Any subject - it does not matter - sport, science, health, music, whatever floats your boat. Share the Love.
Three that I really enjoy.
Scienceish - The presenters take a fictional work - usually a film - and dissect the science within it - could the Matrix be real - Are driverless cars like Knight Rider a possibility and so on - four seasons so far.
Joe Rogan - The world’s biggest Podcast - some really interesting guests and subjects - some you will agree with, some you won’t
Revisionist History - Malcolm Gladwell delves into the truth of historical events and intelligently explores them usually from a different perspective.
Clinton Baptistes Paranormal - piss take of those who claim to speak to the dead - you saw Clinton first in Phoenix Nights - he was the physic who said - im getting the word Nonce.
Angelos and Barry - comedy podcast. The guy who plays Clinton plays Barry from Watford - Alex Lowe.
Rockonteurs - Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt interview fellow musicians.
Eddie Trunk Show and Mitch Lafron podcast - interview musicians from the world of Metal/Rock
Comedians Nick Helm and Nathanael Metcalf fan club - talk about films and TV shows
Johnny Vaughan Kickabout Podcast via Radio X - Alternative build up to the weekend sporting action.
Gary Lineker and Danny Baker podcast - funny look at football.
The Anfield Wrap - free podcast - used to pay for it but don’t anymore.
Knowledge Fight - Two comedians listening to Alex Jones’ show and picking it apart. It’s a great resource for understanding the modern right wing.
Opening Arguments - A lawyer talks to a comedian about recent legal arguments.
The Dollop - Two comedians talk about US History, one of them doesn’t know the topic beforehand.
Behind the Bastards - All about the worst people who have ever lived.
Hardcore History - The best pure history podcast out there.
I mostly enjoy the “person tells another person about a thing” style of podcast which is why I don’t like any of the Parcast style ones even though their subject matter is interesting.
My wife and I listen to Shagged Married Annoyed, a comedy podcast with Chris and Rosie Ramsay - I love it because it reminds me of home listening to them, whilst my wife gets a free lesson on the Geordie accent, which should help her understand my mates. My wife and I also listened to My Dad Wrote a Porno - really funny.
Footywise, I listen to;
The Anfield Wrap
Guardian Football Weekly
Totally Football Show
I do like the Joe Rogan Experience, but at over 3hrs an episode, I struggle to devote the time.
I have just started listening to this podcast this week - yep it is really good and has a diverse range of subjects. There seems to be a genuine attempt to do the research and understand exactly what went on.
You’ll probably like Leon Neyfakh’s podcasts. He was the original producers of Slate’s Slowburn, and after 2 really successful series left to do his own called Fiasco. His focus is on going back to reexamine the big political stories of his childhood (I’d guess he’s in his late 30s, early 40s).
At Slowburn he produced seasons on Watergate and the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal (they’ve since done one on the rise of David Duke, The war in Iraq, and bizarrely the death of Buggy and Tupac, but it’s not as good without him running it). He then left to start Fiasco where he’s done the 2000 election, Iran Contra, and Bengahzi.
It’s much more sober than the comedic angle of You’re Wrong About, but what he is fantastic at is pulling on multiple different threads, often non-chronologically, and retaining coherence of the narrative. His latest one on Benghazi was fascinating as despite being clearly liberal he offered a far clearer justification for the initial investigations and subsequent Special Committee into the embassy attack than I ever heard from the GOP.
Criminal - Shortish episodes, usually between 15-40 or so minutes. A show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or got caught somewhere in the middle (nicked their description).
If It Bleeds, It Leads - More of an in depth, psychological look into the criminal mind and why people do the things they do.
The New Conspiracist - Light hearted discussion about a different conspiracy theory with a special guest each episode.
Hunting Ghislaine with John Sweeney - If you’re interested in the Maxwell trial and all the ‘conspiracies’ surrounding Epstein, it’s definitely worth a listen.
The Infinite Monkey Cage - Brian Cox and Robin Ince with guests discussing everything to do with science. Suitably dumbed down for somebody as stupid as me to understand.
Grounded with Louis Theroux - Just Louis interviewing various celebrities.
My impression of him is that he’s a very empathetic man and is superb at humanising people and cultures/subcultures. He has a certain charm and wit that seemingly makes the majority of his interviewees very comfortable around him, to the point that most of his “interviews” feel like they’d be better described as just normal conversations. He’s often a great bridge between the audience and the subject because he doesn’t simply set out to demonise, but rather has a genuine desire to show both the humanity and complexities of the people he’s spending the time with.
His father is Paul Theroux the American travel writer who is definitely worth a look if travel books interest you.
What I like about Louis Theroux is that he allows the story to be told. The show is not about him or his opinions - he lets the subjects reveal the story.
My new football club - Joe Wilkinson and David earl. Starts of awkward but becomes hilarious. Basically David earl has shifted to Devon and decided to start supporting Exeter City so he talks about his experiences going to matches and all.
In 2014 an anonymous letter was sent to Birmingham city council outlining an Islamic plot to take over schools in Birmingham to indoctrinate the students. The Council unanimously agreed it was a hoax, but the consequences of how it was responded to was devastating to the identified schools and their students. This is an 8-part story of an investigation into the case to try to understand who wrote it and why it generated the response it did from both the local council and the Conservative government.
Two interviews with Timothy Snyder, one with Ezra Klien and one with Chris Hayes
Snyder’s book, On Tyranny, became a popular way of understanding the threat Trump posed during his presidency. He was often rolled out to talk to people to relate elements of his book to whatever awful Trump related thing was in the news at that time.
However, I’ve just come to find that his academic background is the history of Russia and Ukraine. As a result of this he is being wheeled out again in a lot of places to discuss his perspective on what is happening there now and why, and I think those two episodes were particularly good.
Just started listening to a podcast called - If Books Can Kill after I heard they covered Rich Dad, Poor Dad, in one of their episodes. Really enjoying it and have now subscribed to it.
I also recently came across a website and show called ‘the Maintenance Phase’ which I’ve added to my list of shows to listen to - it turns out it is by the same people!
Michael is great. I mentioned earlier in this thread one of his prior podcasts called “You were wrong about”. Exact same theme and set up, just a different partner to bounce things off. He has a good twitter account as well that is worth following (rottenindenamark).
If Books Can Kill has been brilliant. Most are cases where you’re left questioning how could they ever have generated any traction and popularity, but in a couple of cases the central idea of the book had some value but the book itself, the narratives spun in them in application of the ideas were awful. The Love Languages one is a good example of that.
Be weary of Maintenance Phase though. It’s two hosts who have both struggled personally with their weight and with how society has treated them because of it. They have now several episodes related to body weight that are just really bad treatments of the material. Little kernels of truth like “weight stigma is a real problem in medicine” gets turned into “a doctor is bad if they think your weight has anything to do with your issues and being fat really isn’t the health problem the medical community pretend it is.” This is really disappointing because he’d previously done a really smart one on the Obesity epidemic on YWRA that got a lot of the nuanced science right.
