'This Sounds Serious' is a comedy fiction show sending up the true crime genre and its conventions. In 'Missing Melissa', host Gwen Radford finds herself on the trail of America's most missing person: Melissa Turner's a 28-year-old from Idaho who goes AWOL so often she's earned the nickname 'Mel-issing'. Every other time it's happened she's shown up unharmed, but with Melissa going walkabout yet again there are fears that this time something sinister might have happened to her.

Featuring 'The Shrink Next Door', 'Inside The Comedian with David Reed', 'True Crime New Zealand' and 'Borrowed'.

'Borrowed' from Brooklyn Public Library in New York shares the stories happening between the shelves that hold the more than 4 million books in its collection. Like any good library it has reading recommendations, but it's not all about the books! Recorded in the library's own recording studio that you can book with your library card, 'Borrowed' also celebrates the other things libraries do for their communities...like helping to record and archive local history. We play some of an episode of...

A new locally produced true crime show- made by a husband and wife team in their spare time- has been rising up the New Zealand podcast charts to appear alongside big names like Joe Rogan, Stuff You Should Know, and The Daily. We speak to Sirius Rust (not his real name!) who initially thought that success would be getting just a few listeners.

Do you ever hear celebrity interviews that sound a little bit forced and scripted, like they're trotting out the same old answers to questions they've heard a hundred times before? If so, try a dose of 'Inside The Comedian' with David Reed. It's an interview show with a refreshing difference: the host and the guests all ad lib and make up the questions and the answers on the fly! We play extracts from two episodes of 'Inside The Comedian' featuring Max and Ivan and John Finnemore,hosted by...

Doctor: patient, lawyer: client- there are some special relationships where we trust a professional to do the right thing and to act in our best interests at all times. The relationship between a psychiatrist and the person going to see them shouldn't be any different. But as 'The Shrink Next Door' shows, things can go badly wrong when we turn to the wrong person for help. We share some of Part 1 of 'The Shrink Next Door' called 'Welcome To The Neighbourhood' written and presented by Joe...

'Revisionist History' challenges conventional wisdom. Then what humans can learn from the animal kingdom in '30 Animals That Made Us Smarter', 'The Beautiful Brain' investigates the link between head injuries and sport and music, fandom, and the creative process is explored in 'I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats'.

The Mountain Goats' front man, the singer and songwriter John Darnielle, talks about the songs on his latest album 'In League With Dragons' with the writer and podcaster Joseph Fink. Fink's long-running audio series 'Welcome to Night Vale' imagines life in the very strange desert town of Night Vale, through news reports, announcements and ads on the local radio station.

'The Beautiful Brain' (Audible) is a series about the brain and how it gets affected by the sports we play. The show focusses on the degenerative brain condition called CTE (short for chronic traumatic encephalopathy) which shows up in an increased risk of dementia, problems with memory, depression, aggression and personality changes. We play some of Episode 2 of 'The Beautiful Brain' called 'An Inconvenient Truth' featuring interviews with Dr Bennett Omalu, the man who made the breakthrough...

From designing better camouflage to making quieter trains, we humans can learn lots from the animal kingdom. This growing area of research- called biomimicry- is explored in a series called '30 Animals That Made Us Smarter' (BBC World Service).

With the fourth season of Malcolm Gladwell's popular show 'Revisionist History' (Pushkin Industries) starting this week, we share two past episodes. 'Divide and Conquer' tells the story of how a single punctuation mark could have changed the course of US history. And in 'Analysis, Parapraxis, Elvis', Gladwell plays musical detective, enlisting the help of the musician Jack White to understand why Elvis Presley kept botching the lyrics to one of his most famous songs.

Getting to grips with death and bereavement, the problem with tiki bars, why parole fails, an obsession with escalators, and the challenge of designing Indian army rations.

Feeding an army during wartime's always been a huge logistical challenge. And those challenges were magnified for the Indian army in the Second World War. From an Indian podcast called 'The Intersection', which explores stories at the meeting point of culture, science and history, we share some of an episode called 'War And Peas'.

'People Movers' is a one woman passion project, an independent podcast mining a very particular niche: escalators! Lindsey Green was commuting through Melbourne station when she started noticing that some escalators seemed to be moving faster than others, depending on the time of day and how busy it was. So in her spare time outside her job in community radio she's researching this often overlooked form of public transport.

Parole- that intermediate step between prison and freedom- doesn't get much interest or positive coverage in the mainstream press. In the northeastern US state of New Hampshire, about half of all people on parole end up back in prison within three years. So in 'Supervision' (New Hampshire Public Radio) reporter Emily Corwin considers why parole goes wrong for so many people by following someone going through the process himself.

With their blend of kitsch decor, exotic drinks, hula skirts and loud shirts, nothing said fun quite like the tiki bars and Polynesian-themed cocktail lounges that sprang up in the US back in the Fifties and the Sixties. Paola Mardo's an audio producer based in California whose show 'Long Distance' tells stories about the Filipino diaspora. She first got interested in tiki bars when she found out about all the Filipino bartenders who got jobs at these drinking spots. She even did her...

'Death: a podcast about love, grief and hope' (Newshub) is a new locally produced show, that tries to find some answers about how we can cope with grief, and how we can help others do the same. And the story's told by a man who's experienced incomprehensible loss himself. In 2011, Mark Longley's daughter Emily was murdered in England when she was 17 years old. This bewildering event, Mark's attempts to come to terms with it, and audio grabbed from home videos of the young Emily, give the show...

Overthinkers unite in 'Adrift'. 'A Way With Words' explores interesting words and phrases. 'Brexitcast' gives you a behind-the-scenes view of Brexit. And 'Here Be Monsters' offers an anxiety-laden look into our fears.

Back in Ye Olden Days 'Here Be Monsters' is what map-makers are supposed to have written over unknown and unexplored parts of the world on their charts. It's also the name of an offbeat, arty show that describes itself as a podcast about the unknown. Producer Bethany Denton made 'Hypnosis of Hunger' after she found 2 old cassette tapes in a box in her basement- on them were recordings of childhood visits she made to a hypnotherapist to help with her disordered eating. In this powerful audio...

Listener Janet emailed [email protected] about Brexitcast, a show she's got addicted to that features some top BBC journalists explaining what's going on with Brexit. As Janet writes "... it's very back-room. And surprising entertaining if not funny". We speak to the show's producer Dino Sofos and play clips from two episodes of 'Brexitcast' to give you a taster. 'Brexitcast' is presented by Laura Kuenssberg, Katya Adler, Adam Fleming and Chris Mason, produced by Dino Sofos (and engineered by...

'A Way With Words' is a long-running US phone-in show that answers listener questions about the origins and use of interesting words and phrases. For example, when do clothes become laundry? Where does the saying 'high and dry' come from? And how on earth should you pronounce turmeric?! This miscellany of mangled words and unusual sayings is led by two writers, journalist Martha Barnette and lexicographer Grant Barrett, with word quiz guy John Chaneski often popping up to pose little language...

In 'Adrift', serial overthinker Geoff Lloyd and co-host and confidante Annabel Port pick over their listeners' social dilemmas and stories about their failed interactions with other human beings. The two hosts have an easy rapport and some of the deeply uncomfortable (and often minutely detailed!) stories of social awkwardness they share will have you simultaneously cringeing, and laughing out loud.

The podcast poet: 'Have You Heard George's Podcast?' aims for social change. 'Backlisted' brings new life to old books. 'Conversations With People Who Hate Me' introduces online haters to their targets. Finally, 'Words To That Effect' looks at how big ideas enter the popular imagination through books and film.

'Words To That Effect' looks at how some big ideas enter the popular imagination through books and film. Zombies, overpopulation, steampunk and imaginary countries are just some of the topics covered by the Irish writer and researcher Conor Reid and we share an excerpt from an episode called 'Dinosaurs: Palaeontology To Pyjamas'.

In 'Conversations With People Who Hate Me' the actor and activist Dylan Marron speaks directly to the people making hateful comments about him (and others) online. Four years ago Colleen tweeted "I'm not sure I hate any celebrity the way I hate Amanda Palmer". So of course Dylan engineers a conversation between Colleen and Amanda, a popular musician and writer who you might know from her band The Dresden Dolls! Episode 27 of 'Conversations with People Who Hate Me' is called 'I Hate Amanda...