I listen to a lot of podcasts, but I’m pretty picky about them. My criteria doesn’t seem too crazy: they need to be interesting, well-recorded, and edited. There’s nothing I hate more than a 2+ hour podcast of a poorly-recorded “interview” (or, more accurately, long, boring, rambling shooting-the-shit session).
For the most part I tend to avoid political podcasts — there’s too much misery in the news to increase my intake of this insane administration and MAGA followers. So I tend to lean towards humor, music, and general interesting topics.
The App
Although Apple’s Podcast app is fine, I like more control over how I listen to my podcasts. After trying a bunch of different ones, I’ve settled on Overcast. Overcast is free, but I would happily pay for it: it lets me set up and organize playlists, auto-populate them, automatically skip the intros/ads of podcasts, and more. Plus there’s a Mac desktop version of the app (and a website version) in addition the iOS version, so I can listen on my MacBook and things sync up with my iPhone. However, I don’t love the recent redesign which did clutter up the UI, in my opinion.
The Podcasts
Here are my personal favorites right now:
Smartless
I love the interaction between hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett — it feels like you’re just sitting in among friends who like to goof on each other. And the guests are usually pretty good, and even if it’s someone I’m not interested in the discussion is typically entertaining. There have been some really boring guests — I won’t name names here, but they were mostly straight-ahead interviews (vs. a friendly conversation) with actors — but most are really good, and a few were way more entertaining than I expected (like Kathryn Hahn and Sandra Bullock).
The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast
If you’re a fan of The Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone) and/or Saturday Night Live, give this a listen. They discuss the SNL Digital Shorts as well as various SNL skits, and I find it very entertaining … especially Andy, despite the fact he doesn’t like podcasts. Though I do hate how they refer to each episodes as a “pod” (I’m a stickler for proper nomenclature).
99% Invisible
“99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture” — sounds kinda nerdy (and it is) but it’s right in my wheelhouse: topics about design all around us. Some of my favorites were the episodes on flag design (Vexillonaire and Vexillology Revisited: Fixing the Worst Civic Flag Designs in America) — you’ll never look at flags the same again!
Big Time
This is a new true-crime podcast by Apple and hosted by Steve Buscemi (and by “hosted” he does the intro and outro). True crime isn’t usually my type of subject, but these stories are interesting and not your typical stories: a rigged homecoming contest, competitive fishing cheaters, stolen bees. Short and well-done.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
This one’s been around since 2022 but I only discovered it this week. SNAFU is a podcast about history’s greatest screw-ups, and the first season (which I just binged in a day of gardening) is all about how a nuclear war between the US and USSR almost happened in 1984. Scary stuff, but since it was 40 years ago we can laugh about it now, right? Ed Helms does a good job keeping the story light(ish) and engaging, though sometimes I thought it got a little too silly for some of the events (especially Korean Air Lines Flight 007). I did, however enjoy Ed’s impression of Ronald Reagan. Anyway, I’m looking forward to listening to the other seasons next.
Miniseries Podcasts
I do enjoy the occasional “miniseries podcasts” which are limited-length podcasts about a specific event. Here are a few of my favorites:
Broomgate
A podcast about a curling broom scandal? Who’d want to listen to that? Well, curlers will — if you curl and haven’t heard this yet, add it to your list. And if you’re not into curling, you just might find this six-episode podcast compelling. Or weird. Or both. My son was in the car with me one time when I was listening to an episode and he started the drive by (lovingly) making fun of my listening to a curling scandal podcast, but by the end of the drive he was sucked into the story.
The Big Dig
My family likes to tease me because of my interest in infrastructure. And as a Massachusetts resident I enjoyed this fascinating nine-episode podcast about the building of the Big Dig project in Boston, which covered everything from the politics to the communities affected to the actual project and how it was done.
Scratch & Win
A podcast about how the Massachusetts lottery came into being? This is another one of those podcasts that can get me listening to a subject I didn’t think I’d find interesting.
One-offs
There are a bunch of podcasts I listen to less frequently — it depends on the subject of the episode — but they’re worth checking out, too:
If you have any podcasts you think I should check out, let me know!