At the end of a year filled with more podcast debuts than ever, its sometimes easy to overlook returning shows just as worthy of your time. If you havent given them a try yet, there are plenty of past episodes for your ears to indulge during holiday travels. Below are some recent podcasts that came back for new seasons, followed by a few newcomers to check out.

Dan Weissmann kicked off his podcast last year by likening health care costs to water, arguing that Americans (the fish in this metaphor) are so surrounded by it that we cant see how it changes everyones lives in very real, very painful ways. So each episode of An Arm and a Leg sets out to show you the water, examining a different persons battle to pay for the care they need. Weissmanns charming, empathetic and occasionally expletive-laden approach makes for an entertaining but sobering bottom line: Our health care system is broken, and everyone is suffering for it. Season 3 opens with Stephanie Wittels-Wachs the sister of Harris Wittels and the creator of Last Day, the new podcast that begins with his death. But her episode isnt about addiction or opioids. This is about the battle she pursued to convince the Texas state legislature to cover her daughters hearing aids.

The shows exploration of the hidden traumas within families will undoubtedly convince you that yours isnt the only one with skeletons in its closet. While the first two seasons focused on individuals, Season 3 begins with a three-episode arc unpacking Americas own family ghost. Set in Mobile, Ala., this mini-series focuses on the descendants of the enslaved people aboard the last known slave ship to arrive illegally (50 years after importing humans was banned) on U.S. shores. The ship, the Clotilda, was dismissed by the white residents of Mobile as fantasy, and the descendants living in Africatown have fought for centuries to be believed about their origin story.

How do you make British palaces and their bygone occupants come alive without a trip to the U.K.? You listen to Outliers Stories From the Edge of History. Kings and queens are not the focus here. Instead, each episode is devoted to someone the history books rarely if ever mention: Katherine of Aragons African lady-in-waiting, King George Is Turkish valet, the mistress-turned-wife of the Duke of Gloucester (who happened to be a convicted sorceress). Following each episode is a must-listen interview with the given episodes writer, who explains the choice of narrator to reveal historys forgotten moments.

The first season of this James Beard Award-winning podcast took a deep dive into the exclusionary traditions around gender, identity and femininity in the kitchens of fine-dining restaurants. Katy Osuna, the host and former chef de partie in the three-Michelin-starred Manresa restaurant, is back with a second season that again questions the unspoken rules that keep restaurant work in a vice grip. The new season, Overhead, employs the same storytelling by professional restaurant workers to demonstrate how badly the economics of restaurant labor need disrupting.

The Metropolitan Operas podcast is back for a second season, all about one thing: desire. Hosted by the Grammy Award winner Rhiannon Giddens, each episode features a different aria, exploring how the performance embodies operas most enduring and universal theme. Guests include opera singers like Roberto Alagna, Diana Damrau and Sondra Radvanovsky, as well as fans like Dan Savage, Anna Chlumsky and Dame Judi Dench. Even for a philistine like me, who fell asleep when a date took her to the opera, Aria Code presents a mesmerizing appreciation of these powerful solo performances brimming with universal feelings.

The creators of Making Oprah and Making Obama are back for a third season, and this time theyve left Chicago city limits. The new host, Jill Hopkins, a local radio personality, singer, storyteller and self-proclaimed Beyonc superfan, takes us on a deep dive into pre-Destinys Child Beyonc. Hopkins focuses on the rigorous training that Beyoncs original group, Girls Tyme, endured to try to make it big as a preteen band with adult-grade performances. Really what Making Beyonc provides is the vision of Beyoncs father, Matthew Knowles, as a salesman who channeled his ambition through his daughters extraordinary talent, and the insane competitiveness, pain and professionalism the young girls had to shoulder as they tried to make their (and their parents) dreams come true.

Earhustle isnt the only show made within the walls of San Quentin State Prison. Thanks to the California Arts in Corrections Program and audio classes from KALW, incarcerated men at San Quentin and Solano State Prison have joined forces to produce this moving new show. They take turns interviewing each other stories run the gamut from forgiving abusive fathers to finding peace through yoga. Then following each story is a collective reflection on it, as the men challenge each others ideas of masculinity and offer reassurances that their childhood traumas are not their fault.

In this new podcast, the religion reporter Michael OLoughlin complicates the conventional wisdom that views the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 90s as a clash between a community dying from an epidemic and the religious institution that turned its back. With survivor testimony and interviews with religious leaders, OLoughlin, himself a gay Catholic man, shares the stories of those who found God in their care for the sick.

If you love hearing authors read their own work, and appreciate well-written prose enhanced with moving soundscapes, youll enjoy this new podcast from Lit Hub, the literary website. Writers like Matt Gallagher, Lidia Yuknavitch and Caitlin Doughty read original works that explore ideas of family, history and the power of a good story. Each episode matches a different sound designer and composer with a writer, and the result is a private reading just for you. The first episode, with Mitch Albom reading from his forthcoming memoir, Finding Chika, is a moving story of adopted fatherhood.

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Podcasts About Beyonc, Arias and Health Care: Worth a Listen - The New York Times