The 12 Best Jack The Ripper Podcasts (2026)

If there is one podcast that has earned the title of definitive Jack the Ripper show, it is Rippercast. Hosted by Jonathan Menges since 2009, the podcast operates as an extension of Casebook.org, the largest online archive dedicated to the Whitechapel murders. Over 324 episodes, Menges has assembled a rotating cast of co-hosts and guest scholars who pick apart every angle of the 1888 case — from forensic analysis of the crime scenes to the social conditions of London's East End.

The format is roundtable discussion, often loose and conversational, which gives the show a pub-debate atmosphere that fits the subject matter. Guests have included presenters from the annual East End Conference, published Ripperologists, and historians specializing in Victorian policing. The show also occasionally branches out into adjacent topics like Sherlock Holmes or syphilis in Whitechapel, which keeps the catalog varied despite the narrow subject focus.

With a 4-star rating from over 100 Apple Podcasts reviews, Rippercast has a dedicated following, though newcomers sometimes find the discussions assume prior knowledge of suspects and canonical victims. The audio quality varies across the 17-year run — earlier episodes can sound rough — but recent recordings are noticeably improved. For anyone already interested in the Ripper case and wanting to go deeper than the usual suspect roundups, this is the single most comprehensive podcast resource available.

Historian Hallie Rubenhold flipped the entire Jack the Ripper narrative on its head with her book The Five, and Bad Women takes that same approach into podcast form. Season 1 reconstructs the lives of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly — not as victims defined by their murders, but as full human beings with histories, families, and reasons for ending up in Whitechapel in 1888.

Rubenhold makes a provocative case that most of the canonical five were not sex workers, directly challenging over a century of assumptions baked into the Ripper mythology. She traces each woman's path through Victorian society — from respectable working-class childhoods to the crushing poverty that pushed them onto the streets of the East End. The result is less a true crime investigation and more a social history of what it meant to be poor, female, and disposable in late-nineteenth-century London.

Season 2 shifts to the Blackout Ripper of wartime 1942 London, co-hosted with criminologist Alice Fiennes. Across 45 total episodes, the production quality from Pushkin Industries is polished and cinematic. The show earned strong reviews and sat firmly in the Apple Podcasts top charts on release. If the standard Ripper podcast asks "who did it," Bad Women asks a harder question: why have we spent 130 years obsessing over the killer while barely acknowledging the women he targeted?

Aaron Mahnke built his reputation with the massively popular Lore podcast, and Unobscured is where he channels that same meticulous storytelling into season-long deep dives. Season 3 is dedicated entirely to Jack the Ripper, tracing the Whitechapel murders from the first attack through the investigation, the suspects, and the lasting cultural impact. Each episode runs roughly 40-50 minutes and follows a serialized narrative structure, so it plays more like an audiobook than a typical weekly podcast.

What sets Mahnke apart from other Ripper podcasters is his narrative polish. He weaves together primary sources, newspaper accounts from 1888, police records, and expert analysis into a cohesive story that moves at a deliberate pace. He is not rushing to name a suspect or push a pet theory — the season builds methodically, giving equal weight to the social context of Whitechapel and the specific forensic details of each murder.

Unobscured carries a 4.7-star rating from nearly 8,000 Apple Podcasts reviews, reflecting the trust Mahnke has built with his audience. The other three seasons cover the Salem witch trials, the Spiritualist movement, and Rasputin, so the show rewards listeners who appreciate careful historical narrative across a range of dark subjects. For Ripper newcomers especially, Season 3 is one of the most accessible and well-produced entry points into the case.

Alan Warren's podcast tackles the Jack the Ripper case as part of a broader look at Victorian-era murder. Across 27 episodes, Warren covers not just the canonical five Whitechapel victims but also lesser-known murders from the same period, connecting the Ripper killings to the wider crime landscape of 1880s and 1890s Britain. Episodes on criminal profiling history, the biography of Bram Stoker, and suspect analyses of figures like Dr. Francis Tumblety give the show a scholarly bent that goes beyond simple case recaps.

Warren interviews authors and researchers — including crime writer Rachel Corbett — and brings a methodical, educational approach to each topic. The episodes run at a comfortable length for a history podcast, and the weekly release schedule kept the catalog growing steadily between 2022 and 2025. The show holds a strong 4.8-star rating on Apple Podcasts, though it only has 12 reviews, reflecting its niche audience.

The main caveat listeners mention is audio quality. Some episodes sound like they were recorded on older equipment, which can be distracting if you are used to slick network production. But if you can look past that, the depth of research is genuinely impressive. Warren clearly knows his Victorian crime history, and episodes like his detailed breakdown of the Mary Kelly murder scene show a level of forensic attention that most Ripper podcasts skip over.

Ripperature takes a completely different angle from every other Jack the Ripper podcast. Instead of rehashing the murders and suspects, host Gracie Bain examines how the 1888 Whitechapel killings have been fictionalized, adapted, and mythologized across more than a century of books, films, and television. The central question is blunt: why do we keep turning the murders of five real women into entertainment, and what does that say about us?

Season 1 covers detective fiction and alternate-suspect narratives, analyzing specific works like Kerri Maniscalco's Stalking Jack the Ripper, Alan Moore's graphic novel From Hell, and the 1971 Hammer film Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. Bain brings an academic lens to each work, examining how gender, class, and violence intersect in the Ripper mythology. Season 2 expands into other Victorian murders and their fictional afterlives. With 15 episodes across two seasons, the show is compact enough to binge in a weekend.

The 4.7-star rating from 13 reviews on Apple Podcasts reflects a small but engaged audience that appreciates Bain's literary and cultural criticism approach. If you have already listened to the forensic and historical Ripper podcasts and want something that interrogates why the Ripper story endures as a cultural obsession, Ripperature fills a niche that no other show in this space occupies.

Ben Cutmore launched Dark Histories in July 2017 with a Jack the Ripper episode, and it remains one of the best single-episode treatments of the Whitechapel murders available in podcast form. That debut installment walks through all five canonical murders in sequence, placing each killing in its geographic and social context within the East End, and reviewing the major suspect theories without pushing a particular conclusion.

The broader show delivers fortnightly episodes on unsolved mysteries, historical true crime, paranormal events, and cultural oddities. With 245 episodes and a 4.8-star rating from over 1,800 reviews, Dark Histories has built a loyal following drawn to Cutmore's calm, measured narration style. Listeners frequently compare his delivery to a well-paced documentary — no dramatic music stings, no breathless cliffhangers, just thorough research presented in a clear voice that is genuinely pleasant to listen to for extended periods.

The Ripper episode specifically stands out because Cutmore treats the material with restraint. He gives substantial attention to who the victims were before they were killed, describes the Whitechapel streetscape in concrete sensory detail, and walks through the police investigation without sensationalizing the gore. For listeners who want a single comprehensive overview of the case before deciding whether to commit to a full series, this episode is an excellent starting point.

Genevieve Manion hosts a podcast entirely devoted to the dark side of the Victorian era, and that means Jack the Ripper content comes up naturally and frequently. My Victorian Nightmare covers spiritualism, grisly murders, grave robbers, poisonings, memento mori, and the culture's peculiar relationship with death. With 89 episodes and a semiweekly release schedule, Manion has built a substantial archive that treats Victorian society as a whole ecosystem rather than isolating individual crimes.

The show's appeal lies in Manion's storytelling voice, which listeners describe as soothing even when the subject matter is gruesome. She balances factual research with a genuine affection for the era's strangeness — one episode might cover Madame Tussaud's waxwork empire, the next the Donner Party, and another a Victorian seance gone wrong. The Jack the Ripper material benefits from being situated within this broader context of an era obsessed with mortality.

My Victorian Nightmare holds a 4.7-star rating from nearly 1,400 Apple Podcasts reviews, which is impressive for a relatively young show. Premium episodes are available through "The Fan Coven" on Patreon, offering ad-free listening and bonus true crime extras. For Ripper enthusiasts who want to understand the world that produced the Whitechapel murders — the poverty, the superstition, the medical quackery, the overcrowded lodging houses — this show provides the full Victorian backdrop.

Amber and Kristy set a hard rule for their podcast: all cases must predate 1950. That constraint pushes Old Timey Crimey into territory most true crime shows ignore, and it means Victorian-era murders — including the Whitechapel killings — fit squarely within their coverage area. With 229 episodes, the catalog is enormous, spanning cases from the 1700s through the early twentieth century across the United States, Britain, and beyond.

The hosts bring genuine enthusiasm to their research, regularly unearthing cases that have been largely forgotten by mainstream media. Their multi-part miniseries format works well for complex cases like their "Murders on Lovers' Lane" investigation, which traced a series of attacks across Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, and Nebraska during the 1920s and 1930s. The chemistry between Amber and Kristy keeps the episodes lively, mixing humor into the storytelling without disrespecting the victims.

The show sits at a 4.3-star rating from 61 Apple Podcasts reviews — the humor style is not for everyone, and some listeners prefer a more serious tone for historical crime content. But for anyone interested in the Jack the Ripper era who also wants to explore the broader world of pre-modern true crime, Old Timey Crimey offers hundreds of hours of material covering a period that most podcasts barely touch.

Erik Rivenes has spent nearly 500 episodes interviewing authors and historians about their crime research, and that interview-based format gives Most Notorious a depth that solo-narrated shows struggle to match. Each week, a guest who has spent years studying a specific case sits down to share findings, primary sources, and theories that you will not find summarized in a Wikipedia article.

The show covers serial killers, gangsters, gunslingers, maritime disasters, and historical tragedies spanning centuries. Jack the Ripper and Victorian crime come up repeatedly — a January 2026 episode on the East River Ripper murder of "Old Shakespeare" in 1891 drew explicit comparisons to the Whitechapel killings and explored whether the perpetrator had crossed the Atlantic. Previous episodes have featured Ripper scholars and authors who specialize in the 1888 case.

Rivenes is consistently praised for his interview preparation. Multiple Apple Podcasts reviewers note that he asks questions guests say they have never been asked before, which pulls out details and anecdotes that even well-read Ripperologists might not have encountered. The 4.7-star rating from nearly 2,700 reviews reflects an audience that values substance over sensationalism. If you prefer learning about the Ripper case through expert conversations rather than narrated retellings, this is the strongest option available.

The Gilded Gentleman is a history podcast that takes listeners inside the mansions, salons, dining rooms, and theatres of America's Gilded Age, France's Belle Epoque, and late Victorian and Edwardian England. Host Carl Raymond covers the social and cultural world of the late 1800s with 140 episodes that range from gossip journalism to cocktail history to literary figures like Edith Wharton and Oscar Wilde.

The Jack the Ripper episode stands out as one of the show's most popular installments. Raymond invited renowned Ripper historian and author Richard Jones for a 77-minute conversation that covered the crime scenes, the police investigation, press manipulation of the case, and how journalism in 1888 essentially created the public image of the Ripper that persists today. Jones brought decades of Whitechapel walking-tour expertise to the discussion, providing street-level detail about the murder sites that most podcasts skip.

What makes The Gilded Gentleman valuable for Ripper listeners specifically is its focus on the era itself. Understanding the Whitechapel murders requires understanding Victorian London's class structure, its press culture, and its relationship to poverty and crime. Raymond's broader catalog provides exactly that context. The show updates semiweekly and maintains a loyal audience drawn to its careful, well-researched approach to a period that shaped the modern world.

Tori Telfer, author of Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History, hosts a true crime and history podcast focused exclusively on women who ended up on the wrong side of the law. Criminal Broads covers cult leaders, serial poisoners, con artists, swindlers, and women who faked ectoplasm at seances — the kind of stories that overlap naturally with the Victorian underworld that produced Jack the Ripper's victims.

Across 77 episodes produced between 2018 and 2021, Telfer brings a historian's rigor combined with a writer's ear for absurd and darkly comic details. The show treats its subjects as complex figures rather than reducing them to simple villains, exploring how gender, poverty, and social expectations pushed women toward crime across different eras. Episodes on Victorian-era women are particularly relevant for Ripper listeners, providing context on what life looked like for women navigating the same streets and social structures as the Whitechapel victims.

The iHeartPodcasts production ensures clean audio and professional presentation throughout the catalog. While the show is no longer producing new episodes, the existing 77 installments form a complete, bingeable collection that stands on its own. For anyone interested in the Jack the Ripper case who wants to understand the broader experience of women in historical criminal justice systems, Criminal Broads fills that role with intelligence and personality.

Kaelyn Moore hosts a podcast that blends true crime, paranormal investigation, and historical mysteries into episodes designed to genuinely unsettle you. Heart Starts Pounding has covered the Jack the Ripper case in a dedicated episode that Apple Podcasts featured as a "Spooky Listen," treating the Whitechapel murders through the lens of horror storytelling rather than straight historical analysis. The result is a Ripper episode that feels atmospheric and immersive in a way that purely factual accounts often miss.

With 213 episodes covering cold cases, haunted locations, lost media, and folklore, the show maintains a broad scope while consistently returning to historical mysteries. Moore's storytelling style prioritizes building tension and creating mood — she is not interested in rattling off facts at speed but rather in making listeners feel the weight of a dark London alleyway in 1888 or the dread of a wartime blackout.

The community around the show is notably active, with listeners submitting their own paranormal encounters for potential episodes. Premium membership through Patreon or Apple Podcasts at $4.99 per month provides ad-free listening and bonus content. The show is particularly well-suited for Ripper enthusiasts who also enjoy ghost stories, unsolved mysteries, and the kind of atmospheric storytelling that treats Victorian London as a character in its own right rather than just a backdrop for murder.