Lately, there has been somewhat of a renaissance in the world of celebrity podcasts. Comedians Marc Maron and Chris Hardwick, along with director Kevin Smith, have been doing this for over a decade, but the last year or so has seen a plethora of great new offerings from the likes of Anna Faris, Alec Baldwin, Chelsea Peretti and even Macaulay Culkin.
My current favourite is Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard (husband of Kristen Bell of Frozen fame). Shepard manages to get super-famous friends to appear on his podcast – we're talking Ellen DeGeneres, Jimmy Kimmel and Ashton Kutcher – but that is not the real appeal of the show.
Shepard is a skilled listener and brings out the best in his guests with a disarming and genuinely open manner. This is underpinned by a drive to find out what makes people tick and what neuroses they may have, which is largely due to his own struggles with addiction and subsequent path to recovery. An eye-opening podcast that will make you rethink stereotypes of the vacuous, vain Hollywood personality.
