There don’t seem to be any recent similar threads, so I am starting one.
I am mainly interested in podcasts about (lay) science, history, current events (including politics), society. psychology - or practically anything except sports.
I live in Europe and a US centric point of view is not a requirement.
My political opinions are left wing, but I am open to reasoned conservative views as well.
I have Castbox on my phone - I am new to podcasts so I am not sure if the player is relevant to the options you can choose from - I just listened to a couple of episodes of Under the Skin by Russel Brandt which seemed decent, but apparently they are approx. 10 min excerpts and you have to download/ subscribe to something else in order to listen to the whole thing.
So any advice on podcast aggregators/ players would also be welcome.
Hacks on Tap for politics. Most of the MSNBC pundit/opinion shows are also available as podcasts. Chris Wallace and Brett Baier for tolerable Fox News content. Stuff You Should Know is often interesting but commercial-laden. I think most of the players have access to most of the shows; I just use the Google app.
Big fan of the Economist Radio offerings, especially The Intelligence and Babbage. The first is each weekday and the second once weekly, Wednesdays I think.
Yesterday’s The Intelligence for example has this as its summary:
A Hot Dog is a Sandwich: It’s extremely lightweight and probably very American, but it’s just two people discussing popular food debates, such as the one in the title, or “Does pineapple belong on pizza?” or “Chicken wings: drums or flats?” that kind of stuff. Although they do run out of those types of debates after a couple of dozen episodes, then it moves on to stuff like “Is bacon overrated?” but it’s still entertaining.
There are two new (to me) podcasts I’m really enjoying lately.
MusicalSplaining is a podcast where Lindsay Ellis, who loves musicals, watches and discusses them with her long time friend and musical skeptic Kaveh Teharian, often with an additional guest. The original hook was that it was about non-musical movies which became musicals, but they violated that in the first episode, and the pandemic put a damper at their idea of going and seeing those types of musicals anyways. But I very much enjoy the history, and getting the perspectives of both people very into musical culture, and those who are not. Kaveh has enjoyed himself a lot more than he expected.
Escape from Vault Disney is a podcast where Tony Goldmark (a former theme park reviewer) and three guest hosts watch content on Disney+, mostly selected randomly. Occasionally they have themes where the randomness is restricted. And he allows any guest who has been on the show 10 times or more to get one special pick. Despite the vibe being different, the format is similar: they discuss the history of the show and their familiarity with it first, with some humor, and then come back after having watched the show to discuss their opinions of what the watched, with snarky humor.
I also have both Ear Biscuits by Rhett and Link from Good Mythical Morning and Dear Hank and John from the Green brothers. The latter answer viewer questions in absurd ways, while discussing surprisingly deep things. The former is just more Rhett and Link talking to each other, usually discussing a topic, with their typical digressions. However, I suspect that anyone who follows either of these people knows about their podcast.
My current go-to podcast for my long morning commute is The Dollop. It’s two improv comedians who read a story germane to American political or social history while pointing and laughing at the (usually stupid) people in the story. They do some live shows recorded at various comedy festivals and such, which I’m not a big fan of because there’s more banter and less storytelling in those, but they’ve been at it for like 7 years so there’s a lot of episodes to choose from. If you’re looking for a representative episode to introduce yourself to the series listen to the “Dope Lake” episode. Either you’ll be hooked or you’ll forever give it a pass.
One thing is for sure, it definitely won’t improve your views of American society.
Some time ago there was a thread on this topic. I compiled all the suggestions into a spreadsheet and put it up on Google drive. There are 265 podcasts listed; I have no idea if they are all still viable.
Lately, I have been listening to MonsterTalk, which is an entertaining and skeptical look at cryptozoology and other monster-adjacent topics. They are sponsored by Skeptic Magazine. They have different guests each episode to debunk bigfoot sightings, discuss whether ivory billed woodpeckers or Tasmanian tigers might still exist, explain hypnogogic hallucinations, etc. In general, it is light and amusing, but no one is peddling woo.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Dumb People Town recently. It’s just three comedians who read crazy news stories submitted to them by listeners and make fun of them (the stories, not the listeners). Sounds like it would be mean-spirited but it’s mostly not. Most of these subjects wholeheartedly earned the ridicule, frankly.
It should be noted that you should take the Dollop with a MASSIVE grain of salt because it’s badly researched, but since the podcast is two comedians being funny and they’re successful at it you can overlook that if you just want some mindless comedy.
They tend to use very few sources and will not take out whatever bias was in those sources which leads to them making really absurd statements that I don’t know they intentionally realize. Back when I was a weekly listener I would have to Fact Check bizarre statements they made on the SDMB and most of the time they were either completely wrong or wildly exaggerating for comedy without telling the audience.
It’s gotten better. In the first hundred or so episodes they seem to often be reading directly from Wikipedia, but their information slowly improves over the next 300 episodes to where the newest hundred episodes seem to be fairly well researched and they even read an extensive list of sources at the end.
But yeah, the main point of it is comedy and entertainment, and as far as the stories go, I think of them more like a starting off point for learning about a subject rather than the whole story.
Thanks for this recommendation, I’m going to check them out.
Oh absolutely. A history lesson it is not. The first one I listened to (the one about the radioactive boy scout) was so full of mistakes that I was shaking my head as much as I was laughing. But it was funny and I think it is still worth a listen.
In the one about Rainbow Man Dave quotes the Straight Dope article verbatim as if he wrote it himself. That was annoying.
Yeah they’re funny, but it’s definitely a podcast where DON’T listen to an episode on a specific subject you know a lot about, because like me you will wind up mad.
In a similar vein (though I like them a lot better) there’s an incredibly great podcast called Crime In Sports which is a similar format, two stand-up comedians each week find an athlete or sports figure who has had a major crime in their life, and then give you their entire life story in 2-3 hours making jokes along the way. They’re both incredibly knowledgeable about American sports (the Big 3 mostly, MLB, NBA, NFL) and the main host James actually does do primary source research for most of it, tracking down news articles or interviews from the original time of incidents as well as police reports.
I hardly ever have the time or want to watch movies, but I still enjoy listening to podcasts about them. Particularly How Did This Get Made (for the mainstream bad ones) and Unspooled (for the good ones).
long time wrestling legend jim Cornette ha s2 a week the Jim Cornette experience and the Jim Cornette drive-thru
Note there only half about wrestling and funny as hell even if you don’t agree with anything he says since he spouts off about whatever crosses his mind but when he gets in a story tellin mood you’d be surprised on what it takes to have a wrestling match …
I’ve been listening to Knowledge Fight quite a bit lately. It’s two guys who listen to the Alex Jones show (actually, one listens and the other acts as the audience surrogate). They break down his lies, obfuscation, and bad logic, as well as trace the origins of his theories (hint: it’s fascists. It always leads back to fascists). The best episodes are the “formulaic objections “ series, where they cover the depositions from various lawsuits. One of themhas become the world’s only Alex Jones expert by doing the show, and eventually worked as a consultant with the Sandy Hook plaintiffs, even sitting in on a deposition.
For some reason, hearing that blowhard get fact checked is addictive.
Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
Smartless with Bateman, Arnett & Hayes
Literally with Rob Lowe
Sibling Revelry with Kate & Oliver Hudson
Dateline
Family Ghosts
Imagined Life
Stuff You Should Know
Armchair Expert
Stuff to Blow Your Mind