Here’s a roundup of the podcasts to which I’m subscribed. These shows comprise the media that I consume regularly as I don’t watch television. They tend to be educational, scripted, high production-value shows with only a few unscripted interviews sprinkled in. I listen while commuting, running, or cooking. Most shows I play at 1.5x speed on Apple Podcasts, but the music-related episodes I play in real time.
New Additions
The Sporkful
Dan Pashman hosts a colorful food podcast filled to the brim with interviews of famous food personalities, strong and contentious food opinions, and — in 2021 — the thrilling tale of Cascatelli and Dan’s quest to create and sell a new pasta shape. Katie and I just got ahold of a box of the OG semolina flour Cascatelli manufactured by Sfoglini. At first, Dan’s raucous laugh and moderately forceful radio voice personality was a little grating, but the show’s appeal has won me over. He’s smart, interesting, and conducts solid interviews.
Gastropod
Cynthia Graber, Nicola Twilley look at food through the lens of science and history. So much can be learned of the history of people through food cultures. Topics range from an exploration of prehistoric civilizations and the foundations of modern agriculture, David Fairchild and plantation colonialism, and the reverberant ramifications of WWII. There’s always so much more than just tasting notes.
Twenty Thousand Hertz
Dallas Taylor reveals the stories behind the world’s most recognizable sounds. It’s the newest member of my podcast rotation, and I’ve been listening to older episodes too. Despite being a lifelong musician, I have but a rudimentary understanding of sound recording technology and culture. Now that I’m a pretty high-volume consumer of podcasts, I’m equipping myself with a better understanding of what underpins good sound design. A recent favorite was the episode about snoring. Yes, definitely about snoring…
Song Exploder
Hrishikesh Hirway interviews musicians to deconstruct their tracks and explore the stories behind the songs. It’s hit or miss for me because I’m minimally versed in music, but I’ve cherry picked old episodes featuring artists I listen to and, wow. My appreciation is magnified by hearing about the backstory, the emotion, and the artistic construction behind the end product.
Old Favorites
These are my “classics,” shows I listen to almost immediately when they drop. TAL, 99PI, and Planet Money I’ve been subscribed to since I started listening to podcasts in July 2016, Radiolab not long after.
Radiolab
Jad Abumrad and Latif Nasser and Lulu Miller host a podcast about… just like… things. Delightful, creative, informative, evocative. I never know how to describe it to people other than that it’s been my favorite podcast for years. I especially enjoy my supporter’s feed: Radiolab: Mantis Shrimp Members. Oh, of course I was sad when Robert Krulwich retired!
This American Life
This preeminent, pioneering podcast by Ira Glass and company needs little introduction. Although probably half of their weekly shows are reruns, they put on full display how long they’ve been masters of the form.
99% Invisible
Roman Mars explores design and architecture. He and Kurt Kohlstedt, the digital director, wrote a book in 2020, The 99% Invisible City, of which I proudly own a first edition signed copy. Their transcripts and non-audio articles are always worth reading as they’re accompanied by images of the design elements in question. A truly classic indie podcast, though Mars recently sold to Stitcher.
Planet Money
Prepare yourself. It’s NPR’s high-energy and kind of silly economics podcast. I don’t even particularly like economics, but this big crew of nerds makes it easy to digest and fun to follow. They have a budget to do small real-life projects, like buying a junk stock, or buying a bunch of Christmas trees, or buying the rights to a comic book character, and that’s when the money really flies.
The Rest of the Rotation
Revisionist History
Malcolm Gladwell’s journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. He always has some colorful commentary and controversial hot takes on social psychology. His style of small stories framed in peculiar ways is perfectly suited to the podcast medium, even more so than the books that made him ultra-famous. Gladwell knows it too, and he’s publishing self-narrated audiobooks alongside his paper books.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
I subscribe The New Yorker, so I listen to the podcast too. They get to interview the most amazing people. David Remnick and the rest of staff writers skew strongly to a peculiar worldview, but I try to keep mindful of that.
Invisibilia
NPR’s show now hosted by Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw about contemporary topics in social science. Or something. I dunno, it kind of drifts a lot.
The Anthropocene Reviewed
John Greene’s podcast of pensive essays framed through rating facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale. It’s not strongly themed, but I came to enjoy his writing. The podcast became inactive once he collected these episodes and others into a book.
Science Diction
Johanna Mayer discusses the etymology and science stories behind interesting words. I went through an etymology phase this year while studying anatomic terms, and this show was a nice supplement. Sadly, just last month, Johanna Mayer ended her tenure as the host.
Listening timeline (notes)
- The Sporkful: since April 2020
- Gastropod: since Nov 2018
- Twenty Thousand Hertz: since Sept 2021
- Song Exploder: since Nov 2020
- This American Life: since July 2016
- 99 Percent Invisible: since July 2016
- Planet Money: since July 2016
- Radiolab: since mid 2017
- Revisionist History: since inauguration, Sept 2016
- The New Yorker Radio Hour: since June 2020
- Invisibilia: since mid 2017
- The Anthropocene Reviewed: Jul 2019 – May 2021
- Science Diction: Apr 2021 – Dec 2021
- Past subscriptions include The Indicator, The Moth, Modern Love, Freakonomics, How I Built This, Hidden Brain, Serial. I’ve lost track of short-lived shows I’ve binge-watched.