I’m curious what people here listen to, and I’m also looking for new ones to check out. I’m personally a big fan of Linux Unplugged, MBMBaM, Lateral, and Twenty Thousand Hertz!
I also cannot get Lemmy’s search to work, so apologies if this was already a recent topic.
EDIT: I have so many new podcasts to listen to now.
I want to love Darknet Diaries, but the host has such an unexamined, lawful alignment. He tells such good stories so well, but his default interpretation is often that criminals stole from these poor, innocent companies, with no further interrogation into the human and economic systems that make this so common, or the larger ecosystem in which these companies exist and are complicit.
This is something that, in my experience, the entire cybersecurity industry struggles with. I used to do a lot of that kind of work until a few years ago, and I always found my peers uninterested in, or even incapable of, having these larger, interpretative conversations about what we’re doing, what our roles are in the world, and how we can make a safer, better internet.
Josh and Chuck are national treasures. The amount of consistently good content they have made over the years is unparalleled. Even when there is a topic I think I couldn’t give two craps about, they still make it an enjoyable listen.
No Such Thing As A Fish - 30 mins a week where 4 professional trivia compilers and comedians take turns sharing odd facts they’ve learned over the years
Hardcore History - like a history lecture from your favorite high school social studies teacher, but compressed into a professionally produced 4 to 10 hour audiobook
FiveThirtyEight Politics - analysis of political opinion polling in the US. no ideological opinions either way, just strategy and political science applied to current events.
The Magnus Archives - a found-footage horror fiction anthology series where the real story turns out to be about the character we hear narrating the stories
A lot of people already know the absolutely excellent history of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan. However there are a lot of other history podcasts out there which also do “the start to finish format”, inspired by Mike Duncan. Some good ones I have listened to include:
Pax Britannica: A great podcast with good story telling ability about British history, with a focus on the British empire. It begins with the Henry VII and ends with Queen Elisabeth.
Russians rulers podcast: A great podcast that starts with the very first tsar of Russia and follows through the history of the whole country by focusing on the ruler of the time. It begins with Rurik and ends in Putin. However he already finished the leaders years ago so now he does slapshot episodes about various other Russian history topics which is also very interesting.
Fall of civilisations podcast: this is a great one with some of the best story telling in podcast form available. For each episode he chooses a civilization which collapsed in some form or another. He then tells their history from start to finish and but focuses on the decline and how it was to live in those last years. It’s really dramatic sometimes but it’s really informative, well researched and I highly recommend it.
Okay and now this is not a history podcast but it’s still a dear one to me: Sunday school dropouts. It’s a podcast by a wholesome married couple composed of a former presbyterian Christian (now atheist) and a “non beliving sort of Jew” (his words) that read through the whole bible for the first time. They begin with a episode on the book of genesis and continue to the book of revelation. Best way to follow along is to read the bible at the same time and after every bible book (most can be read in under an hour) you listen to the episode afterwards. But you can also listen to it blindly because they do summarize everything. Okay so why do I like this one? The bible is a truly interesting book but the discussion in our media about it is horrible. It’s either the most anti religion people or the “capital A atheists” discussing it or it’s religious people themselves, both of course approach it with very preconceived notions. But this is just a calm podcast where two non Christians seriously read it through, do their research and they discover that some is total garbage and some of the stories are so beautiful they couldn’t stop from crying during the show. Also the hosts are very entertaining and easy to like. I believe everyone should read the bible at least once to simply know what’s it about. It’s the most important book published in world history after all. They finished already and then did two seasons of just random pieces of interesting bible lore which was also fun to listen to.
After listening to the 4h one on the Aztecs, I can now say with confidence that Cortés was a special kind of bastard whose grave deserves to be pissed on by all.
+1 from me too. Paul Cooper rules. He has so much wonder and such a delightful sense of scale. It’s been a few months since the last one, so surely we’re due for another one soon.
The Common Descent podcast has two paleontologists discussing ancient life on Earth. Every episode focuses on a specific era or group of creatures and what we know about their evolution and speciation. There are really good episodes on the “big five” mass extinctions when major changes led to a fundamental reorganization of living groups on the planet.
My Dad Wrote A Porno - 3 people reacting to an “erotica” book series that one of the guys’ dad published (I would say the books are maybe only 5%-20% explicit, depending on the chapter) (some of the characters’ voices can be annoying/grating, and the narrator tends to repeat sentences after they react to them which can be annoying as well)
No Such Thing As A Fish - the behind-the-scenes staff of the show QI bring up interesting facts and tidbits from history/nature/etc. (each episode is split into 4 parts where each member brings up a fact and the others react to it and bring up related facts)
If I Were You - Jake & Amir from CollegeHumor giving advice to listeners (mostly in a sarcastic/tongue-in-cheek way but sometimes genuinely), mostly about relationships/dating
SmartLess - Jason Bateman and Will Arnett (Arrested Development) and Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) interview a famous person each episode where only one of the hosts known who it is beforehand (it gets better after the first few episodes, though some conversations are less funny/entertaining than others)
Office Ladies - Jenna and Angela from The Office (US) reacting to each episode of the show and bringing up behind-the-scenes stuff (some of episodes include interviews with other cast members/staff)
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Conan interviews a famous person each episode (I like the interview part better than the introduction, and similarly to Smartless some conversations are less funny than others)
Probably science? They are still around!? I think the last time I listened to them was 2016. Hilarious even though the science part sometimes felt a bit forced into there. How is it like today?
Just listened to one of their latest episodes. They are amazingly exactly as they were 7 years ago. I realized that I still like the format and I think I’m gonna continue listening to them again. Thanks
If you like Btb, give Roberts book After the revolution a try. He has a the audiobook version setup into episodes like a podcast and he reads it. It’s fantastic, I’m not usually into that type of book but I’m already on my 2nd play through.
It’s one of those “analyze every frame of a movie” podcasts that looks at Harty Potter und der Stein der Weisen (Sorcerer’s Stone). The host and producer is a well known german youtuber who has previously made the most iconic german parody dub for the Harry Potter movies.
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