The podcasts I listen to are typically carefully edited by experienced teams of Americans (and the occasional Canadian) who have worked closely together for years, as can be seen from the graph above, which I made several years ago (since then, things have gotten even more complex, with This American Life's spinoffs creating their own spinoffs, and even spawning a media company, Gimlet, which has begun to poach other former members of This American Life. Many podcasts are also created by people who started with, or are still part of, National Public Radio, which until recently was one of the few means of learning to create high-quality radio broadcasts according to a fixed schedule. What does this all mean? If you like a podcast, look up the names behind it, and you'll often find your favorite producer, host, or guest on several other podcasts!
Anyway, without further ado, I bring you short descriptions of the podcasts that have filled a good proportion of my waking hours, broken down into several categories (which naturally blend into each other): This American Life, storytelling, reporting, in-depth explorations, and podcasts I’m trying out.
This American Life (TAL)
The godfather of them all, the podcast combines all of the other categories in every episode, has several million podcast subscribers, and spawned a TV show. I've been listening to this show since I was little, and have, since 2011, listened to 413 out of its 539 hour-long episodes (the show celebrates its 20th birthday this week). I have even excitedly gone to see the host walk around on a stage by himself monologuing for two hours! Each episode has a theme explored via several "acts" (the show started as "Your Radio Playhouse") which are usually separate stories. These acts can be investigative reporting, memoirs, short stories, collected interviews, and have background music overlaid with people speaking to reflect mood, with a character-based anecdote-reflection-anecdote-reflection model adapted from storytelling. The themes vary widely, from bird-related mishaps to people making sudden and drastic changes in their lives, from coincidences to amusement parks. Some of the best episodes have focused on just one theme/place, such as a high school in inner-city Chicago, or an aircraft carrier, inmates putting on a performance of Shakespeare, to used-car salesmen competing for a prize. Many people got their start from appearances on this show, and it can be surprising to see John Hodgman working as a reporter, or OK Go serving as the show's house band during live tours in 2000 and 2003!
Here are some of my favorite episodes, although the official website has a similar list:
Serious/Investigative Journalism:
Petty Tyrant: The best serious episode: the head of a school district's maintenance department and his long-running rein of terror (space heaters! Tire slashing! Explosives!)
Little War on the Prairie-A forgotten Indian war in Minnesota, and how it's remembered today.
Old Boys Network-Corruption in the modern-day South and Chicago.
What Kind of Country: The Recession and the Rise of the Tea Party.
Kid Politics: Kids rip into each other thanks to school politics, and other kids visit the Reagan presidential library and reenact his moments of crisis.
Funny:
Americans in China: The surreal, whimsical aspects of life for Americans in China.
All Poultry Slams: My favorite episodes. Listen with other people!
The Psychopath Test: TAL's staff freak out about being psychopaths, and Jon Ronson visits a CEO/psychopath's mansion.
#1 Party School: Life at Penn State.
Rest Stop: 24 hours at a rest stop in Delaware.
Scenes from a Mall: 24 hours in a mall (TAL has occasional episodes where the staff spends 24 hours at a typical American location, like a diner).
Fear of Sleep: The basis of Mike Birbiglia's recent film, produced by Ira Glass, the show's host.
Christmas and Commerce: Includes the stories that made David Sedaris and David Rakoff famous.
Superpowers: Chris Ware and John Hodgman discuss their childhoods, and what people would do with superpowers.
Enough fawning, let's move on to our first real category...
Storytelling
Wiretap: Run by This American Life alumnus Jonathan Goldstein, this Canadian show just aired its last episode this year, but its archive goes back many years. The show's central conceit is that Goldstein has an exceptionally dry, unsuccessful radio show, and is constantly interrupted in his daily life, especially when trying to record the show, by phone calls by friends and family (voiced by his actual friends and family, who show up in older episodes of This American Life, especially in one non-fiction segment where one of his friends turns out to be wildly successful with NYC's restaurant staff and deliverypeople!) Thus, the majority of the show is composed of telephone conversations. Think Seinfeld if George Costanza were the main character, Jewish, and everyone else was Kramer. There are also segments where Goldstein interviews children out of character, as he used to on This American Life. Goldstein's a pretty talented writer, and fond of the slow-build (as is clear from occasional standup segments in the show), but the show sticks to its central premise so well that it can feel repetitive, so I've found myself listening to this show off and on, even if a few of my friends are devoted fans.
The Thrilling Adventure Hour: Another long-running show that wrapped up this year, this show consisted of humorous radio plays in the style of classic radio plays, and was performed live on a stage in LA with a recurring cast and high-profile guest actors such as John Hodgman (a This American Life alum) and Felicia Day. Several recurring segments spawned comic books, especially the sketches that combined The Thin Man's alcoholic socialites with Ghostbusters, and "Sparks Nevada: Marshall on Mars," a melodrama Western set on, well, Mars. The script is brilliant, the voice actors talented, the live mistakes charming, and everyone on stage really gets into singing the theme songs. Plus there's a segment involving members of the Algonquin Round Table with superpowers, and one involving a Amelia Earhart traveling through time to fight Nazis, and one with combining Batman and Aquaman, and, and, and!
The Memory Palace: NPR veteran Nate DiMeo spends 5-10 minutes telling a story from American history, usually from the 19th century, almost always really obscure. The stories are moving, the endings reflective and thoughtful. I've heard people sometimes cry at the end, and used to save episodes for bed.
Snap Judgment: Although the show came about when the host, Glenn Washington, won an NPR contest, this show owes a lot to This American Life. Producers tell people's stories via interviews, which are often more dramatic than on This American Life. There is also more fiction, with the host telling one of his short stories in many episodes (as well as actual bits from his life---they can be hard to tell apart!) The sound design is quite good, in part because the show has its own DJ. It was a bit shocking for me to see what everyone looked like (they're all so young!), but take a look at the biographies of the show's crew, and you'll get an idea of the experiences they bring with them, which come out in the show. As an example, here's part of Washington's biography, which misses some of the countries he spent years in:
"educator, diplomat, community activist, actor, political strategist, fist-shaker, mountain-hollerer, and foot stomper. Glynn composed music for the Kunst Stoff dance performances in San Francisco, rocked live spoken word poetry in Detroit, joined a band in Indonesia, wrote several screenplays, painted a daring series of self portraits, released a blues album, and thinks his stories are best served with cocktails."
The Moth: Inspired by the host's tradition of getting together with friends and telling stories late into the night, this show consists of recordings from hundreds of live shows where people tell a 15-minute story from their lives in front of a large audience, usually tied to a theme, and sometimes as part of a competition. The show has spawned storytelling workshops which often work with youth or underprivileged demographics, and sometimes features regulars, such as Jon Ronson (who shows up on a lot of these podcasts), and a man from Savannah, Georgia who speaks in an unsettling accent that brings to mind a Hollywood vampire.
The Truth: Modern-day radio plays, with excellent sound design, and sometimes with horror aspects. I feel like it's gone downhill since its first two years, but it's definitely worth listening to!
Reporting
Radio Spätkauf: It's not especially well-done or good, but this podcast does help me keep track of news in Berlin better than Deutsche Welle's "Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten."
Love + Radio: I have a love/hate relationship with this one, and often skip episodes a few minutes in. Generally, the show consists of an extended interview with someone in the seedy underbelly of American society, from an investigative report to a strip club manager, from a dominatrix to a black musician who became famous for befriending and deradicalizing white supremacists. These interviews, several of which won awards, are almost entirely composed of monologues spliced together with no background information, and with excellent sound design, and sometimes stick in your head.
On the Media: I have a serious crush on this show. As recently stated in a mutual interview between one of the cohosts and Alec Baldwin, "We try to understand how the media works and figure out what's wrong with it ... we believe what's wrong with the media has nothing to do what people think, but ... laziness, stenography, false balance.." The hosts have the best vocabularies on-air, and are dogged in pursuit of the truth to an extent that's rare (witness one go after an Exxon spokesperson trying to skirt revelations that Exxon had discovered that fought to hide global warming since the 70s), but manage to retain a sense of humor throughout, which makes for consistently enjoyable interviews. The show serves as a media watchdog and commentator, but also features serious and in-depth, but still interesting discussions of media ethics, trends, and experiments.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! I wasn't really sure where to put this, the American/radio version of QI, this comedy news game show features a rotating panel of comedians who answer questions, crack jokes, and interact with contestants who call in from around the world to judge which of several unlikely stories is real, or to answer news-related questions in limerick form. The host shares Stephen Colbert's ability to think on his feet and think of a punchline for everything without seeming mean, while the other regulars help make this show the most consistently funny on air. (Fun fact: a show was recorded at my American alma mater during my first month there).
The New Yorker: Politics and More: (AKA: "The Political Scene" until a few weeks ago). Low sound quality betrays this show's print roots as an extension of The New Yorker magazine. However, while the format is simply the hostess asking questions of 1-2 staff writers, these staff writers are among the best living journalists, and tend to have fairly accurate analysis. Still, I sometimes consider dropping this one.
Planet Money: Itself a spinoff of This American Life's "Giant Pool of Money" episode, which won one of TAL's five Peabody Awards and spawned a surprisingly long Wikipedia article and four follow-up episodes further documenting the mortgage crisis (with the help of "Toxie," a toxic asset purchased by reporters), this show's producers have gone off to start the podcast company Gimlet and several podcasts. Despite the brain drain that has occurred in the 663 episodes since the "Giant Pool of Money," this show is going strong, as it takes obscure and seemingly uninteresting and complex parts of the economy, and renders them transparent and interesting. This show is a vital aid in understanding some economic aspects, and is also quite enjoyable in and of itself!
DecodeDC: Founded by a veteran NPR reporter, this podcast does what it says on the label. It has expanded to include several producers and reporters and has been bought out by the Scripps Washington Bureau. It's decent, but I keep considering dropping this one, too.
In-depth Exploration
Song Exploder: Musicians pick apart one of their songs, piece by piece, layer by layer, explaining where the effects come from, their motivations, the meaning of the song lyrics, and their inspirations and mistakes. When you finally hear all the pieces together in the end, as the full song plays, it's a great feeling. I've discovered some good music through this podcast.
99% Invisible: Podcasts feel intensely personal. You listen to someone's voice in your ear for hours, listen to them change and mature. In the case of host Roman Mars (real name!), whose initial episodes were delivered in a near-whisper so as not to disturb his sleeping baby, you even hear their children grow up (for years, the final ad included a clip from one of his precocious sons whose vocabularies grew and voices deepened as the show went on). With a nerdy enthusiasm for flags(!) and obscure but important bits of design, like lifesaving Plimsoll Lines, Mars(!) makes the hidden fascinating. Wildly successful Kickstarter campaigns have helped fund several other reporter/producers, and covered their insurance costs as well.
StartUp: A side effect of the personal nature of podcasts are the sense of loyalty audiences feel with hosts. I began listening to this podcast despite having no interest in startups (I hadn't been in Estonia long enough yet) simply because the host was Alex Blumberg, cowriter of TAL's "The Big Pool of Money," and cofounder of Planet Money. Season 1 of this show was about the podcast itself, and the foundation of a podcast company, Gimlet Media, by the host, and included painful discussions with the founder's wife and potential investors, and the negotiations required at every step, especially when figuring out how to bring in a business partner. Season 2 changed the format a bit, following the creation of a dating startup run by women, and future seasons will follow other startups. It's also interesting to hear behind-the-scenes information of how the company is run as it expands and runs into new problems.
Mystery Show: Season 1 was only 6 shows, but it started out fairly strong, and quickly got so weak that I would have stopped listening had I not enjoyed host Starlee Kine's work for This American Life and Wiretap, and had the show not been a part of Gimlet. The show's premise is simple: Kine investigates a mystery that cannot be solved online. The charming episode about the belt buckle, which I listened to as I poked through the ruins of Liepaja, Latvia, helped me through a particularly bad day and convinced me to go keep going through the episodes about Jake Gyllenhaal and "Welcome Back Kotter."
Radiolab: One of NPR's flagship shows, nearing TAL's popularity, Radiolab has been in its current format for more than a decade, but only cranks out a few shows per year, plus some "shorts." Hosted by a veteran science reporter and an experimental musician, this show approaches complex scientific and philosophical subjects and makes them easily understandable in an imaginative and entertaining manner (such as explaining economic policy via a fictional opera), winning Peabodies and other awards in the process. Their live shows are pretty fantastic too.
Invisibilia: What happens when you combine Radiolab and TAL (its hosts produced both shows), Invisibilia focuses on the invisible phenomena that shape human behavior. It's promising, but has only had a few episodes, released almost a year ago.
Reply All: A spinoff of On the Media's tech spinoff TLDR (Gimlet poached TLDR's producers, much as it has now shanghaied Planet Monday's original cohosts), this show is devoted to the internet. The hosts are lovely people who find interesting stories, and show much of what happens behind the scenes of their show and their company. Unlike most shows about the internet, this podcast isn't just two people chatting in a room, or with the occasional guest---the hosts travel to meet with people affected by the internet in interesting ways (like a family whose pug was "kidnapped by the internet.") In one memorable August show, one of the hosts looks out the window, talks about what a beautiful day it's been and how they've been too busy to enjoy it. For the rest of the episodes, the hosts wander around New York, interviewing random people, getting stuck on a boat on the Hudson, and jumping onto a rusty nail on the rooftop of an abandoned factory in Brooklyn late at night.
Serial: The final TAL spinoff on this list, this show became the most popular podcast of all time shortly after being released a year ago, with 40 million downloads by the time its first season wrapped up (it had 68 million downloads 5 months after the first episode aired). Serial investigates one story over the course of a season, in the eponymous serial format. Season 1 investigated a high schooler's murder in 1999, but ended inconclusively. What Season 2 will be is anyone's guess, but is unlikely to be another murder.
Freakonomics Radio: The coauthors of the Freakonimics series of pop economics books are the cohosts of this weekly series, which shadows the aims of the books---trying to explain various phenomena with quantitative economics, and relies heavily on fairly entertaining interviews with professors. Although I am always considering dropping this podcast, it is sometimes the number 1 podcast on iTunes, getting up to 6 million downloads a week.
Under Evaluation
I am still trying out these newer podcasts. As you can imagine, despite all the time I spend walking and biking in circles around Berlin, the above podcasts don't leave me with much time!
Surprisingly Awesome, Serendipity, Reveal, The Duncan Trussel Family Hour, The Joe Rogan Experience, and How to Be Amazing with Michael Black.
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