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
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 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”
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.
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
I like to listed to Darknet Diaries if I am not listenting to WANshow.
remember when radiolab was THE PREMIERE PODCAST?
The Constant, by Mark Chrysler.
Headlined as “a history of getting things wrong”, the host goes into deep dives about what we thought we knew, how we eventually came to figure out we were wrong, the repercussions of both.
It takes a seriously funny and well researched approach to a number of major events in our history, and I absolutely must recommend “the foolkiller” a five episode exploration of a submarine found at the bottom of the Chicago River then lost to history, with a very juicy footnote delivered several episodes later, that I dare not spoil for you.
Since no one else has said it… 80 days podcast:
80 Days is a podcast dedicated to exploring little-known countries, territories settlements and cities around the world. We’re part history podcast, part geography podcast and part ramble. Each episode, we’ll land in a new locale and spend some time discussing the history, geography, culture, sport, religion, industry, pastimes and music of our new location.
Hardcore history is a very thorough look into different events. Dan Carlin is great
Very well made and researched. Very engaging. My favourite is the Blueprint for Armageddon as it covers more recent history which I personally find more relatable, and therefore more powerful, than the other topics. I would love a WW2 series. His arguement is that it is already very well documented from other sources, but I think Dan could really do it justice. zooming in on a specific part of the conflict would be great.
The Delta Flyers is a podcast by Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill, who played Harry Kim and Tom Paris on Star Trek Voyager, they rewatch the show and interview other crew members, they have completed Voyager, and have started rewatching Deep Space 9, together with Terry Farrell and Armin Shimerman, who played Jadzia and Quark on that show.
Very interesting.
Damn Interesting is a site with long interesting articles about different subjects, they have a podcast under the same name, where they read the articles, it is very well done, but unpdated slowly, but there is quite a few episodes available.
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…
