Anton’s Fav Podcasts

6 min readMar 6, 2016

For today’s episode of The Debriefing, let’s talk podcasts

I’m a big fan of podcasts. They’re convenient, portable and fantastic for long trips or the morning commute. Podcasts have been around since the iPod days, but now they’ve really hit their stride. IMO We’re living in the golden age for the medium. As such, I made a mission to gather up my favorites. It’s called “Great Podcasts”.

Here’s my mission completion proof:

All screenshots taken from the Pocket Casts app.

I got into podcasts on a trip to visit my sister in Oswego, NY. The drive there is 3+ hours from Albany and I get bored easy. Usually I listen to audio books via Audible, but I kept hearing people talk about the podcast Serial so I downloaded Pocket Casts on my phone (I highly recommend it) and got all of the episodes of Serial for our trip.

Serial (Season 1) was incredible. It was full of interesting people and was centered on a real-life murder mystery. When we finally got to Oswego, we didn’t want to get out of the car.

After Serial I was hooked and was starting to suffer withdrawal so I went searching. Serial was my gateway into the world of podcasts. Two years later, I put together this list of favorites.

The Debrief

Since all of these shows are sensational, I’ll talk about each one individually.

StartUp
This was my next obsession after Serial. I discovered it on a whim while browsing through podcasts to listen to on Pocket Casts. The premise is interesting, it’s a podcast about the creation of a startup company for producing high-quality podcasts ;). I highly recommend this to anyone, but make sure you listen to the episodes in order (like Serial). I started listening because I’m interested in startups (hence Checkverse), but you don’t need to care about any of that to like this. Alex Blumberg, the host and founder/CEO, is new to the whole idea of starting a company so he takes the audience along for the ride. It’s really amazing to hear how the company gets off the ground.

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Interestingly enough, this podcast is the second show produced by the company started in the StartUp podcast. Hosted by Alex Goldman and P J Vogt, each episode discusses something related to the Internet. Since the Internet pretty much touches on everything, so does the show. Order doesn’t matter for this podcast, each episode stands on its own. In fact, I highly recommend their most recent episode “Zardulu” to get yourself started. The show is like a more hip version of This American Life. I really like the odd chemistry between Alex and P J. I’ve never listened to a bad episode and you can tell they really love what they’re doing.

This American Life
This podcast I actually first encountered as a television series. It was on Netflix for a bit and was incredibly engaging. I still remember the story about the bull “Chance” who was cloned after death as “2nd Chance”. After watching the show, I started listening to the podast. Unlike the other podcasts on this list, each episode is made up of several little stories. The episodes are about an hour long and connect the stories together with a theme. It’s hosted by Ira Glass and is like the mother of all podcasts. In fact, it begat Serial. Some of the stories are so-so, but there’s lots of amazing one’s too. The production value is always incredibly high.

Radiolab
I found this podcast from reading a best-of list. It’s hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. The episodes cover a wide variety of topics and can be listened to out of order. The production value is also super high. My favorite episode so far is “American Football”. It covered the history of the sport, and what, or should I say who, “Pop Warner” is. The sound editing of each episode is stellar and sets this show apart.

Planet Money
This podcast was actually started by Alex Blumberg (the StartUp founder) several years ago. It’s a show with short episodes that cover things related to economics. The episodes are really interesting and always spur me to do further research on the topics they cover. One of my favorite episodes is on the invention of the shipping container: “Episode 500: The Humble Innovation At The Heart Of The Global Economy”. Despite being always about economics, this show is easy listening for anyone. The hosts always explain everything simply.

99% Invisible
Hosted by Roman Mars, this is a podcast about design, a topic that also touches almost everything. Roman has a very relaxing voice and is obsessed with design. A lot of the episodes are just ok, but there’s also several really incredible ones like this episode on the design of money: “The Colour of Money”.

WTF with Marc Maron
I think Mark Maron is the world’s best interviewer. There’s something about him or his show that just makes people feel comfortable enough to open up and talk about real things. Marc hosts the show out of his garage and has one or more celebrity guests on each episode. He even interviewed President Obama. Marc is super prolific and puts out a lot of episodes. Usually I scan through to see who he’s interviewing, but there have been times where interviewees I wasn’t looking forward to ended up being really cool and changed my opinion of them. I haven’t listened to every episode and you have to pay to listen to the back catalog, but my favorite one so far is when he interviews Patrick Stewart AKA Captain Picard AKA Professor Xavier.

Mystery Show
This show has a really odd and intriguing concept: what if you were to get to the bottom of life’s little mysteries, the ones that most people would otherwise ignore? Host Starlee Kine discovers things like Jake Gyllenhaal’s real height and why someone has the license plate “ILUV911”. It’s another podcast from the company started in StartUp. There’s only a few episodes, but every single one is perfect.

Serial
As I said before, Serial is what got me into podcasts in the first place. In fact, it’s a major reason Alex Blumberg decided to start a podcasting company. He saw its reach and figured now is the time for this medium. The show is hosted by Sarah Koenig. So far there have been 1.9 seasons. Season 1 covers the murder of a high school girl. Season 2 (which is still going right now) covers military deserter and Taliban prisoner, Bowe Bergdahl. Season 1 was incredible. Season 2 is alright. I think it suffers from Bowe not being all that charismatic compared to the people from Season 1. This show is important to listen to in-order starting from Season 1. The episodes are about an hour long each.

So there you have it, that’s my favorite podcasts (so far). I really enjoy them and hope you will too!

Till next time!
Anton

That concludes this episode of The Debriefing. If you like it then you shoulda putta heart on it.

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Or, for more of The Debriefing, check out the other episodes via these convenient hyperlinks:

Anton’s Fav Podcasts

The Debrief

Written by Anton