A lot of my faves have been mentioned (BtB, wtyppod, Bad Gays), so here’s a few I haven’t seen lited here.
Discussion Podcasts
It’s Not Just In Your Head: Therapists talking about the intersection of mental health, capitalism, and treatments (problems with how we go about it and what we could change).
The War on Cars: What it sounds like, urbanists talking about biking, transit, issues with car oriented development.
Tech Won’t Save Us: Interviews with people, having critical conversations of different technologies. Discusses issues of tech, capitalism, surveillance, and more.
Total Liberation: Leftist podcast discussing a variety of topics about the decay of capitalism and how we can recreate and liberate ourselves.
Audio Dramas/Story Podcasts
The Punumbra Podcast: I listen to the Juno Steel series, it’s about a private detective on Mars. Great story and characters, a bit more humorous but will also destroy you emotionally in the best way. Also very queer!
The Bright Sessions: People with super powers go to therapy. I really loved the world they created and how they relate the super powers and mental health.
Scare You to Sleep: Scary stories read in a calm voice. The stories are really good, I actually like the hosts original stories that she sometimes reads quite a lot.
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.
On The Media - a podcast analyzing the media, giving historical and scientific context to news coverage. In the process, it turns out to be the best in depth news shows. Academics and journalists love this show but it doesn’t seem to be as big of a hit with the greater public. I recommend this show very highly.
Also listen to a bunch of nerdy academic podcasts like The Dissenter and New Books in Science, Psychology, Philosophy, etc in the New Books networks.
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.
I recently Discovered the Blowback podcast and it kind of reminds me of Behind the Bastards podcast in subject matter. Revealing more of the happenings behind some of the US (and “western”) actions in various situations that most Americans probably consider cut and dry examples of “we’re the good guys” when it’s more complicated.
Like I didn’t know we, and many western countries, sold chemical weapons to the Iraqis throughout the 80s for them to use on Iran, and then used them as an example of how evil Saddam Hussein is when he invaded Kuwait (something something the us ambassador said we didn’t care about beforehand) and we needed to justify a war. West Germany sold chemical weapons to Iraq and protective gear to the Iranians.
It’s not so much US bad, but illuminating that the government does shitty things and supports shitty people and we should probably make that stop, or at least own it honestly.
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