The shows on this year’s top-50 list highlight innovation where it collides with craft and entertainment. They are the ones that answer the call “Make it new!” They made space for new voices, ideas, and methods of connecting with and harnessing audiences, the internet, and the material world. They are the ones that don’t require advanced preparation, the ones you’d recommend to your friends. Here’s to the best podcasts of 2018, and to what they’ve made resoundingly clear about digital audio: So much more is yet to come. (As usual, we’ve recused The Atlantic’s shows from the list.)

The Truth’s Jonathan Mitchell has been doing experimental, fictional art audio since what feels like the beginning of time (for more than 20 years, actually). The Off Season begins with Bruce Alvarez, a fictional TV host, interviewing a prominent female journalist. They start taking callers, and the first one accuses Alvarez of sexual harassment. As his network investigates the allegations, Alvarez heads to Montauk, New York, where he has an unlikely encounter with an aspiring journalist named Erica Hernandez. The plot becomes implausible—but the conversations that take place between the two allow listeners to process some of the major news events of 2018 without reliving the falls of Matt Lauer and Harvey Weinstein, both of which seem to have inspired the show. The Off Season is, in part, an exploration of the mind of a man who feels helplessly, inexcusably trapped by ingrained sexism. The show’s writers, Marina Tempelsman and Niccolo Aeed, manage to offer poignant social criticism without reducing Alvarez to a caricature of evil. The Off Season may hold up a mirror to life, but it also reflects back some light—some optimism—at listeners, too.

Gateway Episode: “Banished to the Hamptons”

Demystifying romantic relationships, especially complicated topics such as consent and online dating, is a wellspring with seemingly endless mass appeal. The Death, Sex & Money host Anna Sale kicked off a summer series by introducing listeners to a group of people at different stages in their lives, with wildly different goals and dispositions, as they attempted to find love. Most of the episodes are short, serving listeners with a quick shot of dating gossip without veering into anything too indulgent. The vignettes are meaningful, but they likely won’t trigger a sensation of emotional vertigo. Listeners take in the hope and hesitation that one man describes as he attempts to turn a close friendship into something more. One woman discusses the reasons why, even as a virgin, nonmonogamy made the most sense for her. Another man wonders aloud, in light of the #MeToo movement, “Am I losing my masculinity by asking too many questions?” as he tries to suss out when, if ever, it’s okay for him to make a move. Sale puts participants at ease and dignifies them without shying away from asking pointed questions. Hot Dates is intellectually stimulating but not taxing, and in the podcast space, this level of sophisticated simplicity hits a refreshing sweet spot.