For history:
Revolutions by Mike Duncan. You can start with the Haitian and the Mexican revolutions. Then just listen to whichever season you want.
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History.
The History of Rome by Mike Duncan.
These are absolutely amazing.
Honorable mentions for Behind the Bastards and Lions Lead by Donkeys, if you like some banter along with the story telling.
Edit: someone in here reminded me about Your Undivided Attention. It is, literally and without irony, the most important podcast you could ever listen.
Behind the Bastards is my top recommendation. Just learning how truly awful the world has been for a few thousand years is soul crushingly entertaining.
I love how they combine it all with light banter. Without the banter, most of the episode would be unlistenable, as you would be too depressed and tie yourself on a train track.
I also love that Robert brings on repeat guests for certain topics. If an episode has lots of dead babies, it gets one person, Nazis often get Matt Lieb with his new sound board.
My favorite episode of all time is Action Park, with Garrison as host and Robert as the “guest”.
I love “The Dollop” episode on action park. The Dollop hosts were the guests on BTB episode on Kissinger.
The Dollop is a great history podcast. Tends to be a little on the light-hearted side (but not always)
Action park had me laughing so hard I couldn’t breath . Also it’s Garry
Is it Garry now? It was Garrison then but I don’t want to mis-name them.
No he hates being called Garry it’s a running joke with crowds at the dollop live shows.
Missing History on Fire by daniele bonelli.
Carlin’s podcast (and a lot of popular history podcasts) are generally considered fairly poor by academic historians, in regard to accurately portraying modern historical research. I think those kinds of podcasts are good to engage and stimulate interest in history, as long as the listener understands that they are a kind of “pop” history and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Same goes for a lot of popular books, like Sapiens.
I second all of these. I will also recommend the Pirate History Podcast, Fall of Civilizations, and The Ancient World for history podcasts.
Fall of Civilizations too
Nobody recommended 99% Invisible yet?
That one is a must-listen about everyday (and not so everyday) design. Absolutely amazing!
As a testament tp their quality, several “interesting” videos made by Tom Scott and Veritasium were also 99pi episodes before they found out those things. For example, Veritasium did the Snake Antibody Facility video, where Snake venom is milked by hand last year. 99pi did it half a decade ago.
Cautionary tales: stories of how things went wrong
Darknet diaries: stories from the dark web
intelligence squared: thought provoking debates about anything and everything
The numberphile podcast: interviews with mathematicians by Brady Haran. If you like the kinds of videos Brady makes, you’ll probably like this too. You know, stuff like sixty symbols, numberphile, perioedic table of videos etc.
You are not so smart: podcast about psychology
your undivided attention: discussion and interviews about social media. What it’s like to work for a social media company. How social media influences your business, or how it affects your life. How different parts of it are intentional and some are unintentional.
Which ‘cautionary tales’, the search gave a couple results?
With Tim Harford, by Pushkin.
Hope you like it. It’s one of my favorites even though I Found it only about a year ago.
Thank you!
No Such Thing As A Fishis an informative and funny podcast, saw it recommended on a similar post a couple weeks ago and have been hooked sinceAn awesome podcast, listened to every single episode in their (big) backlog and I’m always happy to see the new episode pop into my feed.
Love recommending podcasts!
- Like others have said, Behind the Bastards is great to find out about some of the worst people in history.
- In relation to that Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is the opposite of Behind the Bastards. It’s about people who did cool stuff who became cool.
- Also in lieu of that, Bad Gays, it’s about bad gays in history. I think they’ve covered similar folks on BtB, but this is obviously from a queer perspective.
- Fad Camp and Maintenance Phase are great podcasts about dieting and wellness. Fad Camp is more about how damaging some of these diets can be, whereas Maintenance Phase is similar to You’re Wrong About (which I also recommend)
- The Weekly Planet are these two Australian guys who talk about movies, tv, comics and video games. They also have a YouTube channel called Me Sunday Movies where they’ll upload some of their podcasts. Like they have a running segment called “Caravan of Garbage” which is just sort of talking about a movie, tv show or game. Currently they’ve started going through the RoboCop movies.
- Also shameless plug, but Checkpoint is on the radio but they take their radio show and put it on a podcast. It’s a podcast about giving a 1up to diversity in video games. Most of us are from the LGBTQIA+ community and that’s where most of our perspectives come from, but it’s also just folks from any marginalised group. Lovely bunch of folks (if I do say so myself).
Uh yeah, I have some more, but like that’s politics or it’s writing related or spicyness in or out of the bedroom. But these are the ones I always recc.
I mainly listen to things based around or by improv comedy, so if that’s not your jam, keep on scrolling -
My Brother, My Brother, and Me (three brothers give often terrible advice to questions sent by listeners)
Hey Riddle Riddle (a riddle podcast by improv comedians who really really hate riddies and puzzies)
Dungeons and Daddies (the best D&D podcast by players who don’t really know how to play D&D and it’s not even close)
The Worst Idea of All time (originally the concept was two kiwi comedians watch the same film every week for a year and document and review that experience every week. Each season is a new movie and a new year. The films are always awful and they encourage you not to watch them)
Smartless (Will Arnet, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes interviewing other celebrities and famous figures. Only one of them each week know who they will be interviewing before they do so the questions are all improvised on the spot)
Quick Question with Soren Bowie and Daniel O’brien (two ex Cracked writers from the golden age of Internet comedy, who now write for Family Guy and John Oliver respectfully, ask each other questions)
Dungeons and daddies has legit some of the most hilarious interactions I have ever heard. Beth May (?) playing an emotionally detached step father is pure genius
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I love MBMBaM but sometimes their episodes are such a hit or miss. I think it’s mostly the bits. I don’t mind the vampire one, but the perfume guy was too much.
Well, There’s Your Problem, a podcast with slides about engineering disasters which is, itself, a disaster.
“I am Justin Rozniak I’m the person who is talking right now. My pronouns are he and him.”
Less of a disaster now, thanks Devin!
- You Are Not So Smart: You’ll marvel at both how flawed our reasoning can be and how well we make up for it by being collaborative creatures
- Behind the Bastards: Everything you don’t know about the worst people in all of history, including people you didn’t even know of
- Twenty Thousand Hertz: Stories of pretty much anything as long as it works well in an audio medium. Best sound design in the game; like candy for your ears
- Cautionary Tales (Tim Harford): Stories of people making huge mistakes or taking insane risks. Fun because sometimes the mistake was trusting their intuition instead of a rigorous process, but just as often it was ignoring their intuition in favor of a rigorous process
- Build for Tomorrow, formerly Pessimists Archive: History of people freaking out about new stuff that is totally benign today but they thought would ruin civilization. Like mirrors, bicycles, teddy bears, pinball machines
- Team Human: Kind of the opposite. All about how “progress” has harmed indigenous people, minorities, women, etc. and talking to people about how to address our modern problems with “anti-human” technology and economics
Edit: I somehow forgot to add Knifepoint Horror, but I just read that someone else recommended it and I’m very disappointed in myself because it’s such a good horror podcast that I literally physically got chills when I read its name. So good. Fuck, I would even put it at the top of this list if it weren’t dependent on being in the mood for spoopy stories.
Recently I’ve been listening to Well There’s You’re Problem; it’s 30% retrospective on engineering disasters 70% shitpost
Darknet Diaries - Interesting stories or interviews with people from the darkweb, pen-testers, hackers, etc. A couple of notable episodes: Interview with a creator of the PirateBay. FFFD - Freedom for flash drives.
This podacast will kill you - Interesting ways to die and just regular ones. Like what happens when you die from x, y, or z. Notable episode Sweat is a superpower.
Sticky Notes - About classical music.
Stuff you should know - interesting stories
Stuff they don’t want you to know - interesting stories
The end of the worldwith Josh Clark - limited episodes about existential threats to humanity.
Knowledge fight
Behind the bastards
Ear hustle
The Dollop - a comedy podcast about how messed up American history is.
Last Podcast On The Left - comedy podcast about horror, true crime, aliens and the paranormal.
The Greatest Generation - Star Trek podcast
Behind the Bastards - Podcast about the worst people in history.
Get Played - video game podcast with a comedic bent.
Second Last Podcast on the Left. Quality content consistently for years.
Ologies by Allie Ward!!
She basically interviews scientists about their job and asks all the dumb questions you wish you could ask. She has a huge number of episodes on everything from black holes and dark matter to squirrels to Emojis. And it’s all from the perspective of “the study of”.
One of my favorite episodes is “Ferro-equinology”. The study of iron horses. Trains. I knew trains were cool, but had no idea how cool they really were until that episode.
Her energy is addictive too. Great personality. If you are a part of her patron (which I am) you’ll get a heads up before her interviews and she give an opportunity for you to post questions that she’ll ask the Ologist.
Lateral is one of my go to podcasts. Is full of lateral thinking questions, hosted by Tom Scott with a variety of guests. Is really good fun.
For comedy:
Distractible - very funny guys. Start with the episode Bob’s Fridge
Hamish and Andy - higher profuction value and hilarious. Very much like a radio show because they used to be radio hosts and are also comedians
For hilarious comedians with great chemistry and occasional improved bits: Bad Friends. With Andrew Santino and Bobby Lee.
