“Brilliant.” “I honestly can’t believe I’m including this.” “The most exciting podcast I’ve heard in years.” “I’m kind of annoyed at how much this one captivated me.” “This should be on everybody’s list.” Those are just some of the sentiments that came in when we surveyed more than 220 people in the podcast world about the year’s best podcasts.

Welcome to the second annual Vulture Podcast Survey. The idea is to get a sense of what the podcast world is listening to — and more important, which shows fellow podcasters believe had an outstanding year. Our first stab at the project anointed Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes’s Maintenance Phase as the standout. We had so much fun putting it together in 2021 that we’ve decided to run it again.

Let’s talk methodology. We reached out to several hundred people in the podcast community — producers, hosts, independent creators, executives, agents, sound designers, production coordinators, lawyers, and so on — and polled them on what they felt were the three best podcasts of the year. Votes would be anonymous, and they were given two limitations: They can’t pick a show that they’re affiliated with, and their selections (whether new or existing shows) had to be active this calendar year. People were given the opportunity to provide explanations for their votes, but that wasn’t mandatory. Many respondents gave them anyway, some of which we printed in the results…