The top true-crime podcasts in 2025

2025's best true crime podcasts have been announced by the true crime review podcast Crime Writers On. The podcast has reviewed more than a thousand true-crime and crime-adjacent podcasts. We publish the full list today.

iOS podcast app Castro has blocked Inception Point AI podcasts from its app search results. In a blog post, Castro's Dustin Bluck says that Inception Point AI "seems to be keying on popular searches in order to flood search results and deceive users."

Is the accusation fair? A search in Apple Podcasts for Charlie Kirk brings up four shows from Inception Point AI in the results - Charlie Kirk Biography Flash, Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk Death and Charlie Kirk Manhunt. The company's CEO, Jeanine Wright - who is a former legal attorney - has been clear about the company's SEO policy, saying in an interview for the Podnews Weekly Review podcast: "When people typed Charlie Kirk into Apple and Spotify, we were three of the top five shows - even beating out the Daily Mail." Only one of those shows makes any mention of AI in the audio; another claims it has "personal interviews" and "a team of expert researchers and journalists".
As of checking today, Inception Point AI's biography channel contains 733 shows; the vast majority of which are, according to the company, not checked by humans before publishing.

Apple released iOS v26.2 at the end of last week. In Apple Podcasts, it rolls out automated chapters for every podcast, as well as "timed links", which is particularly helpful for guests, allowing links to their podcasts to appear when they're mentioned in the audio. We've updated our FAQ. The v26.2 update also includes more than 25 different security fixes, so we'd suggest you update as soon as you're able to.

To update your iPhone or iPad to v26.2, open the Settings app, choose "General" then "Software Update", and pull down the screen to check for the latest. (Do it from a fast wifi connection!)