Sleep with Me - just a dude telling weird bedtime stories. Because…
But I need to check some of everyone else’s choices for some commuting material.
My regulars:
The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe
Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Invention (Same guys as Stuff to Blow Your Mind)
Science Rules with Bill Nye
A fascinating limited series:
The End of the World with Josh Clark
This fleshes out my weekly commute pretty nicely.
Cara Santa Maria or Rebecca Watson?
Dumb People Town
Thank God I’m Atheist
How To Heretic
Cognitive Dissonance
I use Castbox. It’s the only one I’ve ever used, so I cannot compare it to anything else. It doesn’t seem to use all that much battery, and it is relatively easy to use. Although I will admit that I have looked at the online help more than once.
You make a good point.
The Good Place - Companion podcast to the NBC show of the same name. Hosted by Marc Evan Jackson, each episode takes an episode of the show and discusses it and brings on a member of the cast or crew to talk about how the themes of that episode influenced them.
Futility Closet - General interest podcast on interesting and unusual stories from history plus lateral thinking puzzles.
Behind the Rind - Podcast on cheese.
Reply All - General interest podcast focusing on stories about the internet. My favorites are Super Tech Support where the hosts try to fix really weird tech problems and Yes Yes No, when they discuss the references in unusual tweets.
Switched On Pop - Podcast about pop music analysis.
The Adventure Zone -RPG storytelling podcast
Sawbones - Podcast on weird and wacky medical history.
Literature and History - Podcast about foundational literary texts with a lot of history about when those texts were written and why.
In Our Time - General interest podcast/radio show from the BBC
The History of Philosophy - Podcast that steps through the growth of philosophy chronologically.
The History of English - Podcast that steps through the growth of English chronologically.
The History of Rome - Podcast that steps through the growth of the Roman Empire chronologically.
En Clair - Podcast on forensic corpus linguistics.
The Allusionist - General interest linguistics podcast.
Lingthusiasm - General interest linguistics podcast.
Fiat Lex - General interest lexicography podcast.
Slate Lexicon Valley - General interest linguistics podcast.
A Way With Words - An agony aunt podcast for word usage.
Dear Hank and John - John and Hank Green answer listener questions and give dubious advice.
Delete This - Hank and Katherine Green review, critique and discuss Hank’s tweets and social media in general from the past week.
Anthropocene Reviewed - John Green reviews things from the anthropocene on a 0-5 star scale.
Death in the Afternoon - A podcast on death and dying.
The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry - BBC podcast/radio show where a mathematician and a biologist search for answers to listeners’ questions.
The Infinite Monkey Cage - General interest science panel discussion show.
After I started having issues with Podcast Addict using 2-3 gigs of data month because of the interstitials, I took a crowbar to my wallet and bought Pocketcasts. I still kinda miss the sheer amount of customization I could do in PA but PC lets me make playlists, speed up audio and most of the other stuff I could do in PA.
Slate’s Political Gabfest and The Gist, and occasionally the Culture Gabfest and Dear Prudence
Savage Lovecast
NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour
The Splendid Table
This American Life
My Dad Wrote a Porno (back next month!)
Cocaine and Rhinestones - This is a FABULOUS podcast about old country music stars, written and hosted by David Allan Coe’s son Tyler. It’s had one season and I’m hanging on for the second. If you listen to one episode, make it Episode #002 about Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill”.
Recently I’ve gotten into a few classic comic book podcasts. In particular:
Make Ours Marvel. Two guys look at every Marvel comic published, starting with Fantastic Four #1 and going forward chronologically (just superhero stuff–not the romance, Western, or war comics that Marvel still published back then). Clearly a project that can never possibly be completed, but they’re forging on as best they can.
My Marvelous Year. A similar idea, but more manageable. These hosts look at significant Marvel storylines year by year. They don’t attempt to cover every issue, or even every title, but they are attempting to hit the high points of Marvel history, and the parts that will be most helpful in understanding where Marvel is today (which is not always the same thing).
If anyone knows any other similar podcasts, I would be interested in hearing about them!
I tried this one and didn’t like it, but I didn’t stick with it for a whole episode and it’s possible I just picked a weak one. I figured “weird” has a lot of meanings and I was thinking “weird” like imaginative, absurd, and surreal and what I heard was “weird” like “this is not so much a story as it is chitchat about nothing”. I mean, it is meant to put you to sleep, not keep you on the edge of your seat. Did I hit a weak one or not give it enough time or is that what it is?
So mine, apart from several of the ones others have already mentioned:
Welcome to Night Vale is probably one of my favorite things. And weird it is. It’s a fictional local radio program set in a little town in the desert where… well, things are really bizarre. And it’s very funny and at times, very heartfelt. It’s got horror and sci-fi and like… it’s just great. It’s great. Go listen to it.
Then there are two from Night Vale Presents that I’ve loved. The first is The Orbiting Human Circus (Of the Air). It’s got the surreal/absurd/imaginative thing going on, but there’s somewhat more… charm about it. It’s more fairy tale than horror. It’s one season, but it’s the kind of show I want to keep re-listening to just to go back and live in that world.
The second is Dreamboy, which, again- surreal, absurd, imaginative, with more of a sort of urban fantasy flair. That one, I listened to the first episode and was absolutely riveted. I was in my driveway when it ended and I put on the second episode and found an excuse to drive around some more so I could listen to it.
A chit chat about nothing is one way to put it. The goal is to help you sleep, I’ve had difficulty when I too interested in the topic*. He does things from reading the Trader Joe Fearless Flyer or a list of the most popular NY apple varieties or recapping TV shows to original stories about an afterlife private eye or nuns trapped on a space ship piloted by a freestyle soda machine.
They all tend to include rambling, repeating himself, and diversions from the topic, the goal seems to be to keep you company while you fall asleep rather than to be particularly entertaining. Though, some episodes are better than others, and it could take a few tries for you to get used to it, the show puts me out, and puts me back to sleep pretty quick if I wake up.
*The one that got me was a recap of a Star Trek TNG show, I didn’t remember how the show ended so I couldn’t sleep until he got to the end.
Space Rocket History - hosted by a man named Michael Annis and goes into incredible detail going back to the primitive days when humans gazed up at the sky in awe and the components for what would be spaceflight hundreds of years later were used as a means of survival in different cultures.
I only started listening in 2016, so I sorta missed the train on Rebecca. But I do like Cara. She “grinds” her voice however, and that can be kinda irritating. How 'bout you?
And if you’re asking who’s hotter, the answer is “yes.” They both are.
I was very sad when Rebecca left, to the point that I thought the podcast might wither. I think Cara is fantastic and hope she stays forever. Never noticed the voice grinding thing, although sometimes I think she interrupts a bit too much.
The really incredible thing is the way Steven Novella shapes the podcast around the talent he has to work with, bringing out everyone’s best.
Almost exclusively true crime for me.
- Crime Junkies (weekly)
- Culpable (serial)
- 22 hours: An American Nightmare (serial - finished and highly recommend)
- Dateline (weekly)
- Hide & Seek (serial; currently listening to this)
Just started following Already Gone & Bear Brook, based on this thread 
Behind the Bastards
It Can Happen Here
My Dad Wrote a Porno
Ephemera
Gilbert Gotfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast
A Date With Dateline
Perhaps It’s You
Monster Kid Radio
plan 9 By 9
Made for TV Mayhem
And others I don’t get to listen to as much as I’d like.
Thanks! I kind of figured that was the deal, but I went into it expecting like… either anecdotes or twisted fairy tales or something like that. I hadn’t thought of it so much as something to keep me company. My issue sleeping tends to be that my mind spins out and goes horrible places, so I need something that will really occupy it and hold it back from the brink. Maybe I’ll give it a try again sometime when I’m in the right mindset 
I think I’d feel the same if Cara left. In the last year, as she becomes even more popular in the pop-science realm, I feel that day might be imminent. She’s had several absences lately as she works on her various projects and tv appearances, and on those eps, her absence is tangible. Yet she still seems fully invested, so who knows? I hope she stays despite her increasing popularity.
I did win a guess for one of the Who’s That Noisy for the Halloween '16 show. It was rather easy, though, as it was a clip from The Thing. But I love how accessible they are, and decided to become a Patreon member. May they go on forever.
What are your favorite podcast apps for Android? Most user-friendly and easiest to navigate?
I’ve only used two Android podcast apps: the Google Podcasts App, and Castbox. I found Castbox to be a superior product, although it does have its navigational issues. Once I figured out how to do everything I wanted to do (like add multiple episodes to playlists and deal with subscriptions), I’ve had very few issues with the app and I use it daily.