The Mortified Podcast

The Mortified Podcast has one of the best concepts in all of podcasting: adults get on stage and read, out loud, the embarrassing things they wrote as kids. Diaries, love letters, song lyrics, school assignments. The cringe is real, and it's magnificent. Hosted by Neil Katcher and David Nadelberg, the show is part of Radiotopia from PRX and has 274 episodes in its catalog. What sounds like a simple comedy bit turns out to be something much more affecting. A woman reads the diary entry she wrote the day her parents divorced. A man shares the love poem he wrote to his seventh-grade crush who didn't know he existed. The audience laughs, sure, but there's usually a moment in each reading where the room gets very quiet, because the embarrassment connects to something real and painful that everyone in the audience has also felt. The show carries a 4.7-star rating from about 2,200 reviewers, and it releases new episodes biweekly. Recent seasons have included tournament-style competitions between different Mortified community chapters and celebrity guest appearances from people like Jodie Sweetin and Joey McIntyre. Mortified has also expanded into a concert film called Mortified Nation, a Tubi series called The Mortified Guide, a kids spinoff podcast, and a card game. But the original podcast remains the heart of it all. Ad-free listening is available through Endless Radiotopia at $4.99 a month. If you need a show that's equal parts hilarious and unexpectedly touching, this is it.