[TobyD]

A few things on BBC sounds to start: 

Sailing into History: truly incredible documentary about Robin Knox-Johnson sailing single handed around the world in the sixties.

Beyond Today: often a great listen on a huge range of topics.

Political thinking: Nick Robinson's podcast, he interviews prominent political figures and makes them seem human, even the ones you really disagree with.

[moose]

BBC, In Our Time - you feel like a genius whilst listening, and forget it all almost immediately.

This American Life is occasionally excellent. I listen to Pod Save America for US politics  - very partisan by ripe with 'insider' comment.

Anything on the Ringer podcast network for US pop culture and sport.

For football fans who like a bit of discursive chat, The Set Piece Menu. For football fans with a taste for analytics, The Double Pivot (by Michael 'xG' Caley), and Statsbomb. For just general love of the game, The Totally Football Show (James Richardson, ex of Gollazo), and the Guardian Football Weekly.

[Danny]

Very Bad Wizards: informal, sometime irreverent science/philosophy chat

The Blindboy Podcast: one man in a room type craic

The British History Podcast: wonkish one man in a room stuff, but loads of episodes, and pretty good at times.

S-Town: very NPR, but the central character is a gem.

Caliphate: disjointed, but quite good.

Radiolab: evergreen, consistently good.

Jon Ronson's The Butterfly Effect and Last Days of August. Amazing stuff on the pr0n industry.

Joe Rogan: guest dependent. Sometimes great, sometimes tosh.

Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History: really like these.

Love + Radio: absolutely peerless IMO. Frequently very NSFW. Some episodes miss the mark, but more often they're amazing.

[TobyD]

BBC, In Our Time - you feel like a genius whilst listening, and forget it all almost immediately.

I love in our time, many of the episodes demand concentration though!

[SEDur]

+1 one for Very Bad Wizards!
No Such Thing As A Fish can be fun sometimes: QI in a podcast

Theres a cool one called 'Song Exploder', which is where artists come in and deconstruct one of their own songs.

Some episodes of 'Art + Music + Technology' are interesting as there are interviews with a range of electronic synthesis people, but the interviewer sounds stoned 100% of the time.

[cheque]

“My Brother, Mr Brother & Me” Three brothers from West Virginia do a terrible job of being agony uncles.

The Adam Buxton Podcast is worth it just for the jingles. 

I used to listen to another one where the two hosts take it in turns to read out erotic fan fiction that the other host has found for them online. I had to delete it ‘cos I could never explain to my colleagues why I was in hysterics.

[tommytwotone]

The things that currently get me through the commute / washing up / ironing etc are:


Brexitcast (BBC) - informal but very informative/ geeky, and good to hear the BBC guys speaking about Brexit as you'd assume they do down the pub, not in a starchy, time-limited way you're used to hear them.


Fighting Talk (BBC) - not so much podcast, but I never get to listen to it live so always end up listening to iPlayer


Lineker and Baker Behind Closed Doors - basically the two of them trading football stories, but between them boy do they have a lot of material.


Dissect - Mark Twight (ex Gym Jones) and some of his mates chewing the cud (at length - some of them are 2 hours). Can be a bit wanky / navel gaze-y but a few of them have resonated with me in terms of motivation, hard work, goals and so on.


Up and Vanished - Serial-esque long form real-life crime story. Compelling.

[Steve R]

  with this thread


Sam Harris

BBC - +4(?) for in our time. Life scientific.

AI/tech/future/existential threats:
After on
80,000 hours podcast
Future of Life Podcast
Existential threats  stand alone, nicely made 'intro' type series.

History:
Dan Carlin's hardcore history only listened to the blueprint for armageddon so far which was brilliant.

"tyler cowen engages today’s deepest thinkers in wide-ranging explorations of their work, the world, and everything in between."

[lagerstarfish]

I enjoyed The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

An HP Lovecraft story presented as an investigative podcast - "An investigation into the disappearance of a young man from a locked room in an asylum."

[moose]

Dan Carlin's hardcore history only listened to the blueprint for armageddon so far which was brilliant.

I've only listened to the series about the Mongols, which was very interesting.  Not sure if I'll ever have the time to invest in any of his other series though... they're pretty epic.

[turnipturned]

If you are totally bored of UK Politics, I highly recommend US politics, far more entertaining. I listen to The Daily (NY Times), pretty good and has some really interesting cross cutting debates (a recent one, which I still can't really get my head around or form an opinion is women (namely kids) who go to Syria to fight for ISIS, should they be allow back...?)

Educational Podcasts:

The Infinite Monkey Cage
Stuff you should Know
Radio Lab
They walk among us
History Unplugged

Fun podcasts:

Couples Therapy
Private Parts
Radio 4: Friday night comedy

And a one off, I highly highly recommend is: The Two Shot Podcast, Joseph Gilgun (Part 1 and 2)

[jwi]

I much prefer scripted radio to loosely scripted or unscripted. Is there a science/culture programme similar to In our time, but scripted? In French, there is the marvellous Sur les épaules de Darwin, is there anything like that in English available in podcast form? Something on NPR maybe?

[slab_happy]

"The Assassination" (10-part series about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto)

"The Museum of Lost Objects" -- the stories of historical artefacts lost/destroyed in conflict in Iraq and Syria (first season), India and Pakistan (second season)

Seconding "Dan Carlin's Hardcore History" and "In Our Time"

"Welcome to Night Vale" and "Alice Isn't Dead" -- gentle creepy. Someone described "Welcome To Night Vale" as a fusion of Garrison Keillor and H. P. Lovecraft.

"You Must Remember This" -- "the secret or forgotten history of Hollywood's first century". Can sometimes be patchy, but the 12-part "Charles Manson's Hollywood" miniseries is excellent and bone-chilling.

"Dear Joan and Jericha" -- Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine satirize the shit out of a certain kind of women's agony aunt/advice columns, and make Derek & Clive sound tame

[Danny]

I much prefer scripted radio to loosely scripted or unscripted. Is there a science/culture programme similar to In our time, but scripted? In French, there is the marvellous Sur les épaules de Darwin, is there anything like that in English available in podcast form? Something on NPR maybe?

Not at all similar to IOT, but Radiolab often fits that bill. I think my main issue with all these NPR things is that they're all highly scripted, but try to sound like they're not.

Science Vs and Invisibilia fit into the sciency and scripted pod category too.

I get my sciencey current affairs via podcasts in the form of Inside Science, and Quirks and Quarks.

[Falling Down]

Great thread!

Blacklisted - The “unbound” team pick a book that’s been forgotten about or isn’t very well known and talk about it. It’s really good.

[peewee]

My Dad wrote a pr0no - funny, basically a guy and his mates reading and critiquing a pr0no his 60yr old dad has written.

[turnipturned]

My Dad wrote a pr0no - funny, basically a guy and his mates reading and critiquing a pr0no his 60yr old dad has written.

Ughhh.... Alice Levine is so annoying

[cheque]

Each to their own innit. I'd sit in silence for a long time before I resorted to a podcast on (for example) Brexit but I'm sure the recommendations on that subject are great if that's your bag.

[Yossarian]

Hip Hop Saved My Life - Romesh Ranganathan with various guests discussing their hip hop memories / favourite albums, etc. My favourite podcast along with (and the perfect foil to) In Our Time.

Rule of Three - Comedians discussing their favourite comedies.

Smershpod - Variable quality (depending on guest) analyses of James Bond films (first series) and Michael Caine films (series 2), along with some randoms here and there. Some episodes are pure gold (Adam Buxton on Taffin, Sarah Phelps on OHMSS, Al Murray on Moonraker.

Got quite into Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History, but started finding his gently enunciated tones seem to send me to sleep. Not great when driving back from Portland as the sun goes down.

Have been meaning to start How To Fail with Elizabeth Day, but not had a chance yet...

[TobyD]

Don't tell me the score on BBC, has an episode with Alex Honnold about fear. Not listened yet, sounds good though.

[Will Hunt]

Thirteen Minutes to the Moon. Series documenting the first moon landing and how it was done, told through the lens of the difficult final descent.

Very interesting indeed and quite inspiring what can be done when heaps of money and political will is thrown at something. I'm always staggered at the level of forward planning required on space missions. And it's very illuminating to see just how much the investment in the programme drove forward technological advancement.

[moose]

Don't tell me the score on BBC, has an episode with Alex Honnold about fear. Not listened yet, sounds good though.

There have been some other pretty interesting pods in that series, entirely dependent on the contributor though - some have just seemed like adverts for "lifestyle" books.

I imagine it's already been mentioned but the Allusionist is good.  Presented by Helen Zaltzman (sister of Andy of Bugle fame), it's a look at the origins and use of language that manages to be both erudite and playful.  Highly recommended to anyone who has ever enjoyed posts in the "Eggcorns" thread.  It's the sort of podcast that results in you boring workmates with choice nuggets.  The history of Polari, "c*nt", Criminallusionist, and the saga of Bic and Biro (Eponym II) episodes come to mind as favourites.
 

[moose]

Also, two of my favourite podcast series of recent years were the  Slate "Slow Burns" on the histories of Watergate and the Clinton / Lewinsky impeachment - incredible access to witness evidence and so much detail that I was utterly unaware of:

https://slate.com/slow-burn

Series 3 has been announced - on the murders of Biggie and Tupac.  Given the information unearthed for the previous series and subject matter (I remember lots of talk of gang rivalries and paid off Police at the time) I would be surprised of it's not fascinating.

https://slate.com/briefing/2019/04/slow-burn-season-3-tupac-biggie.html

[Pope B]

The Elephant Rope recently had Mick Fanning for their second instalment .
 
For those that don't know he's a world championship winning surfer.

Covers some interesting topics around grief, obsession & performance

https://open.spotify.com/show/00mR0DP4tK5381N6ubPAyh

[Will Hunt]

Don't tell me the score on BBC, has an episode with Alex Honnold about fear. Not listened yet, sounds good though.

There have been some other pretty interesting pods in that series, entirely dependent on the contributor though - some have just seemed like adverts for "lifestyle" books.

I imagine it's already been mentioned but the Allusionist is good.  Presented by Helen Zaltzman (sister of Andy of Bugle fame), it's a look at the origins and use of language that manages to be both erudite and playful.  Highly recommended to anyone who has ever enjoyed posts in the "Eggcorns" thread.  It's the sort of podcast that results in you boring workmates with choice nuggets.  The history of Polari, "c*nt", Criminallusionist, and the saga of Bic and Biro (Eponym II) episodes come to mind as favourites.

I had a go with a couple of Allusionist episodes that you mentioned but couldn't get into it. Hey ho, each to their own! If you like that I guess you'll also listen to Word of Mouth with Michael Rosen. Really like that.