Podcasts are a thriving, powerful, yet underappreciated sector of digital media. Here’s a list of some of the podcasts I currently listen to for my work and/or entertainment, broken down by rough categories: history and culture, education, technology and science, economics, gaming, fiction and storytelling, and genre fiction.
Please recommend others or share your thoughts on these in the comments:
History and culture
- In Our Time – superb, high-speed conversations about history, science, and culture.
- BBC Analysis – addresses policy and current events.
- CBC Ideas – deep dives into history, culture, and the history of ideas
- The Memory Palace – short, moving glimpses into the past
- Radio Open Source – not about technology, but a wide range of current events and culture.
- Backstory with the American History Guys – three major historians explore themes in American history.
- Slate Culture Gabfest – high-speed, often cranky chatter about current events and pop culture.
- Norman Centuries, Byzantine Rulers – Lars Brownworth’s medieval history seminars.
- Dan Carlin‘s HardCore History – excellent, thoughtful explorations of intense events.
- 99% Invisible – meditations on architecture and the built environment.
- Long Now Foundation – seminars about very long-term thinking, covering science and culture.
Education
- Digital Campus – discussions on current events in education, libraries, and museums.
- Tech Therapy – technology and higher education, from the Chronicle of Higher Education.
- JISC podcasts – from Britain’s official nexus of technology and education.
- Stephen Downes – this leading commentator and innovator occasionally podcasts his presentations.
Technology and science
- Radiolab – fine storytelling about unusual ideas in science.
- TWiT – a series of podcasts on different aspects of current technology.
- Future Tense – looking at present trends for their future impact.
- Outriders – emergent developments in technology.
- TechStuff – deep dives into new and/or major technologies.
- Star Talk Radio – Neil deGrasse Tyson instructs and entertains.
- Engines of our Ingenuity – short podcasts on technology, inventions, and people.
Economics
- EconTalk – interviews with major economists.
- Peter Day’s World of Business – energetic explorations of present-day economic life.
- Harvard Business Review Ideacast – interviews with economic thinkers and business leaders.
Gaming
- Gamers with Jobs – regular discussions about current games.
- The Brainy Gamer -infrequent interpretations of gaming.
Fiction and storytelling
- Librivox – a huge library of public domain literature.
- The Story Collider – personal stories about science.
- Selected Shorts – great readings of excellent short stories.
- StoryCorps – everyday people sharing stories about their lives.
- Transom – on audio theater.
- The Drama Pod – new radio theater.
- Welcome to Night Vale – a community radio station for a very surreal, twisted town (downloads here).
Genre fiction
- Starship Sofa – first science fiction podcast to win a Hugo award.
- Clarkesworld Magazine podcasts – beautifully read fantasy and science fiction short stories.
- Escape Pod – science fiction short stories.
- 19 Nocturne Boulevard – audio theater of science fiction, fantasy, horror, westerns, comedy, and anything else emitted by Julie Holverson’s mind
- SFF Audio – in-depth discussion of science fiction and fantasy stories.
- Tales to Terrify – horror stories, masterfully MC’d.
- Pseudopod – horror tales.
- Crime City Central – mystery, crime, noir.
Which of these are your favorites? And what are you listening to these days?
I love Wormwood: A Serialized Mystery and The British History Podcast. Eldiabolik’s World of Psychotronic Soundtracks has a great assortment of film score music in every podcast.
Thank you for those, Mike.
what’s your choice for an ios7 podcast app? I was using Pocket Casts but I dislike the new version
I’m not using iOS for podcast downloading, Greg. I use an RSS reader, actually, for my laptop, then transfer files to my mp3 player by cable. Retro!
We have some overlap. A few others include:
* BBC Radio 4, Documentary of the Week
* Colin Marshall’s Notebook on Cities & Culture
* Here’s the Thing
* and KCRW’s Bookworm
I highly recommend using Huffduffer to curate. There’s a nifty Chrome extension and you can import your feed into, say, Instacast.
While also entertaining, I’ve learned more from Merlin Mann over the past 4 years than any other podcaster.
Finally, Audio Hijack Pro makes it easy to obtain audio programming that is less accessible. E.g. un-published streams.
Good podcast and tech suggestions.
No luck recording streams on my Lenovo. It’s one that locks that ability down in the firmware. I wish I knew that before purchase.
In Our Time is fabulous, went on a downloading binge a couple years ago when archive was more extensive, have episodes back to maybe 2004 (??) if you want them. Drove across country coast to coast listening to nothing but these and the newest Antlers and Dirty Projectors albums. After about 36 hours straight of Melvyn Bragg your brain starts talking to itself in fascinating, surreal ways.
Do you know about the audio drama index? It’s a very slow site, but it’s an amazing resource:
http://audio-drama.com/doku.php
Thanks for the offer! In Our Time’s backlist wasn’t available to colonials for some time. I’m caught up, though.
Thanks, too, for the pointer to audio drama index.
Oh, also http://theaudiodramadirectory.com/ which does better job separating out fan fiction audio from original work.
Good stuff!
Good recommendations, often overlapping with the ones on my device. Some others I’d recommend are Buddhist Geeks, KCRW’s Bookworm (if you can get past the intro music), On the Media, Freakonomics, This American Life, New Yorker Fiction, Fresh Air and The Moth.
Nice ones, Mark. Thank you.
Hello ,
I heard about a great MOOC (free university online courses, for everybody) entitled “The future of storytelling”, and I wanted to share the good news with everybody interested in storytelling.
The MOOC will be about :
• storytelling basics,
• serial formats (on the TV, web and beyond),
• storytelling in role-playing games,
• interactive storytelling in video games,
• transmedia storytelling,
• alternate-reality gaming,
• augmented reality and location-based storytelling,
• the role of tools,
• interfaces and information architectures in current storytelling.
The course starts on October 25th, 2013, so enrol now and don’t forget to share the good news with your friends 🙂
You can follow this URL to to discover the course and/or enrol : https://iversity.org/courses/the-future-of-storytelling?r=14bd5
May be I’ll meet other readers of this blog in the MOOC?! 🙂
That sounds like fun. Thanks, N.
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It’s hard to come by educated people about this topic, but
you sound like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks
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