From the makers of the hit TV series Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal comes … a whole slate of new podcasts. Untangle your ear buds and flash back to your morning commute, because Shondaland Audio and iHeartMedia are teaming up for three new original podcasts this month, with more to come in the months ahead. In October, TV producer Shonda Rhimes, who also executive-produced How to Get Away With Murder, signed a deal with iHeartMedia, the top global publisher of commercial podcasts. You Down? , a talk show-style podcast hosted by Obama’s Other Daughters – a Los Angeles-based comedy group of four black women – kicked off on Tuesday. Next week will see the arrival of the historical true-crime show Criminalia and Go Ask Ali , hosted by actress Ali Wentworth. In such a saturated podcast market (more than 800,000 active ones exist in the United States alone), these fresh shows might have a hard time cutting through the noise. But for Sandie Bailey, Shondaland Audio’s chief design and digital media officer, the content resonates with people – just as the Grey’s plots did. “For us, it’s just about telling these stories the same way Shondaland has always told these stories,” she says. “Through a lens of truth, through a lens of giving people a mirror into [and] a window into someone else’s point of view, in which they may see themselves, or hear their own story mirrored back at them.” Triller could be the app to watch if US TikTok ban goes ahead As c oronavirus cases around the world have doubled in the past 45 days , more and more people are seeking out stories and turning towards comfort. And more Americans are listening to podcasts: in the early part of this year, almost 40 per cent of the population had listened to a podcast in the last month. But now people are seeking out different types of stories. Conal Byrne, the president of the iHeartPodcast Network, has had a hand in the podcast world for the last 15 years. After the early success of “hard-hitting, edgy, salacious, guilty pleasure shows” such as The New York Times ’ Serial , he says people have shifted their tastes in quarantine. “They moved toward shows that felt a little more like companionship,” says Byrne. “As I saw that shift happen, that made me feel like the Shondaland slate was even more timely and relevant … Anyone in any disposition right now in quarantine will have a choice to listen to something based on this slate.” By early next year, that slate will expand to include American Coup , a scripted series exploring the story of First Lady Edith Wilson, who essentially took over the Oval Office; #Matter , a scripted drama about a reporter reflecting on a case of police brutality; and Black Girl Lost , which examines growing numbers of missing black women and girls in a documentary style. While a couple of these shows directly address concerns brought to light by the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of police in the American city of Minneapolis and an ongoing campaign for racial equity, the line-up has been months in the making. “I think that some of the programming was, interestingly enough, already on the slate before we started to see this recent uprising,” Bailey says. “And it will be just absolutely amazing for us to get some of these stories told now.” Byrne thinks the times are catching up to what Shondaland already wanted to talk about – “what we all should have been talking about anyway”. “We saw a lot of media brands moving around launch dates, moving up and back launches to respond, to be relevant, and that’s good and fair. It just wasn’t really necessary with this slate,” he said. “It was already there.”