I listen a LOT of podcast so I might post too many of them.
THE GARGLE
From the makers of The Bugle, this is a weekly show that skips the news pages and takes a sideways glance at the nonsense contained within the culture, celebrity, tech, science and advice sections of the news.
Alice Fraser will be joined every show by two great comics from across the globe, bringing 30 minutes of smart satire alongside juvenile nonsense!
Whether you’re just thinking about leaving your religion, or you’re a dyed-in-the-wool decades-long atheist, your audio uncles Mark and Dan are here to help. With the aid of wise friends and experts in all sorts of fields, The How-To Heretic Podcast will guide you through the scary worlds of heathen living, and make sure you have fun in your new heretical life! We’re here for you, friend; so kick off your shoes and join us!
No-Budget Nightmares is a film/comedy podcast that focuses on Low/Micro/Shoestring/No-Budget Films. The hosts Moe Porne and Doug Tilley scour the depths of cinema to try and find the diamonds in the rough, rare as they may be, in the no-budget community. The show tends to break down each film they cover with great detail explaining what does or doesn’t work and ultimately hopes to serves both a celebration of ingenuity, as well as a “What not to do” for aspiring filmmakers.
Decoding the Gurus
An exiled Northern Irish anthropologist and a hitchhiking Australian psychologist take a close look at the contemporary crop of ‘secular gurus’, iconoclasts, and other exiles from the mainstream, offering their own brands of unique takes and special insights.
Leveraging two of the most diverse accents in modern podcasting, Chris and Matt dig deep into the claims, peek behind the psychological curtains, and try to figure out once and for all… What’s it all About?
Join us, as we try to puzzle our way through and talk some smart-sounding smack about the intellectual giants of our age, from Jordan Peterson to Robin DiAngelo. Are they revolutionary thinkers or just grifters with delusions of grandeur?
The Z List Dead List is a Podcast and Live Comedy Show about obscure people from historia.
Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine
Join Justin and Dr. Sydnee McElroy on a marital tour of misguided medicine as they discuss the weird, gross, and sometimes downright dangerous ways we tried to solve our medical woes through the ages.
These two are very little known (the one that is still going has a Patreon with 14 members, while the one that no longer exists had maybe 6) but they are SOOO good!
You Should See The Other Guy!
Three women, all queer, one trans, watch a romantic comedy, talk about it, and tell you why the main character made the wrong choice. Except when they watch Starship Troopers, Legend, the Snyder Cut of Justice League, Interview With The Vampire, or Howl’s Moving Castle and do the same thing. It’s funny, smart, and deserves a huge audience. It doesn’t matter if you watch the movies or even like romantic comedies - it’s just a pleasure to listen to them them take apart these films.
The Creepover
Two girlfriends (later spouses) talk about scary movies, creepy stories and spooky things in the news. Sometimes they go to a haunty place and talk about it afterward. It’s the best slumber party you never went to. Sadly, they ended the show a while ago when life got busy and, well, it is not like the podcast was paying any bills. It is still worth listening to though!
Citation Needed is the collaborative podcast project of the two major hilarious podcast mob families: Cognitive Dissonance (or, the Chicago Syndicate), and The Scathing Atheist / God Awful Movies / Skepticrat (the ruling New York crime family*).
Some more from them:
My life partner calls people above “those laughers”.
Another good podcast is “Revolutions”. It is a podcast that explores political revolutions. Each season covers a specific revolution with each episode going over the details.
Came here to list Oh No Ross And Carrie and Skeptics Guide To The Universe. So pleased that I don’t have to, and goes a long way to explaining why I like BB so much.
I’ll add:
Planet Money- it’s amazing how what they talk about explains so much of our world. I post episodes in threads here constantly because they explain an exact thing that people are trying to figure out.
Build For Tomorrow (formerly Pessimists Archive) - The complete history of, and current trends in, moral panics. The conservatives who panic about every new thing are always wrong and you will be shocked and amused to learn how wrong they have been throughout history.
No Comprimise - This is a stunning deep dive into current gun culture in America. The NRA is dead and the No Compromise movement is now. It’s deep investigative reporting on the culture and very sobering if you want to see what the roots are of things like Jan 6.
I’d like to give a word of caution about It Could Happen Here, since it was recommended multiple times above. I tried to listen but gave up on it. It’s ostensibly about how America could fall apart, but there are huge assumptions, and gaps in understanding in their hypotheses. It falls apart very quickly when you start picking it apart even a little. Because of that, the whole show boils down to scaremongering and I believe strongly we should not be doing that in this world. If threats are real we need to know about them, but the threats laid out in that show are not real because of aforementioned ignorance and leaps of logic. I think a show like that is doing more harm than good to the discourse in a fragile America.
Because of the obvious overlap of interests, I want to give a special shout-out to Cory Doctorow’s interview on ONRAC just the other day:
This really gave me a new respect for Cory and his remarkable ability to synthesize and distill complex morasses of FUD and misdirection in digital rights. Full disclosure, I was not a huge fan of his posts here (not that he should care about my approval of course) because I often found his headlines and summaries to be spinning an agenda so aggressively to the point of being untrue. When drilling into the articles linked, I frequently found they told a very different story than the BB summary was trying to portray.
That said, this interview opened my eyes to how much good Cory is doing in the world, and I’m glad he’s out there fighting the fight.
It was supposed to be a reality show with a twist. In a sun-drenched villa in Ibiza, six hot guys compete for a cash prize and for the love of the beautiful and mysterious Miriam. It’s meant to be her big break: the moment she becomes the superstar she was born to be. But this is the era of “cruel reality TV” and the show producers have a different goal: they want to surprise the men with the fact that Miriam is trans. A new six-episode investigative series from Wondery, the makers of The Shrink Next Door and The Apology Line, and from Novel, HARSH REALITY is the story about love, lies, reality TV and a woman before her time: Miriam Rivera. Written by Agnes Borinsky and hosted by Trace Lysette.
Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist and popular science writer. On his podcast he has discussions with experts from a lot of different fields about ethics, philosophy, AI, consciousness, all kinds of stuff. He also has a soothing Alan Alda voice.
I’d be interested in hearing where you end up with it. While the premise of the show that they are talking about is definitely nothing I would be interested in hearing, I can see how it could be possible that the story of the actual people involved and affected by it could be very interesting
Wheel of Misfortune with comedians Alison Spittle, Fern Brady and guest co-hosts sharing their funniest most embarrassing stories: the bad stuff that makes you feel good.
If you’ve ever yelled at someone on social media about, say, cancel culture or mask-wearing, then you are a soldier in the culture wars - those everyday battles for dominance between conflicting values. The acclaimed writer and podcaster Jon Ronson has seen friends swallowed up in them to the extent that it’s ruined their lives. Jon was curious to learn how things fell apart, and so he went back into the history of the culture wars to find some of the origin stories: the pebbles thrown in the pond, creating the ripples that led us to where we are today. He had no idea what he’d find, but he’s uncovered some extraordinary people and the strangest, yet most consequential tales.
Stuck at home, Louis is using the lockdown to track down some high-profile people he’s been longing to talk to - from all walks of life and on both sides of the Atlantic.
The history podcast for people who don’t like history… and those who do. Greg Jenner brings together the best names in comedy and history to learn and laugh about the past.
It’s not a podcast, but functionally almost the same these days. I’m really enjoying Chuck Klosterman’s new audiobook The Nineties. Simultaneously a bit of escapism and a refresher on a lot of “how we got here”. Albeit (and he admits himself) from a limited point of view of Klosterman himself.
Lovecraft investigations is so good! It really does take the original premise to some interesting places. Even if you have read the original stories you will be surprised by what they are doing.
Cow Casts - Fiction podcasts about cattle or dairy or both. Both are serial and really should be listened to from the beginning in order to appreciate the world building.
One is very funny - both haha and hmm
The other is strange, creepy, and a little funny. More hmm than haha
Matthew Holness stars as Knut Ångström, a brooding, alcoholic, maverick Swedish detective from the tough streets of Oslo, in a Scandinavian detective yarn adapted from the bestselling Ångström trilogy by Martin English (writing as Bjorgen Swedenssonsson).
Following the death of his wife, Ångström is posted to the Njalsland peninsula where he becomes embroiled in a labyrinthine murder (or possibly not-murder) case which bears an eerie similarity to the Askeladden killings - a case from his distant past.
This is one of the few non-fishing and non-writing podcasts I listen to, especially during fire season here. It’s produced by a former firefighter (and one of my favourite outdoors writers) and seems to cover a nice range of topics related to fire and fire management (in the US).
Outrageous comedy drama telling the true story of the pop duo known as the KLF who burned £1 million in cash on a remote Scottish island in 1994. But why?
