Heavyweight
5.0/5
Critic Rating
Maybe you’ve laid awake and imagined how it could have been, how it might yet be, but the moment to act was never right. Well, the moment is here and the podcast making it happen is Heavyweight. Join Jonathan Goldstein for road trips, thorny reunions, and difficult conversations as he backpedals his way into the past like a therapist with a time machine.
Critic Reviews
Score: 5
Fiona Sturges • Financial Times • Dec 17, 2023
"Emotionally complex and impossibly moving, “Lenny” is typical of the warmth and wistfulness that have long characterised Heavyweight and have grown deeper with time."
Score: 5
Taylor Antrim • Vogue • Dec 7, 2023
"The show achieves a level of vulnerability and intimacy that is hard to find....the most striking thing about Heavyweight has always been its ability to be both moving and funny, in every episode. It also helps that the writing is always exquisite."
Score: 5
Reggie Ugwu • New York Times • Dec 4, 2023
"(Season 8) Jonathan Goldstein’s hard-to-classify series (part investigation of the week, part memoir, part “Queer Eye”) has always felt like a minor miracle. the show again offers proof that the stories with the highest stakes are rarely those that make the headlines."
Score: 5
Alice Florence Orr • PodcastReview.org • Oct 25, 2023
"Delving into the past isn’t always a cathartic experience, and closure isn’t always achievable. Yet, by validating the pain we often suppress when life’s threads are left dangling, Heavyweight masterfully navigates the tension between second chances and ultimate disappointment. …"
Score: 5
Anna Leszkiewicz • New Statesman • Oct 11, 2023
"Compelling, empathetic and full of character, the show’s therapeutic qualities and, yes, heavy themes are tempered by Goldstein’s wry cynicism. As ever, it’s a funny, moving and human listen."
Score: 5
PR Staff • PodcastReview.org • Oct 4, 2023
"...still in peak form. As always, Goldstein shares the intimate conversations between them in full. …"
Score: 5
Ximena Smith • Stuff NZ • Oct 8, 2022
"While perhaps that might sound like an overly sentimental, self-helpy premise to you, Goldstein’s self-deprecating, dry sense of humour makes the concept work, and every episode that I’ve heard from the past six seasons has been an absolute joy to listen to. As per, Goldstein works his magic, and what follows is a heartwarming tale of reconnection and reflection."
Score: 5
Nick Hilton • Nick Hilton Blog • Jul 8, 2022
"Heavyweight is the most easily recommendable podcast I’ve encountered. Funny, truthful, sensitive, daring; there’s something for everyone."
Score: 5
Fiona Sturges • Financial Times • Dec 5, 2021
"(Updated) Heavyweight is, then, a podcast about turning points, finding answers to enduring questions and reckoning with the past. It is hosted by Jonathan Goldstein, who facilitates these reckonings, acts as intermediary and asks the questions that those at the centre of the story can’t bring themselves to ask. Throughout all this, Goldstein manages to find laughter amid the melancholy, invariably at his own expense, all the while displaying remarkable empathy towards his subjects and finding profundity in their predicaments."
Score: 5
Fiona Sturges • Financial Times • Oct 9, 2016
"If Heavyweight, the new US podcast hosted by Jonathan Goldstein, tells us anything, it’s that grudges shouldn’t be left to fester...Heavyweight depends on Goldstein’s personal connection to his subjects and his directness as an interviewer. He is, it seems, impervious to discomfort — Louis Theroux without the gaucheness...terrifically moving."
