Dead Rabbit Radio if you like the paranormal or conspiracy theories without any of the shitty right-wing connotations that come with that community. Jason Carpenter is one of the best podcasters I’ve listened to and deserved 10x the views he gets.
I’m not affiliated with the show in any way but here’s a link to the shows YouTube channel
Judge John Hodgman. It’s about people with silly disputes, and John and his bailiff Jesse Thorn way in on them. What’s great is even though the disputes are silly, they both come at the cases with such thoughtfulness and empathy, listening to the show will make you a better and kinder person. Also sometimes Jean Grae guests bailiff’s and she is amazing too.
This Paranormal Life is a comedy podcast about 2 guys who investigate the paranormal and come down on an answer as to whether they believe the story happened or not. They go into deep detail about the subjects they are talking about in a hilarious but informative way.
The Adventure Zone is a tabletop roleplaying podcast about the McElroy family trying to play roleplaying games and creating amazing stories all in a hilarious way.
Bananas: A comedy writer and a comedian talking about articles that are bananas. A couple of funny dudes who just want to laugh and tell stories, using crazy headlines as a jumping off point. They often have guests who identify as female or non-binary.
The Unmade Podcast: A couple childhood buds who think of podcast ideas that they’ll never make, but then they do make a few into special episodes. Listen from the beginning because there are a lot of in-jokes that are worth it.
Both my recommendations are over now, but I love the niche of conversational history podcasts, or, as someone once put it, people talking about history like other podcasts talk about bad movies:
Paleocast. They interview guests to discuss all kinds of life that existed throughout the Earth’s history. There’s a lot of coverage of dinosaurs in pop culture but there’s a huge diversity out there to explore.
Overall my favorite is ABetterWay2A. It’s a podcast about gun culture, with an aim (ha!) towards making it more inclusive for people that are not right wing, christian, etc. Most guests are left-leaning, the remainder are fairly far left. In the same vein, the Guns Guide to Liberals is a good podcast about gun owners trying to bridge the gap with traditional liberals (“liberals” in the US sense) that don’t believe in an individual 2A right. It ended after two seasons, because the owners got too busy with their business to continue. The Tiger Bloc is an irregular podcast by Yellow Peril Tactical; yes, they know what Yellow Peril means, because they’re all Asian. They’re also definitely leftists. Practical Shooting After Dark is about getting better at shooting; it’s largely a podcast about how to practice. It’s mostly a-political from what I’ve heard so far. It’s put on by Ben Stoeger who was a USPSA Grand Master
Mormon Stories. It’s about deconstructing religion in general, and leaving the Mormon cult specifically. It’s one of the longest-running podcasts; it’s currently sitting at 1800 episodes, with most being in the 2.5-3 hour range.
FiveThirtyEight Politics. It’s non-partisan politics; news, analysis, and polling.
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. Deep dives on subjects. Supposedly he’s not always accurate, but I also haven’t heard specific criticisms. The podcast is wildly irregular - 6-11 month gaps between episodes - since episodes are pretty heavily researched, and typically run 5+ hours each.
Behind the Bastards. Do you want to be depressed about how the world is, and always will be shitty, and yet entertained at the same time? This is your podcast. I will say that the episode on Dr. Mengele was considerably less awful than I expected it to be; apparently some of the worst stories about Mengele were fabrications.
The Friendly Atheist. News and commentary about church-state separation. You’ll either love Jess–the co-host–or hate her, there is no in-between. Hemant Mehta generally has pretty good critiques, and is usually very reasonable and measured in his approach. The ads are getting really jarring though.
Like others have said, Behind the Bastards is great to find out about some of the worst people in history.
In relation to that Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is the opposite of Behind the Bastards. It’s about people who did cool stuff who became cool.
Also in lieu of that, Bad Gays, it’s about bad gays in history. I think they’ve covered similar folks on BtB, but this is obviously from a queer perspective.
Fad Camp and Maintenance Phase are great podcasts about dieting and wellness. Fad Camp is more about how damaging some of these diets can be, whereas Maintenance Phase is similar to You’re Wrong About (which I also recommend)
The Weekly Planet are these two Australian guys who talk about movies, tv, comics and video games. They also have a YouTube channel called Me Sunday Movies where they’ll upload some of their podcasts. Like they have a running segment called “Caravan of Garbage” which is just sort of talking about a movie, tv show or game. Currently they’ve started going through the RoboCop movies.
Also shameless plug, but Checkpoint is on the radio but they take their radio show and put it on a podcast. It’s a podcast about giving a 1up to diversity in video games. Most of us are from the LGBTQIA+ community and that’s where most of our perspectives come from, but it’s also just folks from any marginalised group. Lovely bunch of folks (if I do say so myself).
Uh yeah, I have some more, but like that’s politics or it’s writing related or spicyness in or out of the bedroom. But these are the ones I always recc.
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