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.
Behind the Bastards. I’ve almost caught up, but I’ve picked up a long list of other pods to binge.
Or I could finally get around to watching a youtube tutorial on how to build a guillotine.
If you like behind the bastards, cool people who did cool stuff is great and blowback is blowing my mind currently
Yeah, cool people was up near the top of my list.
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.
I listened to the audio version that Robert narrated. Can’t say you’ve had the authentic experience without that British accent.
I should get a paper copy of it too though.
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.
+1 For the Fall of Civilisations.
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.
Fall of Civilizations is so excellent
On the comedy side like MBMBAM:
- 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)
The only podcast I listen to with any regularity is Knowledge Fight. Listening to a couple of dudes dunk on Alex Jones is cathartic.
Alex is a loser little titty baby
Darknet diaries
Ted radio hour
Dan carlins hardcore history
Darknet Diaries is so good
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.
Stuff You Should Know. So good and has a massive backlog of awesome episodes. Always new topics. And they update frequently. Been listening for years!
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
Nobody’s mentioned it yet, so I’ll suggest Well There’s Your Problem. It’s a podcast about engineering disasters, with slides.
Hasn’t been the same since Activate Windows left the show or came back or stayed the same or whatever
99% Invisible. So much random knowledge.
I’m currently enjoying “A Problem Squared”. A comedy / educational podcast hosted by 2 Australian comedians (who live in the UK), Matt Parker (Stand-up Maths on YouTube) and Bec Hill.
Continuing the Australian comedy science theme - Smart Enough to Know Better is very good too.
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.
Comedy Bang Bang
Hollywood Handbook
Hey Randy
Knowledge Fight
These are my “must listens” every week.
Honorable mention for another CBB Presents, Full Throttle! With Bob Ducca - extraordinarily brilliant, probably the hardest I’ve ever laughed at a podcast in my life. Limited run, so it’s concluded. He tells a story about posing as a monkey in a traveling circus that is somehow both tragically beautiful, and snot running down your face funny.
KEXP song of the day: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/song-of-the-day/id121393815
This Week in Tech: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-tech-video/id478840375
I only listen to Lateral, so I guess that’s my favourite…
Lingthusiasm
Sidenote by ASAPscience
Drk Mode (the misspelling of “dark” is deliberate)
Cold Ones
Literally anything on actual radio stations
