Hi,
I’m a big fan of podcasts and I’ve been enjoying “Against the Rules” and “Darknet Diaries” lately.
Now, I want to hear your recommendations! What podcasts do you love and why? Let’s build an epic list of must-listen podcasts together.
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
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Behind the Bastards, a deep dive into the various shit people of history. Episode one is Saddam Hussein: Erotic Novelist.
There’s nearly 700 episodes, and I’ve yet to run tio a dud. Loads of great guests. My only gripe is that it’s a touch Amerocentric, but other than that I’d recommend it to basically anyone. Not kid friendly, in case that wasn’t obvious.
I think it’s only fair to add that this podcast has a very left leaning bias. I’m not saying that that is bad, just being objective.
Yeah, it does. That’s a fair thing to say.
+1 for Behind the Bastards. Robert Evans is great!
I like listening to historical podcasts, and my favorites are “The History of Rome” (which has finished) and its followup “The History of Byzantium” and “Hardcore History” . I’ve heard good things about “Revolutions” by the creator of “The History of Rome” but I haven’t checked it out yet.
Also I’ve been enjoying “Fall of Civilizations” a lot, but so far have only listened to a few of the episodes.
The Fall of Civilizations is one of my favorite podcasts right now! I highly recommend it if you like to think about history from a sort of different point of view. The host is really invested in trying to contextualize what things may have looked and felt like from the common person’s point of view.
I’ve listened to all of these podcasts besides Hardcore history, and I can highly recommend all of them. It’s hard to pick a favourite but it might be Revolutions, which I found the most eye-opening, especially season 3 on the french revolution. I’m currently working my way through Wittenberg to Westphalia, the Wars of the Reformation, which is meant to be on the 30 years way, but takes a very deep dive into the life, economy, history and culture of the middle ages and early modern period.
- Hidden brain for psychology
- 99 percent invisible for interesting stories of stuff.
Massively depends on what you’re into.
That said, I follow these podcasts:
News related comedy:
- Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me from NPR
- Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4
- The Bugle
- Breaking The News from BBC Scotland
DnD:
- Dicefunk (I recommend seasons 3 & 4 in particular)
Puns:
- Punwatch
- (also The Bugle sometimes)
Science communication:
- The Infinite Monkey Cage
- Daniel And Jorge Explain The Universe
- The Curious Cases Of Rutherford & Fry
- Supermassive
- A Problem Squared
- Creature Feature
- My Favourite Theorem
About Media:
- Failure To Launch, about TV pilots that failed to become full series
- Get Played, originally called “How Did This Get Played?” and focused on the worst games ever made, now about games in general
- Dream Factory, about plots of non-existing movies
Security/Hacking:
- Malicious Life
- Darknet Diaries
- Human Factor Security
History:
- You’re Dead To Me
I am surprised some of the big ones haven’t been mentioned yet -
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Radiolab - Not really sure how to describe this podcast. It’s superb journalism at its core. They do both short and multi-episode long form about a variety of topics from science to history to current events. For example, how dinosaurs died when the asteroid hit earth, the story of a Guantanamo convict with the same name as the host, and how poorly computer databases are designed for names that are outside the norm.
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Planet Money - An excellent economics podcast where complex topics are distilled in fairly short episodes. They recently released a completely AI generated episode which was incredibly scary with how good it was.
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More Perfect - Everything the US Supreme Court
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Serial - One multi-episode series at a time about complicated criminal cases.
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What Roman Mars can Learn about Con Law - Started off during the Trump Presidency when tough questions about the US constitution are being asked given his penchant for pushing the legal boundaries and norms.
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Trashfuture is a great podcast. It is, ostensibly, a tech-pessimist podcast, but every now and then there are some great UK-centric politics that bleed through since they are based in the UK. All of the host are kind of leftist weirdo Marxists and they really take the piss out of “technology companies” that are nothing more than shell games of moving things around that have been around forever and calling it a tech company. One of my favorites.
Big fan of Darknet Diaries.
Hardcore History. The come out a few times a year and are incredibly long (some episodes are five hours), but listening to Dan Carlin talk is really engaging. Plus he has one of those voices you can fall asleep to.
It Could Happen Here. Keeps my righteous anger at ‘the man’ topped up.
Criminal Records. Fun crime podcast focussed on the weird and less heard of crimes in history.- History on Fire (Italian Prof talks about interesting events and people)
- The Deprogramm (An iraqi, a slav and a american rant about things)
- Duncan Trussell Family Hour (Classical “guy invites interesting people to talk to”)
- Blowback (Historic events regarding american imperialism)
No such thing as a fish, funny and educational
I’ve been a longtime fan of CheapShow, a comedy podcast loosely based around unusual items found in cheap shops and charity shops (thrift stores). Episodes include deep dives in vintage/retro media, taste tests of weird foodstuffs, various games and challenges, plus a lot of complete chaos and toilet humour.
Maybe not for everyone, but if any of the above catches your interest it’s worth a try.
Not another D&D podcast. Very entertaining and funny.
Dungeons and Daddies, a chaotic and hilarious Dungeons and Dragons podcast. It does have some good emotional parts as well.
Mostly on the humorous side:
- My Brother, My Brother And Me - 3 brothers giving not-so-serious advice to listeners, reacting to questions from Yahoo Answers (when that was a thing), and overall being funny/silly
- My Dad Wrote A Porno - 3 people hilariously reacting to an “erotica” book series that one of the guys’ dad published (I would say the books are maybe only 5%-20% explicit, depending on the chapter)
- No Such Thing As A Fish - the behind-the-scenes staff of the show QI bring up interesting facts and tidbits from history/nature/etc. (each episode is split into 4 parts where each member brings up a fact and the others react to it and bring up related facts)
- If I Were You - Jake & Amir from CollegeHumor giving advice to listeners (mostly in a sarcastic/tongue-in-cheek way but sometimes genuinely), mostly about relationships/dating
- SmartLess - Jason Bateman and Will Arnett (Arrested Development) and Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) interview a famous person each episode where only one of the hosts known who it is beforehand (it gets better after the first few episodes)
- Office Ladies - Jenna and Angela from The Office (US) reacting to each episode of the show and bringing up behind-the-scenes stuff (some of episodes include interviews with other cast members/staff)
I listen to a bunch of accident and disaster podcasts. Black Box Down about plane crashes, Great Disasters, and Well There’s Your Problem. All quite different in tone, but all informative and entertaining.
Movies and TV discussions: Ty & That Guy (if you’re an Expanse fan, you’ll love it), Cinema of Meaning, and Too Scary; Didn’t Watch.
Space nerd shit: Space Rocket History (I wanna adopt this host and his wife, they’re so damn sweet), Space Nuts
Medical nerd shit: This Podcast Will Kill You, EMCrit Podcast
