My wife asked me to recommend some podcasts to her, so I made a list from some of the podcasts I currently enjoy, or have enjoyed in the past. It’s not exhaustive: there’s plenty I used to listen to that either I don’t remember anymore, or that have gone downhill. Also, I don’t listen to podcasts as much as I used to—my drive commuting to work is more often filled with music or silence and my own thoughts these days. But this is what I put on that list of things for me wife check out.
- Heavyweight: A delightfully awkward guy goes around helping people with unfinished business from their lives. (I went to grad school with Jonathan, and I quite enjoyed him in my first workshop there.) Find it here.
- Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People: A very empathetic comedian takes phone calls from strangers who talk with him about their lives and experiences. Find it here.
- Behind the Bastards: Biographies of terrible people in history and in the world today. I only listen occasionally, as the world has enough of these types bouncing into my consciousness on the average day already, but it’s good. It’s here.
- Citations Needed: Criticising the bullshit used by politicians in general, mostly very specific to the US. Smart and angry and done with the bullshit. Find it here.
- Crackdown: Canadian drug users fighting back against government policies that threaten their safety. From Vancouver. It’s here.
- Darknet Diaries: About hackers and digital/organizational security. Find it here.
- Hidden Brain: A podcast with interviews about the brain, psychology, etc. I don’t listen to it much anymore, but it used to be interesting. Find it here.
- Next Comes What by Andrea Pritzer. About American politics and its connections to concentration camps and authoritarianism in history. Optimistic but grounded, I find it the best podcast on surviving and responding to US politics right now, though it’s probably more useful to Americans than people like me who aren’t American. Find it here, or see the Youtube version here.
- Nice Try!: About various historical attempts to set up utopias, and how they inevitably failed. Check it out here.
- Old Gods of Appalachia: spooky stories set in the Appalachian mountains of the US. Find it here.
Question Everything: A show about journalism today, lately focused on the law that makes internet companies legally not responsible for how they affect the world. US-focused but relevant to the world in general.Check it out here.Actually, screw Question Everything: they’re stumping for the right-wing agenda, wittingly or unwittingly, by pushing for the repeal of Section 230. Check out Taylor Lorenz’s Power User podcast instead, if you want the real scoop about Section 230.- Stuff You Missed in History Class: Interesting discussions of one mostly-forgotten historical person or event each episode. Mostly Western history-focused. Find it here.
- You Are Not So Smart: About the way we all fool ourselves with logical fallacies, false assumptions, and the like–and how to avoid falling into that trap. This is another one I don’t listen to much anymore, but I used to like it. Check it out here.
That’s a short list compared to the number I’ve got set to following on my phone, but my wife’s not into tabletop RPGs or musician podcasts and that’s the topic of most of the others I have set up there (especially RPG-related stuff).
Oh, honorable mention for a podcast I didn’t recommend to my wife, but which I still love and can’t not mention—it was my main podcast listening for most of last year, even:
- Two Hundred a Day. A pair of RPG designers (Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol) discuss the 70s TV series The Rockford Files, episode by episode (but out of order, though they do eventually cover the entire series), with some insights into how to implement elements of Rockford stories in tabletop RPGs. If you like the TV series, this is a fun celebration of it. Listen here.