We’re in an era of constant content, and if Spotify’s 11 hour “This Is Taylor Swift” playlist isn’t enough to fill your work week with an endless stream of noise, then it may be time to climb aboard the podcast wagon. From free-flowing conversations to scripted long-form storytelling, the podcast industry has never been so fertile. So fertile, even, that you may be one of the many paralyzed by decision overload when it comes to starting a new show. Fear not. We’ve rounded up some of the best podcasts that deserve a stream—none of which are helmed by Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, or other plagues on this great nation. Happy podcasting!
The A24 Podcast
Your annoying film friend’s favorite podcast—it’s me, I’m your annoying film friend—The A24 Podcast is an irregular pod, perfect for the fickle listener. The show is host free, ad free, and usually coincides with whatever big budget indie film (an oxymoron, we recognize) is being pumped out by the production company. The show pairs such auteurs and figures as Nathan Fielder and Alexa Demie, Sofia Coppola and Celine Song, Patti LuPone and Nathan Lane, Simon Rex and the late Angus Cloud, and more. If you love Variety’s “Actors on Actors” or Interview Magazine’s irreverent celeb-on-celeb interviews, then you’ll love this podcast.
This American Life
A relic of radio show culture, this weekly podcast comes from WBEZ Chicago Public Radio and is hosted by Ira Glass, one of the erudites’ most beloved voices. The show features essays, memoirs, short fiction, and more, with each episode following a theme rooted in modern American culture—think dads, turkey day, words, politics, and more. While the most pretentious among us might call it “easy listening,” this is not the show for those looking to giggle through aimless conversation. We have more of that later.
The Broski Report
Oh look, it’s later! This new podcast from the internet’s favorite comedian Brittany Broski is for the girls, gays, theys, and allies who want to decode great music, horn publicly for high fantasy smut, or have an all-too genuine sob about the plight of womanhood. All of that and more can be found on The Broski Report, the clips of which you’ve surely already seen on TikTok.
Call Her Daddy
This ever-relevant podcast is hosted by industry pioneer and recent Cosmo cover girl, Alex Cooper. This comedy podcast debuted in 2018 under Barstool Sports, before moving to Spotify under an industry shaking $60 million deal for Cooper. In its original form, the show featured comedic commentary on the current state of the sexual marketplace for young women, but has evolved over the years to become one of the internet’s leading interview shows, with Cooper leading newsworthy conversations with the likes of Miley Cyrus, Jamie Lynn Spears, Julia Fox, Demi Lovato, and more. Her influence on the culture earned her a new title from Rolling Stone of “Gen-Z’s Barbara Walters,” right next to her original moniker, “Daddy.”
The Daily
News you can use (to impress at the water cooler), The Daily releases new episodes each morning, with each episode running around 30 minutes and unraveling the most important news story of the day. Don’t let the 24 hour loop of terror on cable news fool you, staying informed doesn’t require that much work. A Daily episode a day keeps the doom scrolling away.
Hard Fork
Silicon Valley moves faster than you do, so the only way to truly keep up with the happenings of the tech world (aka, the world), is Hard Fork. This podcast is helmed by technology writers at The New York Times, returning to our liberal arts-trained ears each week with the latest news from the control room. Recent episodes have detailed the latest in A.I. technology, the uses of Apple Vision Pro, and legal battles between music record labels and TikTok.
Huberman Lab
The world’s number one health podcast, and possibly the only “manosphere” podcast you could realistically discuss with your boyfriend, Huberman Lab is wildly interesting and single handedly responsible for the rise in early morning productivity routines online. The show is led by Dr. Andrew Huberman, a Neuroscience Professor at Stanford University. His show unpacks such issues as the science behind willpower, the actual effect of alcohol on the body, how we can use different sources of light to optimize health, hormones and fertility, and much more. If you snoozed off during all 12 years of pre-collegiate science class, then here is your crash course, with only the information you need.
Las Culturistas
Comedic cultural commentary simply does not get better than Las Culturistas. Seriously, the buck stops with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Together, the comedians and best friends talk about culture and current events in the vein of diva culture, entertainment happenings, and gay pageantry. Each episode follows a loose, conversational structure— sometimes featuring guests, sometimes not—and always culminating in the “I Don’t Think So, Honey” segment, during which our hosts and guests have one minute to rail against something in the culture.
Maintenance Phase
Join us, please, on our never-ending journey to unlearn the most toxic and harmful rhetorics spewed by the diet industry from the years of 1990 to 2018, respectively. Hosted by Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon, Maintenance Phase “debunks the junk science behind health and wellness fads,” tackling everything from Weight Watchers, to Keto, to BMI, to cleanse culture.
Modern Love
Just in time for love season, this ever-popular podcast from The New York Times explores the love stories of real people—small, big, messy, clean, heartwarming, and heartbreaking. The podcast comes from the Times “Modern Love” column, which has been running for more than 18 years. It’s an easy listen, a consistent follow, and a healthy reminder that romance exists somewhere between the dating app algorithms and Hollywood’s soapy jaunts.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast is the digitally accessible iteration of The Moth’s popular storytelling events, which take place off-air, IRL across the country. The Moth events, writers and storytellers take to the stage to tell five-minute stories aligned with the night’s given theme. These storytellers are scored and compared, with the best stories moving onto bigger storytelling events, and eventually landing on The Moth Radio Hour and The Moth Podcast. That was the crash course, but if you want to hear brief, well-written stories from real, not at all famous, people, then try this pod.
The Retrievals
From Serial Productions and The New York Times, this 2023 limited podcast series is a nightmare, but a riveting one at that. The five-part pod explores an investigation into malpractice at the Yale Fertility Center, at which one nurse was swapping fentanyl for saline, sending women into intensive reproductive procedures with no pain relief. Beyond a wild true crime story, the series also discusses female pain and the culture of silence around it, proliferated by a society whose default mode of dealing with women is dismissal.
Slow Burn
This narrative series from Slate recently completed its eighth season, with each season focusing on a major political moment that changed the social fabric of our country forever. These moments include Watergate, the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, Biggie and Tupac, Roe v. Wade, David Duke and the rise of the KKK, The Road to the Iraq War, and more. The most recent season, which premiered in May of 2023, focused on the Supreme Court confirmation of Clarence Thomas.
Unreal: A Critical History of Reality TV
With each passing year, it seems reality television becomes a larger and larger part of modern American culture—and hey, if we can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Unreal traces the long and winding history of reality TV, from early competition series like Road Rules, Survivor, and The Challenge, to the sea-change that was the Keeping Up With The Kardashians series premiere, to the relevance of current hits like Love Island. Beneath the fun, the show digs into the ethics of reality television—the good, the bad and the very very ugly.
You Must Remember This
A show dedicated to Hollywood’s hidden histories, You Must Remember This was created by American film critic Karina Longworth. The podcast is the perfect blend of everything good—it’s funny, it’s informative, it’s well written and insightful, and it’s available on every platform. While the show’s typical form stands with Longworth at the podium, it has been known to attract such guests as John Mulaney, Dana Carvey, and Fred Savage. The show runs in dedicated seasons, some of which include “Charles Manson’s Hollywood,” “Gossip Girls: Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons,” “Dead Blondes,” and the latest iteration, “Erotic ’90s.”
