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?
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
Ohhh sounds right up my alley. Thanks for the rec!
It’s a fantastic podcast and I point people to the one on the V-22 Osprey frequently just because we live near an airport and Ospreys practice touch and gos before getting lunch nearby.
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
There are a lot of posts about this podcast. I’m listening to it now!
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
I didn’t think Roman hosted it anymore. Is he still making it?
Edit: just had a look. I guess he is. I seem to remember a spell where he wasn’t hosting. Am I remembering correctly?
AFAIK it’s always been him.
They changed owners or something a few years ago, which means Roman Mars got more time to work with actual podcast stuff instead of being a manager.
I might have to go back and give it a fresh listen. I dropped off years ago when he was deep into running radiotopia.
I’ve really enjoyed all of these:
So much yes. Highly recommend. I could listen to Dan Carlin go on about a topic endlessly.
Behind the Bastards and The Dollop are both a lot of fun as they delve into historical events and figures and do a whole comedic + factual examination in that order
If you want a really good episode for people unfamilar with the series-s, I love
- “The Tank Chase” (Dollop)
- “Stalin After Dark” (Behind the Bastards), the guest on Stalin episodes is very funny to me
For me the top Dollop episode will always be The Rube.
The baseball ones are ALWAY a roaring good time! My fave baseball one was Lenny Dykstra, lol.
It turns out his ping-pong ball schtick might actually be a legit real thing for focus 😂
10 cent beer night does it for me. I also recently relistened the Kissinger episodes (BtB w/ Dollop). That one still slaps and is what crossed me over into The Dollop.
- Newport Sex Scandal
- Purity Balls
- Carry A Nation
- The Cereal Men is great and I think Patton Oswalt was a guest
I’m pretty hooked on Behind the Bastards, but his newer stuff has gotten a bit sloppy. Too much lazy dunking on conservatives. He does have some really good series though. The Jack Welch series sticks out in my head as particularly good. That, and G. Gordon Liddy.
5-4 is also a recent addition to my playlist.
Anything they do on Ron L Hubbard or Stalin is tops
What’s a specific example you feel is sloppy? I love BtB but yeah it’s always been hit or miss for me. A lot of times, it depends on the guest too. I thought the latest Sam Bankman-Fried ones were pretty entertaining.
I don’t know if it has already been said, but “Darknet diaries” is a podcast i love to listen to, it’s basically a history and breakdown of different hacks that happend all around the world, there are also some interviews with pentesters who tell some amazing story’s, so if you’re into computers thats something I’d recommend listening to
Seconded. I like the episodes about pen testers. It’s so interesting how so many business are super easy to hack into or physically break into and gain access to their networks and other sensitive info.
Great podcast. But maybe “disturbing”
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.
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.
Stuff they don’t want you to know was good years ago. I haven’t listened in a while though.
It’s still good as well as Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
- If you’re tech and history inclined, “Command Line Heroes” tells stories about people who transformed technology “from the command line up”.
- For stories about really nasty people (interspersed with some good people for the Christmas Episodes), “Behind the Bastards” is a good source. A story is usually split in two episodes, but for long ones it can be five or six.
- For news about science but with intelligent discussion behind it, and several nice fun an intelligent sections, you can’t beat The Skeptic Guide to the Universe. If anything, their only defect is that sometimes they’re a little naive and technophilic.
Blowback. Very, very good podcast on western imperialism.
A lot of people have been recommending Blowback. I’m listening to it now!
It’s not free though…
It’s definitely free to listen, if that’s what you mean. I listen to it on Apple Podcasts without paying a penny.
Alright. On the website it said it was a paid one
You can pay for early access and I think some bonus content but otherwise it’s free.
Oh No Ross and Carrie is a lot of fun! “The show where we don’t just report on spirituality, fringe science and claims of the paranormal, but take part ourselves. We join religions, undergo alternative medical treatments, and hunt for ghost, goblins, demons, and deities. If it has an extraordinary claim attached to it, we’ll check it out.”
They do a large variety of investigations, including things like ear candling, trying ayahuasca, going to UFO conferences, joining Scientology (a particularly long but very interesting series of episodes), meeting a local flat earther group (and even helping them design and run experiments), be trained in performing exorcisms, etc etc!
Glad to see someone mention this shiw, it’s delightful and rather a hidden gem. Their series on Scientology was marvelous.
I like listening to podcasts that casually destroy my worldview, which means a lot of history and politics podcasts while working. I have 2 suggestions and a secret 3rd option!
First is The Deprogram, a podcast about various topics relating to socialism and leftism. The bromance is strong with this one, it’s hilarious. The humor can potentially be a turn off though, very rarely they’ll take a joke too far. However the educational info they provide is more than worth looking past imo.
Second is UNFTR, or Unfuck the Republic. This is a much smaller podcast, but the audio quality is great. His voice is very soothing, something tells me he worked in radio at one point. The stuff on youtube is on the shorter side, but still very good.
The third option is one you haven’t thought of before, but look up archival footage of speeches! Some of my favorite youtube archive channels are Afromarxist and the Micheal Parenti Library
Black Box Down is interesting. They describe aviation disasters but in a very approachable way, while also not really dumbing it down. No drama, although the stories themselves can sometimes be crazy, they don’t play it up.
Not strictly a podcast, but Mentour Pilot on YouTube does a really good job of this too. Has some great visuals but would work as audio only too.
You’re dead to me - history, different expert and comedian guest every week, very good
No Such Thing as a Fish - superb trivia show
Sci-Show Tangents - “lightly competitive science knowledge showcase”
A Podcast of Unnecessary Detail - science and math facts around a random topic from 3 very smart people
The Infinite Monkey Cage - science and comedy with Brian Cox and guests
Journey to the Microcosmos - interesting things in our microscopic world
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
