What general topic or category are you looking for? There's a lot out there.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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My response from the last time I saw this question:
- Trillbilly Worker's Party - Kentucky-centric Marxist jokers hanging out. They always know how to put a smile on my face, even if they're talking about bleak stuff.
- Fun City - Well produced live role playing of Shadowrun. The game is a few years in and I am just invested.
- ALAB - Lawyers talking shit. They're funny and I like learning about interesting cases. One of the characters they covered actually sued them and settled for an interview on the show.
- Desert Oracle Radio - Joshua Tree-centric paranormal stuff. Good for an old X-Files head like me.
99 Percent Invisible
Wide variety of topics, all somewhat obvious if a bit niche, but they turn out so much deeper than you thought.
Also Roman Mars has a very pleasant voice.
Lateral
Out-of-the-box thinking game show from Tom Scott of (former) YouTube fame.
The Rest is History (history podcast with both mini-series... serieses... series... and one-off episodes)
Clear Eyes Full Hearts (Friday Night Lights rewatch)
The Line (Canadian politics -- there are a number of podcasts with this or a similar name, so you're looking for the one by Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney)
Stories Podcast (short stories for children; my kids like this a lot for road trips)
Old Books with Grace (old/very old book talk with a medievalist)
Season 1 is essential listening. It's not very long, and takes you through the journey of putting astronauts on the moon with tech far less advanced that what you're reading this on. It came sooooo close to failure on more than one occasion. When that lander touched down, it had something like 8 seconds of fuel left.
Season 2 is the story in detail of the Apollo 13 mission. If you loved Season 1 and want more, then go right ahead. I liked season 2, but nowhere near as much.
I feel like my regular rotation is slight in comparison to what other folks are posting, but podcasts are an unwinding kind of activity for me, so I don't really want to be inundated with current events or heavy topics. Accordingly, here's a bunch of "Arts and Culture" type recommendations.
Bandsplain: Yasi Salek explores bands' discographies, usually with a guest who is a self-described super fan of the band being discussed. I think it's a Spotify exclusive, which is a bummer, but they leverage that to actually play relevant songs at certain points in the cast. A good way to remove blindspots in your catalog, or to achieve a greater understanding of artists' holistic output, rather than just the hits.
Blank Check: A podcast about filmographies. Each "season" covers a different director, and the hosts examine their career chronologically. Fun, and it encourages me to finally tackle movie blindspots. They are doing the first half of Spielberg's career at the moment, most recently discussing 1987's Empire of the Sun.
Eye of the Duck: A podcast about movie genres / vibes. Each "season" is a different kind of film, and the hosts select emblematic examples to examine in chronological order, with a mind towards how the genre evolved over time. Examples of past topics include Alien Invasion, 80s Dark Fantasy, Space Movies, and so on. They are typically a little more "film school brain" than most amateur podcasts, which I appreciate, but may not be everyone's cup of tea.
Three Moves Ahead: Weekly video game podcast, with a heavy emphasis on strategy games. I'm not a regular listener, but I will often check to see if they've done an episode on a particular game that I'm playing.
Every F'n FF: Three folks (who I think are involved in the speed running scene) on a quest to complete every Final Fantasy game. This coincided with a replay of FFX that I embarked upon. Sadly I think X-2 may have broke them, as they've not uploaded since last October, but it does look like they completed 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 13, and Dirge of Cerberus.
The blindboy podcast!
Blowback.
Behind the Bastards has already been shouted out a lot. And I’m sure lots of folks on lemmy are big fans of Robert Evans as it is, but I haven’t seen It Could Happen Here or friend of both those pods Knowledge Fight mentioned. Both well worth listening to
I’m a fan of ICHH, but my god, for an anticapitalist podcast they really need to lay off the ads just a little bit
This has nothing to do with what I said
Criticizing anti-capitalism media for existing in a capitalistic system is literally the last panel. I'm sure we agree on most things if you listened to ICHH as well, so I'm not trying to argue or start a fight.
But Evans has to eat, pay rent and deserves to make profit off his time like the rest of us. Personally, I feel as if you're falling into the "AoC/Bernie/Hasan has money and are hypocritical socialists" style trap, which is at best lazy and worst willfully ignorant of the context in which we all live.
The podcast wouldn't exist without ads, so ads are a weird thing to complain about. It's the message that is important and ads don't diminish that anti capitalistic message.
Not just Evans, but Mia, Gar (sp?), James, and their other contributors.
Yeah except I never said their arguments aren’t valid like the comic is suggesting. Nor did I say they shouldn’t run ads at all. All I said was the amount of ads is tiresome.
For this comic to be relevant I’d have to have said something along the line of “Im not going to listen to what they say because they run ads”
I’m happy for Robert and co.’s success, I just wish they had a model that didn’t rely so heavily on advertising, like some other leftist content creators I listen to.
You can always listen to the weekly omnibus episode that only has ad breaks between each full segment. Or get good with your skip forward button.
I’ve been a Cooler Zone Media subscriber since they launched that and it’s so much better without ads. I consumed a bunch of their content so $5 is well worth it for me
I would too but afaik its only available on apple podcasts :(
for an anticapitalist podcast they really need to lay off the ads just a little bit
May I know what do you mean?
The podcast is critical of corpratism and consumerism, but they run like 5 minutes of ads every 10 minutes. Its excessive
It's an I Heart Radio podcast right? I♡R suuuuuvks.
I love Cool Zone Media's output, but their parent company is exhausting.
It's not like they are unskippable ads, so i don't think it's as bad as YouTube or Hulu or whatever.
I don’t have as much time to listen to podcasts at the moment. The only one I’ve continued listening to is “Well There’s Your Problem”, it is sooo good. Just my kind of humor!
It's an engineering disaster podcast with slides, so it's on YouTube. It's a good one to listen to while doing chores where you can occasionally glance at your screen to see what they are talking about.
I second this, it’s a great podcast for chores
The fall of civilizations - it tells the story of the rise and fall of different groups of people through history. Often with readings in the original tongue.
From the same creator “vaccine” is the history of the creation of the works first vaccines. Neither podcast has any ads which is awesome.
Lastly factually with Adam conover is great. Comedian discussing often political issues.
"Even more news" general news and politics
"Trash taste" anime and japanese centric by 3 people who moved to Japan and are YouTubers
Podcasts are my thing. I've got you covered.
Depends on what you're into:
More or Less: Behind the Stats - analysis of some statistic from the news
The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - what science says about how to be happy
The Audio Long Read - long form articles from the Guardian newspaper
You Are Not So Smart - cognitive science related. How we know things, our biases, how our thinking is flawed, etc.
Dan Snow's History Hit - One of the few history podcasts I really like
Short History Of... - a short history of some specific thing
The Forum - expert panel discussion about some topic
Behind the Bastards - Very well known podcast focusing on some bastard personality
CrowdScience - in depth investigation of a listener science question
Radiolab - in depth investigation of a topic of their interest. Quite broad scope.
Unexpected Elements - a very varied mix of discussions around a science topic from the news
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Tim Harford is the podcast king for me. This show is a deep dive into something that went wrong in news or history, and an investigation of all the systemic failures around it. It tries to show how blame is hardly ever warranted on a single person and the systems are at fault.
The Martin Lewis Podcast - UK consumer advocate and saving guru
Show Me The Meaning! A Wisecrack podcast - a couple of philosophers talk about a movie
The Inquiry - a deep dive into a news story
Revisionist History - Malcolm Gladwell's podcast about a range of different things
The Law Show - UK legal system issues
The Infinite Monkey Cage - comedy science panel show
The Supermassive Podcast - space related podcast
File on 4 investigates - detailed story from deep investigative journalism
Thinking Allowed - light philosophical ramblings
When It Hits the Fan - two public relations experts talk about PR issues from current events
Discovery - science related. Currently mostly doing shows about "a life scientific" I.e. talking to a scientist about their life
Overthink - philosophy made accessible
What It's Like To Be.. - a person from a particular occupation talks about their job
People Fixing the World - people from different parts of the world fixing some local problem in their community in a creative way
Hidden Brain - my absolute favourite. Cognitive science related. Explains how the brain works and how to use the understanding to male your own love better.
Within Reason Your Parenting Mojo - evidence based parenting. Can be a very dry long-winded research presentation, but this has improved my parenting (and life) immensely
sideways - different ideas and how to look at things differently
Darknet Diaries - stories from the dark underbelly of the internet
The Reith Lectures - once a year short lecture series, but well worth listening to the backlog
Evil Genius with Russell Kane - comedians discuss how some villains from history weren't so bad and how some heroes from history were terrible people
Owls at Dawn - ramblings of a couple of philosophers
Sound of Gaming - excellent music show about music soundtracks from videogames
Playing god? - medical ethics discussion
30 Animals That Made Us Smarter - this series has ended but it is worth listening to the backlog
50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - this series has ended but it is worth listening to the backlog
A History of the World in 100 Objects - this series has ended but it is worth listening to the backlog
I would also recommend the podcast series made to accompany the Chernobyl and Last of Us TV series.
S Town - a nice fiction mini series drama story.
The Regulation Podcast - A comedy podcast for "deep lore about nothing"
✏️
History podcast from the BBC : You're dead to me
I enjoy 'This American life, depends on the topic but it can be very interesting.
If you've heard of QI from the BBC there is No such thing as a fish when they talk about a couple facts they've read. I find it pretty funny too.
Mike Duncan is doing a new seasons of Revolutions about the Mars revolution (fictional of course) but before he did a bunch of others including the Mexican and French revolutions which I particularly enjoyed.
Blowback does seasons about bad US foreign policy. For news about US foreign policy there is also American Prestige.
Also listen to 15 minutes history from the University of Austin Texas. They just did something about the King of Haïti for example. They do new topics each episode.
Also another history one if MartyrMade.
And Trillbilly Workers podcast because I like to have no clue what they're talking about lol
You're Dead to Me is a great one. I also really like The Rest is History in a similar niche.
Mike Duncan is fire! I really enjoyed all of it. But his "revolutions" podcast on early modern england was really interesting.
I particularly enjoyed an episode (later on in the French revolution) that talked about the Paris fish wives march on the Bastille.
Behind the Bastards
BtB’s counterpart, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
If Books Could Kill
You’re Wrong About
Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The Dollop
Depresh Mod
The Daily Zeitgeist
+1 for The Dollop. Good comedic look at American history.
History on Fire
Hardcore History
500 Rock songs in 500 Days
I love Throughline from NPR. Some of their episodes are very "cinematic" and great to listen too in bed with the lights off, though some might find some of the topics depressing, but you can mostly avoid thoose based on the titles (but those are sometimes the best episodes!!!)
Everything from the Ranged Touch Network. Basically culture and media studies with good banter. They have:
Just king things (Reading every King Book in publication order)
Game Studies Study Buddies
Shelved By Genre (Units discussing different genre books).
- Swindled - Mostly white-collar true crime with dark humor and disdain aplenty.
- 404 Media - The folks who used to do the Cyber podcast before they left VICE and are doing far better work, indy.
- Better Offline - Another tech podcast by Ed Zitron. He loves tech and can't stand how fucked up the tech-bros are making the whole thing, at our collective expense.
I’ll have to check out Swindled. +1 for 404 Media and Better Offline.
This is my list from 2017: https://jeena.net/podcasts-listening
Interestingly I still listen to mos of them with the exception of the technology ones. Somehow technology podcasts started boring me a couple of years ago so I stopped listening to them, with one notable exception, the HomeAssistant podcast.
Not rly a podcast but looong (3+hr episodes) video series caller "fall of civilisations" about fall of civilisations in ancient times , history of the civ , what lead to the fall , the fall itself and the aftermath
Skeptoid.
Something a bit different, but Super Marcato Bros. They play through game soundtracks and give some musician commentary. I'd say their music curation for the episodes is pretty good.
Some that I’ve been on and off listening to (because I struggle to consistently listen to anything in particular)
- UNBIASED politics
- ChooseFI
- do it yourself
There’s a bunch of other financial coaching type podcasts that I’ve listened to, but I haven’t been much in the financial coaching game in a while