Jump Into the “Podcasting Renaissance” with These Intelligent Shows (and Tell Us Your Favorites)

in Podcasts | November 11th, 2014 19 Comments

Serial-2

You may have heard that pod­cast­ing has a renais­sance going on. As a pod­cast­er since the begin­ning stages of the medi­um — and one slight­ly sur­prised to find that the medi­um has now reached ten years of age — I can only wel­come the news, though I nev­er knew pod­cast­ing had gone into a dark age. New York Mag­a­zine’s Kevin Roose tells the sto­ry of the appear­ance of Apple’s iPod, fol­lowed by a flow­er­ing of “pod­casts about pol­i­tics, sports, lit­er­a­ture, com­e­dy,” “pod­casts that sound­ed like NPR, and ones that sound­ed like Rush Lim­baugh,” some that “lacked pol­ish,” but most pos­sessed of “a kind of ener­gy to them that suit­ed their audi­ences well.” But then, “some­time around 2009 or 2010, the pod­cast scene seemed to with­er. The stal­warts (This Amer­i­can Life, Radi­o­lab) stayed around at the top of the iTunes charts, but there was­n’t much else hap­pen­ing. Down­load num­bers fell. Inter­est waned.” But ah, in this year of our Pod 2014, things have changed: “Today, a very dif­fer­ent prob­lem exists: There are too many great pod­casts to keep up with.”

Roose, and hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of oth­er peo­ple on the inter­net, rec­om­mends first and fore­most Ser­i­al (iTunes — RSS — Sound­cloud), “the true-crime dra­ma host­ed by This Amer­i­can Life pro­duc­er Sarah Koenig,” a show some­times cred­it­ed with reviv­ing pod­cast­ing itself. The New York­er’s Sarah Lar­son calls it “the pod­cast we’ve been wait­ing for” in a piece giv­ing a look into the rea­sons behind its suc­cess. Roos also gives spe­cial men­tion to anoth­er new show involv­ing a name you might rec­og­nize from the This Amer­i­can Life orbit: Alex Blum­berg’s Start­Up (iTunes — RSS), a run­ning doc­u­ment of the cre­ator’s attempt to launch a pod­cast­ing busi­ness, the kind of ven­ture that sounds less quixot­ic all the time. And Roose also names a per­son­al favorite of mine, the well-known pod­cast about archi­tec­ture and design — but Real­ly, About Life Itself — 99% Invis­i­ble (iTunes — RSS).

If you feel like get­ting into this pod­cast renais­sance, or if you’ve spent years as a pod­cast lis­ten­er and just need some new mate­r­i­al in your rota­tion, you could do much worse than start­ing with the three shows above. To add to that list, I can sug­gest no pod­cast more suit­ed to the inter­ests of Open Cul­ture read­ers than In Our Time (iTunes — RSS), the long-run­ning BBC Radio 4 pro­gram about the his­to­ry of ideas where­in vet­er­an broad­cast­er Melvyn Bragg inter­views groups of Oxbridge experts on sub­jects like nuclear fusion, the Hait­ian rev­o­lu­tion, Rud­yard Kipling, the Bat­tle of Talas, and the female pharaoh Hat­shep­sut — just in the past month. Per­son­al­ly, I so enjoy In Our Time that I went to inter­view Melvyn Bragg on my own pod­cast Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture ear­li­er this year.

Inter­views and com­e­dy have proven two of the most durable forms of con­tent in pod­cast­ing, and any­one who has­n’t dipped into come­di­an Marc Maron’s in-depth and intro­spec­tive inter­view show WTF (iTunes — RSS) — not that many haven’t at this point — has missed out on a ster­ling exam­ple of the kind of lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences pod­cast­ing, and only pod­cast­ing, has made pos­si­ble. (You might con­sid­er also lis­ten­ing to my inter­view with Maron on The Los Ange­les Review of Books pod­cast.) And while not nec­es­sar­i­ly com­e­dy, I can’t imag­ine Open Cul­ture read­ers not get­ting a laugh, and all oth­er kinds of intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion besides, out of the pod­cast­ing of Ben­ja­men Walk­er. Walk­er, for­mer­ly the host of Too Much Infor­ma­tion on the beloved inde­pen­dent radio sta­tion WFMU, recent­ly launched a new show called Ben­ja­men Walk­er’s The­o­ry of Every­thing (iTunes — Sound­cloud), a show of per­son­al sto­ries that explores all things to which those sto­ries con­nect.

True, one com­plaint about pod­cast­ing in its ear­ly years held that the shows pod­cast­ers made went too per­son­al — the old charge of “two or three guys sit­ting in base­ment talk­ing about noth­ing” — but now that this decade-old medi­um has found more mature forms, the per­son­al has become its art and its craft. I nev­er hes­i­tate to pro­mote XO (iTunes — RSS), a show by Kei­th McNal­ly, a pod­cast auteur whom I believe has done more to mas­ter the cre­ative per­son­al-sto­ry pod­cast than almost any­body, and he began doing it ear­li­er. (As with Bragg, I went to his home­town of Toron­to to inter­view him too.) But enough about my favorite pod­casts; which ones do you tire­less­ly cham­pi­on? Make your rec­om­men­da­tions, and we’ll round them up in a post soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

Shakespeare’s Rest­less World: A Por­trait of the Bard’s Era in 20 Pod­casts

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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Comments (19)
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  • scottmacs says:
    November 11, 2014 at 1:12 pm

    My absolute favorite and top rec­om­men­da­tion is The Geo­log­ic Pod­cast ( http://geologicpodcast.com/ ). (Don’t let the title fool you, this pod­cast has noth­ing to do with rocks.) George Hrab, a.k.a Geo, pro­duces a week­ly show with seg­ments such as Inter­est­ing Fau­na, Rupert McClan­na­han’s Inde­struc­tible Bas­tards, and Hor­ror-Scopes as well as sto­ries from Geo’s life as a drum­mer for the Philadel­phia Funk Author­i­ty and inde­pen­dent musi­cian.

    Inter­na­tion­al Waters ( http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/international-waters ) is a pan­el game host­ed by Dave Holmes fea­tur­ing team’s of two come­di­ans (one each from the US and UK). Holmes quizzes the teams and as he says the point of the show is more to be fun­ny than right.

    Talk­ing Head­ways: A Streets­blog Pod­cast fea­tures Tanya Sny­der and Jeff Wood dis­cussing sto­ries of sus­tain­able trans­porta­tion, urban plan­ning, eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and how they inter­sect.

    The Sprock­et Pod­cast is a Port­land, OR based show on “sim­pli­fy­ing the good life.” Hosts Brock Dit­tus and Aaron Flo­res inter­view Port­landers and oth­ers pass­ing through who live their lives and/or make their liv­ing with an eye toward sus­tain­abil­i­ty and sim­plic­i­ty.

    The Unof­fi­cial, Unsanc­tioned Wom­en’s UCI Cycling Show chron­i­cles the races, rid­ers, and teams at the UCI’s top lev­el. Pri­mar­i­ly focus­ing on the wom­en’s road race sea­son, hosts Sarah and Dan also dis­cuss wom­en’s moun­tain bik­ing, wom­en’s track cycling, and para-cycling.

    Rea­son­able Doubts, a.k.a Doubt­cast, is “Your skep­ti­cal guide to reli­gion” ( http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/ ). The pan­el of hosts take a skep­ti­cal look at both cur­rent reli­gious news sto­ries as well as ancient myths. Rather than being out­right dis­mis­sive of reli­gious claims, the hosts crit­i­cal­ly ana­lyze news sto­ries and pub­lished research.

    An Amer­i­can Athe­ist ( http://anamericanatheist.org/ )fea­tures a pan­el of athe­ists dis­cussing news sto­ries and occa­sion­al­ly an inter­view with a writer or film mak­er. Although the hosts are non-believ­ers, they present unique per­spec­tives on each top­ic of dis­cus­sion.

    Judge John Hodg­man ( http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/judge-john-hodgman/ ) takes the unusu­al and humor­ous cas­es sub­mit­ted to him and his bailiff Jesse Thorn and hands down jus­tice.

    Reply
  • Daniel B. says:
    November 11, 2014 at 1:29 pm

    Great list, thank you. As for my own favourite pod­cast: Now that one of their founders is an inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty, new episodes come out more spo­rad­i­cal­ly, but The Bugle pod­cast still is the finest, weird­est, most heart­felt polit­i­cal satire on the (dig­i­tal) air. John Oliv­er is the Brit who made it big in the States, a mas­ter of knowl­edge, words (with neol­o­gisms coined on the show like the infa­mous “Fuckeu­lo­gy”) and espe­cial­ly song; Andy Zaltz­man is the Brit stayed home and did­n’t hit it big, but is an under­val­ued com­ic jug­ger­naut of puns and absur­dist rants, the Id to Oliv­er’s Super-Ego. Togeth­er they have the charis­ma, charme and dynam­ic of gen­uine friends, and even when the newest episode is late or can­celled — their back cat­a­logue is a trea­sue trove of polit­i­cal satire. May the Bugle live on for­ev­er.

    Reply
  • scottmacs says:
    November 11, 2014 at 1:50 pm

    (Note to mod­er­a­tor: I tried sub­mit­ting this com­ment before, so if the orig­i­nal does appear feel free to delete this one)

    My absolute favorite and top rec­om­men­da­tion is The Geo­log­ic Pod­cast ( http://geologicpodcast.com/ ). (Don’t let the title fool you, this pod­cast has noth­ing to do with rocks.) George Hrab, a.k.a Geo, pro­duces a week­ly show with seg­ments such as Inter­est­ing Fau­na, Rupert McClan­na­han’s Inde­struc­tible Bas­tards, and Hor­ror-Scopes as well as sto­ries from Geo’s life as a drum­mer for the Philadel­phia Funk Author­i­ty and inde­pen­dent musi­cian.

    Inter­na­tion­al Waters ( http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/international-waters ) is a pan­el game host­ed by Dave Holmes fea­tur­ing team’s of two come­di­ans (one each from the US and UK). Holmes quizzes the teams and as he says the point of the show is more to be fun­ny than right.

    Talk­ing Head­ways: A Streets­blog Pod­cast fea­tures Tanya Sny­der and Jeff Wood dis­cussing sto­ries of sus­tain­able trans­porta­tion, urban plan­ning, eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and how they inter­sect.

    The Sprock­et Pod­cast is a Port­land, OR based show on “sim­pli­fy­ing the good life.” Hosts Brock Dit­tus and Aaron Flo­res inter­view Port­landers and oth­ers pass­ing through who live their lives and/or make their liv­ing with an eye toward sus­tain­abil­i­ty and sim­plic­i­ty.

    The Unof­fi­cial, Unsanc­tioned Wom­en’s UCI Cycling Show chron­i­cles the races, rid­ers, and teams at the UCI’s top lev­el. Pri­mar­i­ly focus­ing on the wom­en’s road race sea­son, hosts Sarah and Dan also dis­cuss wom­en’s moun­tain bik­ing, wom­en’s track cycling, and para-cycling.

    Rea­son­able Doubts, a.k.a Doubt­cast, is “Your skep­ti­cal guide to reli­gion” ( http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/ ). The pan­el of hosts take a skep­ti­cal look at both cur­rent reli­gious news sto­ries as well as ancient myths. Rather than being out­right dis­mis­sive of reli­gious claims, the hosts crit­i­cal­ly ana­lyze news sto­ries and pub­lished research.

    An Amer­i­can Athe­ist ( http://anamericanatheist.org/ )fea­tures a pan­el of athe­ists dis­cussing news sto­ries and occa­sion­al­ly an inter­view with a writer or film mak­er. Although the hosts are non-believ­ers, they present unique per­spec­tives on each top­ic of dis­cus­sion.

    Judge John Hodg­man ( http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/judge-john-hodgman/ ) takes the unusu­al and humor­ous cas­es sub­mit­ted to him and his bailiff Jesse Thorn and hands down jus­tice.

    Reply
  • Leishalynn says:
    November 11, 2014 at 3:55 pm

    Econ­Talk, Nature, Frank Delaney’s Re:Joyce, The Philoso­pher’s Zone, Pod­cas­tle, Poet­ry Off the Shelf, and (still, when they do it) Mug­gle­cast. Also, aside from those you men­tioned, Span­ish­Pod­cast, Podrun­ner, A State of Trance, The Next Reel (very best one for films), New York­er: Fic­tion, Alan Watts, Sci­ence Fri­day, All In The Mind, The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life (best phi­los­o­phy pod­cast), Cit­i­zen Radio, and Poem Talk.

    Reply
  • Peter Saumur says:
    November 11, 2014 at 8:57 pm

    Dan Car­lin’s “Hard­core His­to­ry”.

    Reply
  • Janelle says:
    November 11, 2014 at 9:04 pm

    I love that this pod­cast does­n’t just have one top­ic — it’s dif­fer­ent every week. ConversationAccessories.com

    Reply
  • MJ says:
    November 11, 2014 at 9:06 pm

    May I be self-serv­ing and sug­gest my own fledg­ling his­to­ry pod­cast ‘Tem­pus’ https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/tempus/id928932250

    Reply
  • Brad says:
    November 11, 2014 at 9:22 pm

    Sec­ond that on Car­lin’s Hard­core His­to­ry. Medi­um-defin­ing. Rig­or­ous­ly researched. Spe­cial stuff.

    Reply
  • Gina Swifte says:
    November 12, 2014 at 5:58 am

    My favourite pod­casts are: British His­to­ry by Jamie Jef­fers; Chi­na His­to­ry by Laz­lo Mont­gomery; His­to­ry of Han­ni­bal by Jamie Red­fern; His­to­ry of Eng­land by David Crowther; His­to­ry of Eng­lish by Kevin Stroud; His­to­ry of Alexan­der the Great by Jamie Red­fern; Renais­sance Eng­lish His­to­ry by Heather Teysko; Rev­o­lu­tions by Mike Dun­can; His­to­ry of Rome by Mike Dun­can; The Ancient World by Scott Chris­t­ian; His­to­ry of the Papa­cy by Stephen Guer­ra; Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World by Paul Vin­cent; Nor­man Cen­turies by Lars Brown­worth; 12 Byzan­tine Rulers by Lars Brown­worth; Russ­ian Rulers by Mark Schauss; Ancient Rome Refo­cused by Rob Cain; Brief His­to­ry of Math­e­mat­ics; …
    Then there’s Wit­ness; Arab Spring; Last Word; Leg­ends of King Arthur; Myths of Greece and Rome; Life Sci­en­tif­ic; Lis­ten to Lucy; More or Less: Behind the Stats; and a good few more, not for­get­ting the var­i­ous French based pod­casts I use in a vain attempt to improve my under­stand­ing of the lan­guage!

    Reply
  • zack says:
    November 12, 2014 at 6:36 am

    i sec­ond Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life (http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/) as a casu­al pod­cast about phi­los­o­phy (in the broad­est sense) and what it means to us (in the broad­est sense). Although cen­tered around philo­soph­i­cal texts, they aim to emu­late “the dis­cus­sion in the bar after class” as opposed to class dis­cus­sion itself. episodes can be a bit long, but they’re absolute­ly worth­while as the con­tent is often incred­i­bly dense and requires some time to parse out.

    my sec­ond sec­ond is Econ­Talk (http://www.econtalk.org/). self described as “Eco­nom­ics pod­cast for dai­ly life” the top­ics extend far beyond eco­nom­ics. many guests are nobel lau­re­ates and/or at the top of their respec­tive fields. host Russ Roberts does a good job of pro­vid­ing con­text, as well as play­ing dev­il’s advo­cate to real­ly push the con­ver­sa­tion in con­struc­tive ways

    Reply
  • Dan Colman says:
    November 12, 2014 at 8:21 am

    I noticed today that Metafil­ter high­light­ed what looks like an inter­est­ing pod­cast.

    Meet the Com­pos­er is a new pod­cast that dives into the minds of some of today’s top com­posers. Pro­duced by WQXR and Q2 Music, and host­ed by New York area vio­list Nadia Siro­ta, Meet the Com­pos­er “takes lis­ten­ers into the minds and cre­ative process­es of the com­posers mak­ing some of the most inno­v­a­tive, com­pelling and breath­tak­ing­ly beau­ti­ful music today.”

    http://www.wqxr.org/#!/programs/meet-composer/

    https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/meet-the-composer/id891942714?mt=2

    Reply
  • Nate says:
    November 12, 2014 at 8:45 am

    One of my favorites is David McRaney’s “You Are Not So Smart” pod­cast.

    http://youarenotsosmart.com/

    Reply
  • Drew says:
    November 12, 2014 at 8:50 am

    Can­WeSt­ill­Be­Friends?

    Reply
  • Jesse says:
    November 12, 2014 at 2:46 pm

    Star Talk Radio is my favorite.

    Reply
  • Dylan Edwards says:
    November 12, 2014 at 3:21 pm

    The best new pod­cast this year is You Must Remem­ber This, seri­ous­ly intel­li­gent and stun­ning­ly well-researched week­ly essays about twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry film cul­ture’s for­got­ten or just lit­tle-known curi­ous sto­ries; all deliv­ered in an assertive­ly gos­sipy tone, and tend­ing to deal with gen­der pol­i­tics in real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and refresh­ing ways. Best episodes so far have been about the myths around Frances Farmer’s late life and death, Raquel Welch’s life and career in the shad­ow of ‘that image’, and a won­der­ful ongo­ing ‘Fol­lies of 1938’ series pre­sent­ing that much-for­got­ten year as an inte­gral one in Hol­ly­wood’s his­to­ry. The episodes fin­ish and you want to lis­ten to hours more. So good.

    The best review pod­cast out there (by miles) is the Voice Film Club, best film pod­cast in gen­er­al is the Cinephil­i­acs. My oth­er vital ones are the mem­o­ry palace (which is like This Amer­i­can Life if it was actu­al­ly con­sis­tent­ly inter­est­ing), Long­form, the New York­er’s short sto­ry, poet­ry, com­ment and polit­i­cal scene pod­casts, and the Mon­o­cle Week­ly.

    Reply
  • ohradiogirl says:
    November 13, 2014 at 10:30 am

    This is a good top­ic and good sug­ges­tions from every­one.

    State of the Re:Union for good sto­ry­telling. I’m a bit of a techie so Pop Tech Jam (http://www.poptechjam.com/) is a fav for being con­ver­sa­tion­al and shar­ing insights on tech­nol­o­gy. Oh, and How To Do Every­thing (http://howtodoeverything.org/) is engag­ing and just the right length — 15–20 min­utes. On The Media (http://www.onthemedia.org/) has been a good one for years — con­sis­tent review of the media as well as tech and leg­is­la­tion that impact media. Curi­ous City (https://curiouscity.wbez.org/) is a new­er pod­cast based in Chica­go that is get­ting atten­tion for its inclu­sion of the com­mu­ni­ty. Love + Radio (http://loveandradio.org/) is … just dif­fer­ent, but in a good way. It’s not for every­one in terms of top­ics and lan­guage. Enjoy.

    Reply
  • gjackson says:
    November 13, 2014 at 8:01 pm

    my faves are main­ly comedic (but not nec­es­sar­i­ly with famous come­di­ans), though i do love the his­to­ry pod­casts men­tioned ear­li­er. some of my com­e­dy favorites are “Uhh Yeah Dude”, “Pap­py’s Flat­share Slam­down”, “Stack of Dimes”, “Cock­tails and Cream Puffs”, “LOTSL”, “How Did This Get Made”, “Flip The Table”, “Doug Loves Movies”, “Game Night Guys”, “The Smell­cast”, “TADPOG”, “Pro­fes­sor Blastoff”, and “Wel­come To Night Vale”. I also like “Mys­te­ri­ous Uni­verse”, “In Our Time With Melvyn BRagg”, and “BBC His­to­ry Extra Pod­cast”.

    Reply
  • Cmm says:
    November 14, 2014 at 8:39 pm

    Good Job Brain — triv­ia quizzes and fun facts

    Filmspot­ting — in depth dis­cus­sions and reviews of cur­rent movies plus top­i­cal Top 5 lists. Tends to the art house end of the film con­tin­u­um.

    Film Sack — 4 guys watch or rewatch movies, most cur­rent­ly stream­ing on Net­flix, and have often very humor­ous dis­cus­sions.

    Mark Ker­mod­e’s movie show from BBC radio, reviews, inter­views and fre­quent­ly hilar­i­ous debates between Ker­mode and his cohost, with lots of read­er par­tic­i­pa­tion.

    Stuff You Missed in His­to­ry Class — 2 women go in depth into for­got­ten cor­ners of his­to­ry — events, peo­ple, and stuff of every­day life like a recent episode on the his­to­ry of cos­met

    Reply
  • William says:
    April 7, 2017 at 8:32 pm

    Here’s a real­ly inter­est­ing pod­cast about the His­to­ry of The Byzan­tine Empire, by Lars Brown­worth. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing, real­ly.

    https://12byzantinerulers.com/

    He’s got some oth­er pod­casts that are also quite good. Google him.

    Reply

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