Nate DiMeo hosts The Memory Palace, a podcast of short, narrated stories from American and world history.
HN commenters recommend it warmly, calling it a favorite podcast and linking episodes on topics such as the wheel, a year without summer, and handwashing.
Here's my playlist. First the good ones that are actively in my queue (in general order of recommendation):
- The Memory Palace: http://thememorypalace.us/ (these are stunningly good historical stories)
- On the Media: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/otm/
- Reply All: https://gimletmedia.com/reply-all/ (this is the one I expected to see on every list at hackernews, and don't)
- The Gist: http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/gist.html
- The Daily: https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-daily
- 99% Invisible: http://99percentinvisible.org/
- Economist Radio: https://radio.economist.com/
- New Yorker Radio Hour: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/tnyradiohour/
- Planet Money: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/ (not the juggernaut of content they once were)
- This American Life: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/
Shorter series (or just defunct or really rarely updated) that I can recommend to this crowd:
- Zachtronics Podcast: http://www.zachtronics.com/podcast/
- Revisionist History: http://revisionisthistory.com/ (should be starting a new season soon)
- Mystery Show: https://gimletmedia.com/mystery-show/
- A Life Well Wasted: http://alifewellwasted.com/ (great videogamey series)
- Containers: https://www.flexport.com/blog/alexis-madrigal-containers-podcast/
- S-Town: https://stownpodcast.org/
Listening at 1.8x for most of these shows forces me to pay attention, and let's me consume more content. The exception is for The Memory Palace which deserves to be heard exactly as…
I used GPT to add links and short descriptions :)
My current listens:
• 99% Invisible (https://99percentinvisible.org): Design's unnoticed marvels explored.
• Articles of Interest (https://www.radiotopia.fm/podcasts/articles-of-interest): A podcast about clothing, style, and wear.
• Conversations with Tyler (https://conversationswithtyler.com): Tyler Cowen's dialogues on economics and culture.
• Derek Sivers (https://sive.rs): Musings of a musician turned entrepreneur.
• Radiolab (https://www.radiolab.org): A journey through curious scientific and philosophical landscapes.
• The Memory Palace (https://thememorypalace.us): History's footnotes brought to life.
• Cortex (https://www.relay.fm/cortex/): Two YouTubers discuss productivity and workflow.
• What's Your Problem? (https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem): Problem-solving strategies in business and life.
• Software Unscripted (https://twitter.com/sw_unscripted?lang=en): Conversations on the realities of software engineering.
Bingeworthy series that are completed or on indefinite hiatus:
• S-Town (https://stownpodcast.org/): A deep dive into a quixotic Alabama tale.
• The Anthropocene Reviewed (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anthropocene-reviewed): John Green reviews facets of the human-centered planet.
• On the Metal (https://oxide.computer/podcast/on-the-metal): Tech veterans unpack computing and engineering layers.
• Björk: Sonic Symbolism …
I knew I'd heard recently about someone brilliant who had obsessed over bus tickets. Thanks for helping me recall it.
A recent episode of Radiolab, dated August 27, 2019, introduced a large audience (including me) to another podcast, The Memory Palace:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/memory-palace
With that strong endorsement I began going through the whole back-catalog of The Memory Palace, and Episode 36, dated January 7, 2011, “six scenes from the life of william james sidis, wonderful boy”, talks about Sidis' obsession with bus tickets. Or maybe more precisely, streetcar transfers.
http://thememorypalace.us/2011/01/six-scenes-in-the-life-of-william-james-sidis-wonderful-boy/
I think it said he figured out ways to traverse great distances on a single fare by connecting transfers. That kind of graph traversal thinking strikes me as ahead of its time for the age of streetcars, and could plausibly have led to some interesting places.
I get enough tech in my daily life, so I look to podcasts to enrich my life in other dimensions and teach me new things. Here are some of my favorites:
* Cooking, food, and molecular gastronomy; Cooking Issues: http://www.heritageradionetwork.org/programs/51-Cooking-Issues
* Outdoor adventure; Dirtbag Diaries: http://dirtbagdiaries.com
* Music and poetic music breakdown (uniquely well-suited to audio as a medium); Song Exploder: http://songexploder.net
* History; the Memory Palace: http://thememorypalace.us
* Design; 99% Invisible: http://99percentinvisible.org
* Electic subjects: http://loveandradio.org
* RadioLab: http://www.radiolab.org
I'd love to find a good fiction podcast, with either short form stories or episodic long form arcs in the fashion of old-school radio shows.
Voices. Music. Emotions. Whimsy.
Try this episode of "The Memory Palace": http://thememorypalace.us/2012/12/dreamland/
That's four minutes twenty-five seconds you might find not wasted. And none of the information in it is likely to be useful to you whatsoever.
I listen to podcasts while I'm doing the dishes, cleaning the floor, cooking, tidying the house, sewing patches, reseating the heatsink onto a GPU. No need to be driving.
Pop songs are usually an incredibly inefficient way to consume information too, but I listen to those a lot. I wonder if you do.
Handwashing became less important than mask wearing, but The Memory Palace did a fantastic episode of 20-second stories for hand washing:
https://thememorypalace.us/music-to-wash-hands-by/
He recently named it his Episode of the Year, despite it being only November, because there was nothing going to top it.