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?
Tides of History is a very well-produced history podcast that deals with ancient history. It tells history in an engaging way and is founded in recent scholarship.
Podcasting is Praxis, a funny politics podcast made by British communists.
Blowback, all the praise heaped upon it is absolutely justified. Listen to it.
We Are Not So Different, an entertaining podcast about medieval history. It has a leftist outlook on things and treats medieval people like people and avoids romanticising as well as looking down on them.
A People’s History of Ideas. An amazingly detailed history of the Chinese revolution with offshoots into international Maoism. If you want to listen to an episode about how CPC safehouses worked in Shanghai in the early 1930’s, this is a podcast for you.
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
Ohhh sounds right up my alley. Thanks for the rec!
You’re dead to me - history, different expert and comedian guest every week, very good
No Such Thing as a Fish - superb trivia show
Sci-Show Tangents - “lightly competitive science knowledge showcase”
A Podcast of Unnecessary Detail - science and math facts around a random topic from 3 very smart people
The Infinite Monkey Cage - science and comedy with Brian Cox and guests
Journey to the Microcosmos - interesting things in our microscopic world
I’ll second No Such Thing As A Fish. Its four researchers giving their four favorite facts of the week. It is always informative at the very least and usually they’re pretty funny/entertaining as well!
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.
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
The Rest is History
Been listening to this lately, loving it. Always keeps it entertaining, stays true to the discipline, and I’m always learning a lot.
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
Whomst among us has let the dogs out is one of my favorite episodes of theirs. Great stuff.
A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - This is one of my favorite podcasts, but I’m going to warn you it’s not for everybody. The creator of this show, Andrew Hickey, is THOROUGH. A great example is the most reason episode about Hey Jude. Either you will love the concept of a 3.5-hour episode where 80% of the podcast is not about the song but rather the circumstances and lives of The Beatles, Yoko Ono, and the late 1960s music scene leading up to the creation of Hey Jude, or you will be furious that so much of the episode is about stuff that isn’t the song.
Science and Tech:
1-Stuff you should know. 2-Skeptics guide to the universe. 3-Programming throwdown.
Gaming:
1-Get played. 2-Triple click.
Comedy and movies and music:
1-Comedy bang bang. 2-How did this get made? 3-With Gourley and Rust. 4-Bizarre albums.
Other:
1-Scam goddess. 2-Qanon anonymous.
Helps you sleep:
-Sleep with me.
Hardcore history is a very thorough look into different events. Dan Carlin is great
For deeply nerdy computer/network/IT/programming: On the Metal
Only 2 seasons, but some great interviews.
The Dork Forest, the host invites on somebody to talk about whatever they are really in to. It’s ranged from a comedienne talking about comedy, to a pen and paper Marvel/DC super hero RPG history/mechanics, to the Sailor Moon anime series. Its pretty chill and usually a decent listen.
The Past Times, its by the two hosts of The Dollop. (Sometimes Dave and/or Gareth will get wound up and stuck on a bit that can get cringy as it goes on too long.) Dave gets a newspaper from some point in the past and Gareth and whoever they’ve invited on just riff on the headlines, the content of the articles/advertisements/classifieds, etc. A bit hit or miss, but its decent for having on in the background where you aren’t really trying to pay too much attention to it.
The Dollop is alright. Dave reads stuff about an historical event or person to Gareth and sometimes a guest. Everybody riffs on it. Sometimes the jokes are a bit gross and go on for too long. I’d recommend their sports episodes as a person who is not interested in the watching or playing of sports but I do find myself amazed about the history behind leagues, games, competitions, players, coaches, owners sometimes. Some of the episodes can get pretty dark due to the subject of the episode though.
It ended quite a while ago but, The West Wing Thing, is a pretty long series that follows a popular USA TV series “The West Wing” and the slow descent into maddness by the two hosts and their guests as they watch (almost) every episode and discuss what they watched.
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.
Black Box Down is interesting. They describe aviation disasters but in a very approachable way, while also not really dumbing it down. No drama, although the stories themselves can sometimes be crazy, they don’t play it up.
Not strictly a podcast, but Mentour Pilot on YouTube does a really good job of this too. Has some great visuals but would work as audio only too.