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.