GET UP TO SPEED
ESSENTIAL PODCASTS FOR ASPIRING
KNOW-IT-ALLS
The word “podcast” connotes many things—a sport where contestants use fishing poles to heave alien sacs into outer space (where they belong!), or maybe a reality television series where strangers are forced to coexist for months in a single cubicle, to give just a couple of examples—but the word “podcast” doesn’t help anyone understand what pod-casts actually are. So for those who don’t know: Podcasts are just radio programs, but with way fewer commercials, DJs, and dead air; and way more talking, swearing, and listener edification. If you have a commute in the morning or a mindless chore to do at night, that is prime podcast time. So line up the subscriptions, start downloading, and prepare to be a cooler, smarter version of yourself . . .
Podcasts are not, by and large, especially profitable enterprises. This means that a lot of the really great podcast content out there comes from either public radio stations (NPR, the BBC, etc) or from news outlets, like Slate, that offer podcasts simply as a supplement to the more traditional content they produce. But it also means that even when these shows do fit into a larger company mission, they tend to fight for as large an audience as they can possibly get. This is good news for people who want to know what’s happening in areas like politics, science, technology, and (most pertinently here) finance, where the issues under discussion can often be quite complex.
Planet Money never shies away from complexity (in fact, it grew out of an hour-long This American Life episode that explained how the American housing bust went down), but it also manages to find entertaining ways of accessing complicated topics, from dark money to currency exchange rates to the perils and profits of free goods. They also manage to do proactive stories on larger financial questions like “What could a bipartisan panel of economists actually agree on in terms of tax reform?” that other mainstream news outlets would never consider. So in under 30 minutes, you’ll get great stories, some surprising facts, and a new way of looking at the world around you. Not bad!
Essential for: Budding economists.
Sports radio is famous for being brash, bullying, and for lack of a better phrase, dumb as a pigeon on stilts. You’ve got the one guy who thinks all goalies should be sumo wrestlers, the other guy who swears statistics killed JFK, and more first-time callers/long-time listeners than you can shake a stick at. But Hang Up and Listen says good-bye to all that. This crew of thoughtful, articulate, and very funny reporters goes deep inside the sporting week’s three most interesting events, and when they do have a special guest on the program, it is usually not because that person has won a major trophy; instead, it’s more likely that he has a realistic outlook on the meaning of a missed field goal or because she’s written a book of haiku about curling. Each episode also concludes with the utterly unique (and often revelatory) “Afterballs” segment, where . . . well, just listen. If you love sports, you’ll love Hang Up and Listen. If you hate sports, same. And if you want to just sound superior when other people talk in sports–radio jargon, this is the place to find the sweet poison you need to shut those first-time callers up.
Essential for: Anyone who doesn’t feel entirely at peace with the amount of tears America sheds during the televised Olympics coverage.
Aside from the high-profile guests it manages to snag for its roundtable discussions, there’s nothing flashy about Start the Week. The themes are serious (they’ve recently tackled such topics as religious extremism, the relationship between science and politics, and nuclear weapons in the modern world), host Andrew Marr’s questions are always in earnest, the bluster quotient is low, and at the end of most episodes, you get the sense that everyone involved in the discussion learned something new and taught something new to someone else. So it offers, in sum, a pretty beautiful picture of human conversation and cultural dialogue. The show has been running on BBC Radio since 1970, so a number of different people have served as host, but rest assured that Andrew Marr—the current host—will keep the guests on topic and devoted to a common goal: an interesting discussion of human culture in all its many forms.
Essential for: Serious cocktail party enthusiasts.
Podcasts are really all about personality. Whether you’re one person jabbering into a solitary microphone in a suburban basement or part of a team collaborating on a weekly show in midtown Manhattan, you won’t have much success if you can’t get your listeners to like you. It doesn’t matter how incisive your analysis is if your audience thinks you murder doves and smash old ladies’ mailboxes on your nights off. And although I do think it’s possible that host Stephen Metcalf may be up to no good right now (with a roguish band of baby-booming street poets), in sum, the gabfesters combine to form a kind of podcasting dream team.
Stephen frequently draws groans from Julia and Dana when he insists that the latest summer blockbuster is an offense to humankind, but when he backs up that same bit of hyperbole with a surprisingly poignant theory of American disintegration—which forces Julia and Dana to really make an argument for why Iron Man 2 can’t reasonably be considered a sin—then all is forgiven. And because each of the show’s three personalities have such divergent interests, the endorsements at the end of the show really do wind up offering something for everyone.
Essential for: People looking for the next great show or for something new to say about an old, mediocre one.
If anyone has ever recommended the WTF podcast to you before, they’ve probably also told you to skip the opening ten to fif teen minutes (where host Marc Maron delivers a monologue filled with emotion, F-bombs, and enough honesty to make you question the virtue of honesty as a trait). But it’s funny, because that same style is also what drives his interviews, which are just about the greatest thing ever. His interviews happen to be with comics and other “performers” (including not only Louis C.K. [famously] and Dane Cook [infamously], but also people like Dan Harmon, Ira Glass, and Judd Apatow), and although he goes very in-depth on questions of comic inspiration and how people managed to pay their industry dues, the podcast really does wind up being hugely expansive. (Probably because each new interview really is about what comedy is and means to each new interview subject, rather than a formulaic discussion of why someone or something is funny.) This is, in sum, Marc Maron’s podcast, and he’s a guy worth listening to (even when he’s an asshole).
Essential for: Future comedians, failed comedians, comedic geniuses, and Friday night hacks. Also for anyone who wants a sense of what it takes to succeed in the entertainment industry and what it costs.
Lexicon Valley, a podcast that examines the whys and wherefores of language, is exceptional in this podcast list. Unlike the other programs—which tend to take complicated topics and explain them in an unusually direct and lucid manner—Lexicon Valley generally begins with a truly difficult question, and then makes it more difficult, and then adds a new wrinkle, and then gets one kind of an answer, but then reveals a problem, before finally solving the problem at hand . . . or not. But that’s appropriate here! Language is a messy business, and Slate’s new podcast lets language do its dirty thing on its own terms, without sacrificing any intellectual rigor or any entertainment value. You will be shocked at how much gendered nouns and historical tenses will turn out to have mattered to you.
Essential for: Anyone who uses words or has seen a word on TV.
It sounds like a trade program (and it is a little odd that the title should be a problem for a program that’s all about appearances and filters), but On the Media is much more than just a show about the media. And not because the show doesn’t know where to stop, but rather because the media really is everywhere—and so is the media’s influence. Teasing out the difference between facts, fiction, opinions, biases, trends, and “what the people want” is truly the devil’s work—but Garfield and Gladstone go at it like saints. There are no easy answers here (at least not usually), but On the Media provides listeners with a real accounting of the stories that change the world, and the world that changes the stories. (And good luck figuring out which is which.)
Essential for: People who want more from their news.
So here’s the setup: Every week, Melvyn Bragg invites three experts onto his program to talk about a historical topic that is sometimes artistic, sometimes scientific, sometimes religious, and sometimes philosophical, but always of enduring interest and relevance. The experts are invited on the basis of their standing rather than their innate hostility levels (as is often the case on American roundtables), but because these people are passionate about what they do, you often get the sense that, in a way, you are listening to history in the process of being formed. Sometimes the areas of expertise will complement one another, so that an anthropologist and a linguist may shed light on different aspects of the same problem, but at other times, all three of the guests will view the same question through separate lenses—with combustible results. But no matter how definitive the conclusion may (or may not) be, the format allows listeners to ingest their history as real, vital material, rather than as dead weight. This show makes you excited to be a human being.
Essential for: Those who are skeptical of textbooks, but still believe in truth.
Ira Glass believes in radio as a medium. That is, on the one hand, ridiculous, because look around; but it is also not so crazy after all, because even though This American Life doesn’t have images (except when it’s on television and it does), it works. It tells stories, and those stories are so well curated, produced, and told, that an hour later you’re still sitting in your garage wondering why you are crying so hard about a man named Joe who lives in Illinois. But then, a week later, when the national media is covering a thousand guys just like Joe who just fought their way back to a living wage in the coal mines outside of Peoria, you’re like, “Hey, yeah, I was right to call in sick that day. I was striking, and I did it for America!” But all exaggeration aside, This American Life has an uncanny knack for extracting human tears (and not just of sorrow, since a lot of comic writers and comedians are featured there as well), and a stellar reputation for beating the American media to the story that really matters. So if you need an excuse to sob, or just want to find your next small-talk go-to, Ira Glass has you covered.
Pretty much everything that was said about This American Life can also be applied to Radiolab. Except instead of spending that lost hour in your garage crying your eyes out, if you’re listening to Radiolab, the police will need to be called in: because your mind will have exploded 14 to 18 times. In most cases it would be a bridge too far to attempt to do a radio show on the topic of “mortality” or “time” or “memory,” because WHERE ARE ALL THE PICTURES? But then a well-timed audio effect somehow actually helps you understand why the sky is blue, and then you are like, “Oh no, there go my brains all over the place again. Thanks a lot, Radiolab.” But also, seriously: Thanks a lot, Radiolab.
Essential for: Things with ears, hearts. Also, aliens (as an instructive lesson in the fact that humans aren’t so stupid after all).