means to be a queer in modern-day society. 

How To Fail 

Sometimes, even good change can feel bad at first. When my relationship began to fall apart, I felt like it was a personal failure, and I took on the weight of that failure in all its entirety.

As the months have gone by, I’ve shed this feeling, but when I truly did feel disappointed in myself, How to Fail was the perfect podcast to redefine what it means to fail. In each episode, Elizabeth Day invites wildly successful people, from celebrities to politicians to authors, to reflect on their biggest failures, providing a deeply humbling view of people who seem unfaltering brilliant. 

Read more: “Asking for It” Wants Honesty about Queer Domestic Violence

This American Life

For British people, America is an inherently strange place. It exists as a perfect dichotomy, feeling both deeply familiar and outrageously different, all at once. However, what alleviates that strangeness is the knowledge that there are threads of feelings and solidarity which connect us all. 

From timely episodes discussing the reverberations of a recent news event in a given community to throwback episodes that fully encapsulate the full range of human emotion, This American Life is a deeply comforting window into another cultural world. Host Ira Glass leads us through each weekly theme, charting how a feeling, phenomenon or thought has fundamentally shaped the lives of people across America, and beyond. It’s this juxtaposition that makes This American Life on of of the best breakup podcasts available.

Throughout my breakup, episodes of This American Life provided moments of much-needed happiness, as well as stark realisations of what it is to live in this current cultural and political moment. In many ways, it has radicalised me into action and shown me what it means to live in a society and a wider community. 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6El3e8rNktmHBZMD0KepGg

The New Yorker Fiction Podcast

Something unique to podcasts is the ability to dip between several genres, stories and hosts almost seamlessly. Podcasts like the New Yorker Fiction podcast utilise this strength perfectly, providing revelatory snippets of stories and compelling narratives, served up and ready to be dissected in vivid detail.

Each week, host Deborah Treisman invites acclaimed writers to choose a short story from the New Yorker archive to read and discuss, with guests such as Margaret Attwood and Ottessa Moshfegh. Providing glimpses into the interior lives of writers and the choices they make when creating new material, this podcast is the perfect antidote for any writer who has fallen out of love with writing. As I struggled through my post-breakup writer’s block, listening to Deborah Treisman and her co-hosts delight in the power of the written word was the inspiration I needed I needed to get writing again.