I used to listen to long form essays on Youtube. My favourite ones either break down the history of a conspiracy, teach me something new and cool about the world, or explore a hobby I’ve never been interested in.
I don’t like the ones about killers or heavy drama. I also don’t like podcasts that spend half the time reading the latest news from [topic] in verbatim .
What are some podcasts you can recommend me while I chip away at other things?
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Mike Duncan’s History of Rome?
No Such Thing As A Fish
More Or Less
Stuff You Should Know
Seconded. A very chill and entertaining informational podcast that benefits greatly from its conversational style.
And episodes can be about nearly anything. Forgiveness, the Cannonball Run, the Loch Ness monster, the sun, beavers, the Equal Rights Act. They’re all great. I’ve been listening since 2012.
General deep dives on random topics:
- secretly incredibly fascinating
- stuff you should know
stuff about the animal world:
- creature feature
linguistics and how we communicate:
- lexicon valley
- lingthusiasm
There’s “Well there’s your problem”. In each episode, the hosts break down an engineering disaster. The episodes are one to several hours long each, and they are thorough, entertaining, and you learn a ton.
There’s also a video version that contains slides with pictures and graphs.
I would suggest as a starter episode 139, The impossible railroad, which I thought was a fun one. Or 146 on the Mount Everest, that was eye-opening. Those are the recent ones that stand out to me.
My favorite is the Gulf State Vanity Projects episode! Either that or the Costa Concordia one
99 percent invisible is a good one. It’s about the stories behind things we take for granted in the world. It can be anything between ambulances, country borders and the lyrics of who let the dogs out.
Roman Mars has literally the perfect voice for a podcast
Not sure if it would appeal or not, but I’ve spent a good chunk of this year listening to How Other Dads Dad by Hamish Blake, here in Australia. Just a semi-light-hearted look at dadding in the 21st century.
You probably already know about him, but Andrew Huberman is doing an amazing job on bringing science back to the people.
Sleep, motivation, exercise, mental health… everything in the context of neuroscience so you start understanding a bit more everything that happens to you. Protocols to follow, fully explained and backed up by scientific papers, all for the sake of your health. Amazing source of information.
A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - This is one of my favorite podcasts, but I’m going to warn you it’s not for everybody. The creator of this show, Andrew Hickey, is THOROUGH. A great example is the most reason episode about Hey Jude. Either you will love the concept of a 3.5-hour episode where 80% of the podcast is not about the song but rather the circumstances and lives of The Beatles, Yoko Ono, and the late 1960s music scene leading up to the creation of Hey Jude, or you will be furious that so much of the episode is about stuff that isn’t the song.
Science and Tech:
1-Stuff you should know. 2-Skeptics guide to the universe. 3-Programming throwdown.
Gaming:
1-Get played. 2-Triple click.
Comedy and movies and music:
1-Comedy bang bang. 2-How did this get made? 3-With Gourley and Rust. 4-Bizarre albums.
Other:
1-Scam goddess. 2-Qanon anonymous.
Helps you sleep:
-Sleep with me.
Well There’s Your Problem Podcast. They do have a news segment at the beginning of each episode, but you can skip past it if you want to.
Darknet Diaries is always fascinating: it’s all about cybercrime. Sometimes the episodes are breakdowns of particular hacker groups or specific notable hacks; other times, they’re interviews with people in the industry: both cybersecurity professionals and criminals.
One of my favorite podcasts
Explore artistic photography - The Candid Frame
Explore the wine industry - I’ll Drink to That
Explore good food and cooking well - The Splendid Tablehonorable mention:
Stay Tuned with Preet
Beyond Organic Wine Podcast
The Art of ManlinessI know it’s older but recently I’ve been listening to Ologies by Allie Ward. She explores all the different types of science, she’s funny, and she finds people who are really passionate about their field of work.
Blowback - Deep dives into American imperialism. Each season covers a single topic and goes into the background history, through to the conflict, to the aftermath in about 10 hour long episodes each. The first season was on the Iraq War, the second on Cuba, the third on the Korean War and the fourth into Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan. Extremely well produced with some great soundtracks.
Blowback is fantastic.
