Best Podcasts Made in Scotland (2026 Listening Guide)
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Scotland sounds different.
From stand-up comics and true crime journalists to charity campaigners, historians, founders and cultural obsessives, these shows prove that Scottish podcasting has grown into a serious creative scene.
Scotland has been making podcasts for over two decades. I know this because I was there at the start, producing shows since 2005 when there were almost no other Scottish podcasters doing it. What I've watched develop since then is a scene that has grown from a handful of enthusiasts into a genuinely diverse ecosystem of shows covering comedy, crime, culture, business, history, and much more.
This isn't an exhaustive directory. It's a personal guide to shows worth your time, organised by genre, written by someone who has spent 20 years thinking about what makes a podcast good. Where I have a professional connection to a show, I'll say so. Where I don't, I'll say that too.
The Scottish Podcast Awards, the country's first national podcast awards programme, opened for entries in January 2026. The fact that such a thing now exists says everything about where Scottish podcasting has arrived. These are the shows that are part of the reason it got here.
Comedy
Comedy
Some Laugh
Scottish stand-up comedy has always had a distinct voice: direct, self-deprecating, occasionally confrontational, and fundamentally communal. Some Laugh captures that precisely. Hosts Marc Jennings, Stephen Buchanan, and Stuart McPherson are three working comedians who talk about their lives on and off the circuit, bring in guests from the Scottish and UK comedy world, and discuss topics ranging from the genuinely profound to the gleefully stupid.
The chemistry is real because these are actual friends who've known each other through the grind of the comedy circuit. Nearly 200 episodes in and still going weekly, with all three hosts now running successful solo touring shows. The show is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Where to start: The episodes featuring fellow Scottish comedians tend to yield the richest conversations, because the shared cultural shorthand does a lot of work.
The Ford & Shelby Show
The Ford & Shelby Show is a clash of decades and a meeting of minds. Comedy legend Ford Kiernan teams up with Shelby Hamesoon to talk through generational quirks, cultural absurdities, Scottish life, and the strange state of the world.
This is exactly the kind of show that benefits from being watched as well as heard. Ford and Shelby's timing, facial reactions and generational contrast are part of the format, which is why the studio setting matters. The show was shortlisted at the Scottish Podcast Awards 2026 for Best Video Podcast, Comedy, and Entertainment & Pop Culture.
Where to start: Start with the first episode if you want the premise from the beginning, or pick any episode title that makes you laugh before you've even pressed play.
True crime
True Crime
Glasgow Crime Stories
Glasgow Crime Stories is a weekly podcast produced by the Glasgow Times that brings together the city's biggest cold cases and most shocking crimes in 20-minute episodes, narrated by Taggart's Alex Norton. The casting choice matters enormously here. Norton's voice carries the weight of decades of Glaswegian crime drama, and his delivery treats the material with the seriousness it deserves without tipping into lurid sensationalism.
Scripts are written by journalist Norman Silvester, with fresh interviews alongside the archival material. Episodes cover everyone from Bible John to Jimmy Boyle, the gangster who became a sculptor, and the Glasgow teacher who built links to the Colombian drug trade. The production is tightly edited and consistent. If you want 20 focused minutes of well-researched Glasgow history with genuine atmosphere, this is it.
Where to start: The Peter Manuel episodes, covering Scotland's first recognised serial killer and the detective who pursued him.
Murder Scotland
Where Glasgow Crime Stories is produced journalism, Murder Scotland is closer to a conversation between two people who care deeply about the subject. The show is hosted by AM Nicol, who qualified as a solicitor in 1980, spent twelve years as a Procurator Fiscal, and has been writing about crime since 2008, alongside Julie Lamont, a true crime enthusiast who brings a listener's perspective to the discussion.
The combination works because Nicol knows the Scottish legal system from the inside and is happy to explain how it differs from what listeners might expect from American or English crime podcasts. Cases covered range from the Bible John murders and Peter Manuel through to more recent cases, including the Lockerbie bombing. Episodes run long, the research is thorough, and the format is built around genuine dialogue rather than narration.
A different experience from Glasgow Crime Stories, and a complementary one.
Where to start: The Bible John series that launched the show, which gives you both hosts at their best and covers the case in more depth than almost anything else you'll find.
Recorded at Podcast Studio Glasgow
Scottish Podcast Awards shows made in the studio
Several shows recorded at Podcast Studio Glasgow were shortlisted at the Scottish Podcast Awards 2026. We don't claim the creative credit for our clients' ideas, scripts, chemistry or editorial judgement. What we do provide is the space, kit and recording environment that lets the show itself come through cleanly.
Check One Two
Check One Two is the podcast from Cahonas, the testicular cancer charity. It gives listeners the lowdown on testicular cancer through survivor stories, health conversations and honest discussions around topics men often avoid, including fertility, IVF, early detection and the emotional impact of diagnosis.
This is the one from the Scottish Podcast Awards shortlist where we handle both recording and post-production. Being shortlisted in Community Impact & Charity and Best Podcast Artwork is genuinely meaningful because the show has a clear purpose: making difficult conversations easier to start.
The Canmore Trust Podcast
The Canmore Trust Podcast shares conversations of hope, support and connection. It deals with grief, suicide prevention, survival, resilience and the experience of families affected by suicide, with the aim of helping people talk about what is often left unsaid.
One recent episode features John Gibson speaking with John Bell about the loss of his son Jake to suicide, grief, anger, and the struggle to keep going. It is heavy subject matter, handled through calm, human conversation rather than sensationalism.
Business
Business
The Scottish Business Podcast
Hosted by Sebastian Mackay, The Scottish Business Podcast brings together Scotland's leading CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs to talk about how they built their businesses, with guests sharing insights, challenges, defeats, and successes.
The show is strongest when Mackay leans into the specifics of the Scottish context: what it means to build a company in Edinburgh or Glasgow rather than London, how the Scottish funding ecosystem differs, and how Scotland's relatively small business community creates both tight networks and unusual opportunities.
Guest quality has been consistently strong, with conversations covering everyone from games industry founders to hospitality and tech entrepreneurs. Honest about failure in a way that more polished business podcasts tend not to be.
Where to start: Any episode featuring a founder from the Scottish games industry, where the gap between global cultural impact and local recognition is most striking.
Culture and history
Culture and History
Scots Whay Hae!
The oldest show on this list and, in many ways, the one that most clearly defines what a distinctly Scottish cultural podcast can do. Hosted by Alistair Braidwood, Scots Whay Hae! describes itself as the place to discuss modern Scottish culture, wherever and whatever that may be.
In practice, that means literature, theatre, music, film, poetry, and any other cultural form that Braidwood finds worth investigating, always with an emphasis on work that is rooted in or connected to Scotland. The show has been running since 2011, which, in podcasting terms, makes it practically ancient, and the back catalogue is an archive of Scottish cultural conversation with no equivalent anywhere.
Episodes with Bloody Scotland crime writers, Edinburgh Fringe artists, and publishing figures have made it an essential part of the Scottish arts calendar.
Where to start: The annual "best books of the year" episodes with Publishing Scotland's Vikki Reilly, which cover Scottish fiction and non-fiction comprehensively and function as a reading list in their own right.
Love Scotland
Love Scotland is a fortnightly podcast from the National Trust for Scotland, hosted by TV star, expert broadcaster, and NTS president Jackie Bird, with each episode delving deep into Scotland's history, wildlife, and landscapes. The production values are high, Bird is a genuinely skilled interviewer, and the subject matter ranges from the witch trials of the 16th century to the restoration of St Kilda's 200-year-old church.
It's the kind of show that takes what sounds like institutional content and makes it feel personal, partly because Bird is clearly invested in the material rather than merely presenting it. Guests have included Sam Heughan, Alan Cumming, and a rotating cast of historians, archaeologists, and conservationists who know their subjects thoroughly. The show won podcast awards before there were Scottish podcast awards to win.
Where to start: The Glencoe episodes, which cover one of the most significant events in Scottish history with the kind of depth that only a two-part podcast format can provide.
A note on production
A Note on Production
Working in a professional podcast studio, I notice production quality in a way that most listeners probably don't consciously register, but definitely feel. The shows on this list range from the polished, professionally produced (Glasgow Crime Stories, Love Scotland) to the intimate, self-recorded feel that some of the comedy and conversation podcasts deliberately cultivate. Both approaches can work.
What matters is that the production serves the content, and that the audio isn't fighting the listener.
Glasgow has become increasingly important as a place where podcast production is taken seriously. At Podcast Studio Glasgow, we've produced corporate podcast content for clients including Scottish Water and NHS Education Scotland, and we work with independent creators who want broadcast-quality results from a base in the city. If any of the shows on this list have made you want to start your own, or take your existing show to the next level, that's where we can help.
The bigger picture
The Bigger Picture
The inaugural Scottish Podcast Awards, with entries open until 9 March 2026 and a ceremony at Glasgow's Old Fruitmarket on 25 June, will give some of these shows a platform for recognition they've long deserved. More importantly, it will make the Scottish podcast scene visible to audiences, commissioners, and funders who might not have realised how much is being made here.
Scotland has always produced strong media. The shows above are evidence that podcasting is no exception.
