I’ve been rather obsessed with consuming information/stories in the form of podcasts, but on another level during COVID. What would otherwise be the voices of coworkers, friends, or strangers, I’ve filled with podcast hosts and interviewees. Sometimes the podcasts or the information makes me sad, like stories about racial inequity or tragedy, but I feel irresponsible not hearing these voices. But mostly, I can’t live all the lives so I live them through other people’s stories and experiences.
Here are my picks with what they’re about, their hosts, and why I like them. The bolded titles are podcasts that are my favorites with consistently great episodes.
How to Be a Girl - “is an audio podcast I produce about life with my six-year-old transgender daughter. It stars the two of us — a single mom and a six-year-old ‘girl with a penis’ — as we attempt together to sort out just what it means to be a girl.” I’ve recently asked myself this: what makes me feel like a lady? This audio journey is so intimate and revealing as to the ways we internalize (and externalize) gender. Emma, at such a young age, could articulate exactly what she felt in this process. This podcast is one of the best audio stories I’ve ever heard. So intimate. So compelling. Just listen to the whole thing IN ORDER.
Nancy - “with Tobin Low and Kathy Tu. Stories and conversations about the queer experience today”. I’ve always been curious about LGBTQ+ experiences but Kathy and Tobin are the reason why I’ve stayed. Kathy and Tobin are gay Asian Americans who interview their community, their loved ones, and themselves about topics ranging from how to find your gaggle to experiences in the military during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
Top row, from left: Jon M. Chu, Dante Basco, Niki Nakayama, John Cho; middle row: Dumbfoundead, Mina Kimes, Padma Lakshmi, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jet Tila; bottom row: Rabia Chaudry, Lulu Wang, Sung Kang, Margaret Cho. (Shenho Hshieh)
Asian Enough - “From the Los Angeles Times, “Asian Enough” is a podcast about being Asian American -- the joys, the complications and everything else in between. In each episode, hosts Jen Yamato and Frank Shyong invite celebrity guests to share their personal stories and unpack identity on their own terms. They explore the vast diaspora across cultures, backgrounds and generations, share ‘Bad Asian Confessions,’ and try to expand the ways in which being Asian American is defined”. I particularly love the hosts’ conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen that touches what the heck cultural authenticity means.
Ear Hustle - I BINGED this podcast series about incarceration but told from inside the penitentiary (thanks, Paula, for the reccommendation!). This podcast is hosted by Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods, and their friendship chemistry is just to die for. These stories aren’t focused on the crimes that put these men in prison but around their daily lives. Each cellmate that’s interviewed is endlessly thoughtful and personable. I also love hearing all the lingo, like catching a kite, birdbaths, and the boom boom room. They also covered stories throughout the pandemic. For another podcast centered around incarceration but focuses on rap/hip hop, check out Louder than a Riot.
Shereen Marisol Meraji and Gene Demby, hosts of Code Switch
Code Switch - “Remember when folks used to talk about being "post-racial"? Well, we're definitely not that. We're a multi-racial, multi-generational team of journalists fascinated by the overlapping themes of race, ethnicity, and culture, how they play out in our lives and communities, and how all of this is shifting”. Code Switch has been talking about race since 2013 so they have quite a large collection. They’ve given me the language to speak about race, like “rep sweats”.
Rabbit Hole - “Introducing an audio series about how the internet is changing, and how it’s changing us”. “We set out on a yearlong project to make a narrative audio series that would tell the stories of people who were shaping, and being shaped by, the internet,” writes the host, Kevin Roose. In this era of ideological polarization, this series tells the tale of radicalization through consumers and technologists of YouTube and other platforms with content selection algorithms. As someone who doesn’t talk to or understand the radical right, I developed empathy for how someone could develop such opposing views.
PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman of Reply All. Image courtesy of Spotify/Gimlet
Reply All - The “OG” and most popular podcast about the internet. PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman continue their previous podcast TLDR but through a different radio company, Gimlet. This podcast is all over the place, from YikYak enabled racism at Colgate to my favorite periodic segment called “Yes Yes No”. “Yes Yes No” is founded on internet ignorance, where our hilarious hosts have to explain an internet phenomenon to their boss, Alex Blumberg. One of the best “Yes Yes No” segments is called “Voyage into Pizzagate”, unraveling the conspiracy theory of John Podesta and Comet Ping Pong, but framed around internet groups and forums. The hosts’ favorite episodes are: “The Case of the Missing Hit”, “Long Distance”, and “The SnapChat Thief” [AV Club].
How to Save a Planet - Let’s talk about climate change in a way that isn’t totally depressing. Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg explore topics like the money of renovating old buildings, the state of nuclear power, how electric cars are all-around better for the environment than gas cars, and indigenous knowledge. They end each episode with an explicit list of action items that can be done RIGHT NOW, like installing the search browser extension, Ecosia, which plants trees for every search!
The Daily - New York Times’ audio version of the daily news. Definitely a liberal bias. “The biggest stories of our time. Hosted by Michael Barbaro. Twenty minutes a day, five days a week.”
Alie Ward and a guest! Image courtesy of Alie Ward. Check out her website!
Radiolab - “The show is known for its deep-dive journalism and innovative sound design”. An oldie but a good one. I’ve grown a little tired of the sound bite sampling and feel the episodes are overproduced but the content is still great. The journalists cover a wide array of human-centric topics. Radiolab hosts many mini-series, which are great longer-form audio journalism. We’ve got a mini-series about consent called “In the No” (so good, please check it out), the rights (more like lack of rights) of prisoners of war called “The Other Latif”, and how we measure human intelligence “G” (hint, IQ is imbued with racism).
Ologies with Alie Ward - While I was interviewing for faculty positions, one of my favorite things I took from that experience was to talk to people who were just so darned passionate about their research. Alie gets to have that kind of interaction with fun, passionate, smart folks, where Alie is half the delight! Alie is a great interviewer because she doesn’t ask questions that try to prove she’s smart; she just asks good questions. I learn and laugh listening to each episode that focuses on one field that ends in -ology. My favorite episodes include Mythology the study of stories (did you know superhero movies are more popular in times of crises?) and Agnotology the study of ignorance (did you know for every bad thing you can buy, there’s a dedicated lobbyist?).
Planet Money Mission Patch. Photographed by Annabel Edwards/Designed by Ryan Troy Ford
Planet Money - Economics is endlessly fascinating because of its omnipresence. These twenty minutes episodes are very bingeable and at times, blow my freaking mind. Like the Modern Monetary Theory episode, imagine instead of taxing people to pay for programs ahead of time, the government creates as much money as they want to pay for programs and tax people after the fact to control inflation? Or are you curious about BitCoin and why the heck the value of BitCoin has skyrocketed? How about how opting-in or nudges can increase the amount of tax revenue a government can collect?
The Indicator from Planet Money - Pretty much a shorter version of Planet Money with the lovely hosts, Stacey Vanek Smith and Cardiff Garcia.
Women at Work - Are you a professional woman? Do you think about topics like how to grapple with sexism at work and how to support your sisters of color? This pod gives brings in academics/industry leaders to report on studies and give advice on making yourself heard, couples that work, leading with authenticity, and minding the (wage) gap. There are so many episodes that you can scroll through that you’re likely to find an episode that resonates with a problem you’re experiencing.
Nora McInerny is the host of the Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast. She's also the author of the book It's Okay to Laugh: (Crying Is Cool Too). Image courtesy of Kylee Leonetti
The Cut - Outside being a professional woman, do you still identify with that woman part? Or maybe you’re just interested in topics surrounding being a lady? (please be!) This podcast explores topics like the insidious “likeability” of female politicians, rhetoric around abortions, and ownership around photos taken of your body.
Unladylike - Unapologetic feminists explore the marrying off of “maiden names”, demystifying female anatomy, and estranged parents.
Stuff Mom Never Told You - Wow, I have a lot of feminist podcasts. OK, so this last one had a good one recently about the role women play in the alt-right movement. They also explore involuntary celibates! Fun! Outside of these dark pockets of sexism, they also profile badass women and Femme Firsts.
Pod Save America - Four former aides to Obama are the political pundits that comforted me throughout the Trump era. They were preaching to the choir because there was no attempt to reach across the aisle here. These four poli-bros comment, more like rag, on all the crazy stuff that was happening.
Terrible, Thanks for Asking - People are so resilient, and yet there are so many things to grieve. I call this my tragedy podcast where I hear about all the experiences that are hard to talk about, so people don’t talk about it. This podcast normalizes sadness and peels back the humility these experiences can have on someone. Nora McInerny opens the podcast about her own experience with her now-deceased husband’s struggle through brain cancer, her miscarriage, and then her father’s death all within a few months. Sometimes, life is just awful so let’s talk about it and support each other. I know this sounds hella sad, but Nora is really funny and the interviewees can still laugh and kid despite all the trauma. This podcast has really taught me how grieving people want to be talked to (hint, acknowledging the elephant in the room is way better than not) and how to take care of myself when I grieve.
I first saw Nicole Byer as a host on the show ‘Nailed It!’ She’s 50% of the show to me. Check out her Instagram but she is seriously fabulous. Image courtesy of Netflix
Why Won’t You Date Me? with Nicole Byer - Hard pivot. Nicole Byer, comedian extraordinaire, asks previous dates and hookups “why won’t you date me”? Brutally honest and hysterical, Nicole talks about everything: relationships, sketch/stand-up comedy, and the most random delightful tidbits. Nicole’s guests are typically comedians so the whole show propagates with the “yes AND” mentality that comes with sketch comedy that tumbles the conversation into wild scenarios. Warning, Nicole is a NASTY woman; NSFW.
Bonus Round
Warning, confrontational politics. Podcasts that have since ended or I have stopped listening to:
Divided States of Women - After Trump got elected, I just so wanted to understand the other side, so I went looking for opposing views. “Too often, women are thought of as a monolithic block, and they were often discussed that way throughout the 2016 election. But women are in fact divided on major issues. Liz Plan (a progressive) and Hitha Herzog ( a conservative) are friends who get along but don’t always agree. Together, they cover the complicated, multifaceted, intersectional debates that make up the life of modern American women.”
The Joe Rogan Experience - Many dudes fanboy over Joe Rogan so I wanted to know what it’s all about. This podcast has a bad boy reputation of IDGAF free-speech, a rebellion against identity politics and political correctness. Joe Rogan’s podcast is speculated to be a gateway to more radical, alt-right beliefs, which scares me honestly (see here for a rebuttal). I just couldn’t relate to Joe Rogan, his guests, or the topics at hand. I like Joe Rogan’s authenticity and his desire to learn/grow from his guests but I disagree how he handles his immense power, inviting guests with terrible beliefs (Alex Jones, Sandy Hook denier) to have a platform. I don’t know how to feel about this podcast because free speech is important, but are these thoughts really worth spreading? I’m a believer that people should be exposed to all the ideas and make decisions for themselves but not all speech is distributed equally. The way we transmit ideas is influenced by the facts that ground the idea and the rhetoric crafted by the speaker. More than ever, I am discouraged by the way charismatic people can spread lies. Don’t be afraid of ideas, but please, be careful and seek all sides if available.
Original photos from the Bari Weiss profile article in NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html . Picture taken from: https://medium.com/@henziran/the-dangers-of-the-intellectual-dark-web-c398ad5d0a4c
The Rubin Report - Dave Rubin, the host, started this podcast when he, a true liberal, was kicked out of left communities for disagreeing with political correctness. I valued his perspective as a leftie who transitioned to libertarianism/conservatism (he voted for Trump). I liked his interview with Andrew Yang! But after listening to many interviews, he lets his guests walk all over him (I don’t think he has solid beliefs anymore), he doesn’t challenge his guests hard enough, and he’s more driven by his rejection from the left than seeking the truth. I think he takes a lot of pride in being in a club called the “Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW), a group of intellectuals who dislike political correctness and pride themselves in free-thinking. Honestly, the conversations seemed to be layered with self-aggrandisement/self-importance (“aren’t we so edgy and smart? aren’t we above it all?”). There was too much ego and not enough information/insightful conversations for me to justify my time.
The Ben Shapiro Show - We’ve been progressing farther right on the political spectrum. Ben Shapiro was my liaison for far-right rhetoric and he had some reputation for “taking down a college liberal at speaking event”. Listening to him took a lot of emotional bandwidth because he sharply criticizes liberal ideas in a very condescending way. Still, this is how his target audience sees the left and I wanted to understand. Unfortunately, because his ideas were so far right, I couldn’t logically connect how we got from one source of truth to end perspectives that were so far apart. Definitely give it a listen to get a taste!
Lex Fridman Podcast - Let’s end this podcast list by coming up for air. Lex is an artificial intelligence researcher at MIT and really looks up to Joe Rogan. He has highly intellectual conversations with IDW types and researchers. Lex comes off as a genuinely nice dude with optimism and love. I get a little cringe listening to intellectual conversations even though I love to have them myself. It’s kind of like telling people about dreams, means a lot to you but can mean very little to the person who’s listening.
Serial - Tapestry of stories trying to untangle the events surrounding the death of Hae Min Lee in 1999. Not so much that the events were that interesting but this level of journalism was phenomenal.
S-Town - Same storytelling skill as Serial, S-Town focuses on the life of John, who despises his Alabama town.