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The 2024 awards season has felt unusually hectic so far, thanks to the strike-delayed Emmy Awards<\/a> shifting from their usual fall airdate to January. To help make sense of it all \u2014 and unpack the discombobulated state of Hollywood now \u2014 these five podcasts offer a mixture of expert analysis and predictions for the major ceremonies, original reporting on the industry trends and behind-the-scenes machinations that influence voting, and reflections on Oscar front-runners of the past that probably shouldn\u2019t have been.<\/p>\n This Vanity Fair series debuted in 2015, which means it\u2019s been on hand to chronicle some of the weirdest moments in Academy history, like the 2017 Best Picture flub<\/a> (when \u201cLa La Land” was mistakenly announced as the winner instead of \u201cMoonlight\u201d), 2021\u2019s muted Covid-era ceremony held in a cavernous Los Angeles train station<\/a>, and the slap heard around the world<\/a> in 2022. But even when there\u2019s nothing quite so unusual going on, the analysis here always makes awards season more interesting. Hosted by the Vanity Fair journalists Michael Hogan, Katey Rich, Richard Lawson and Joanna Robinson, the conversation is always exhaustive and packed with expertise, exploring not just the contenders for Hollywood\u2019s top prizes, but also the campaigning and strategizing that shape the race. Since many Oscar journeys begin at film festivals such as Sundance, Cannes, Venice and Toronto, there\u2019s no shortage of news and releases to cover year round, not to mention interviews; recent guests have included Andrew Scott (\u201cAll of Us Strangers\u201d), Emma Stone (\u201cPoor Things\u201d) and Greta Lee (\u201cPast Lives\u201d).<\/p>\n Starter episode: \u201cOscar Voters, Start Your Engines\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n There\u2019s a peculiar category of film that debuts with great fanfare, attracts plenty of awards buzz, and then fades from the cultural consciousness without a trace (and no awards). Not all of the films discussed on \u201cThis Had Oscar Buzz\u201d fall into that bracket, but, as the title suggests, the focus is on the movies that had that buzzy aura around them, at least for a while. An early episode about \u201cCake,\u201d a 2014 movie starring Jennifer Aniston as a woman living with chronic pain, exemplifies what works so well about this format \u2014 Aniston was lauded for her playing-against-type performance and campaigned intensely during that awards season<\/a>, but was famously snubbed on Oscar nomination morning. The hosts, Joe Reid and Chris Feil, don\u2019t belittle either the performance or the hustle, but rather use the hype around \u201cCake\u201d as a jumping-off point to discuss Aniston\u2019s career and celebrity more broadly, alongside the ins and outs of how exactly buzz gets built in the first place.<\/p>\n Starter episode: \u201cAlexander (With David Sims)\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Though not a traditional awards season podcast with predictions or play-by-play recaps, \u201cThe Town\u201d is an invaluable resource for anyone hoping to understand the upheaval in Hollywood. Delivered in snappy episodes that clock in around 30 minutes, Matthew Belloni, a former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and a founding partner of the digital media company Puck, shares insights and exclusive reporting on the industry, whether the issue is last year\u2019s monthslong writers\u2019 and actors\u2019 strikes, Disney\u2019s succession woes<\/a> or the cost-of-streaming crisis<\/a>. In a recent episode, Belloni and Brooks Barnes, a Hollywood correspondent for The New York Times, went deep on the current state of the \u201cunkillable\u201d Golden Globes, which returned last year after a hiatus sparked by controversy surrounding its now-defunct unorthodox voting body, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Traditionally the first awards show on the calendar \u2014 and the most chaotic \u2014 the Globes have proved to have more staying power than many predicted, and this analysis is a good resource for anybody wondering why.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\u2018Little Gold Men\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n