Ok, so i pretty much am constantly listening to something in the bacground, usually a podcast or creeypasta, and yeah its a problem
But while i work on that, i need some podcasts to listen to and i am mostly out of material
My two Criteria are:
- The format is a conversation between two or more friends
- its not about tech, enough people recommendation those around here
My Brother My Brother and Me probably fits the bill.
The Box of Oddities is really good. Husband and wife team talking about spooky and Fortean topics.
No Such Thing as a Fish, a podcast spinoff of the UK TV show QI. Four hosts each show up with an interesting bit of trivia to discuss.
The Bugle. Comedians doing political satire. Is UK-centric but ends up being about US politics a lot of the time.
If Books Could Kill. A couple guys tear apart popular self help books as well as pop-sci books like Freakonomics
And if you like If Books Could Kill, you might like Maintenance Phase, Michael’s other one with Aubrey about fitness bs.
Once We Were Spacemen - Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion reminiscing. Fairly new, so only a dozen or so episodes so far.
The Weekly Planet. - Melbourne lads, James and Maso riffing about pop culture. They’re hilarious. YEARS of content.
Once We Were Spaceman is great, but they need more Firefly references I reckon.
I’m listening to What Now with Trevor Noah right now. It’s a lot of Trevor just chatting with his friends or guests, and it’s usually pretty smart and funny. They have some techy guests but it’s not that predominantly.
Sorry for the self promotion, but I’m part of a group of atheistic Satanists who operate a podcast about books and reading called The Devil’s Library - its literally 4 friends talking each month about a particular book we agreed to read - bit like a book club I guess. It does skew horror/fantasy/scifi heavy I guess.
https://www.dolloppodcast.com/
The dollop. One guy does a deep dive on a topic and tells it to his friend who has no idea what the topic will be about. Highlights include: The Rube, The Newsie Strike, The 1904 Olympics, Fighting Irish vs The Klan, 10 Cent Beer Night, The NYC to Paris Car Race, Truck Nuts War, Boston Corbett, NJ Shark Attacks, and Cereal Men
If you’re into movies at all, Team Deakins is a casual conversation between GOAT cinematographer Roger Deakins, his wife/creative partner, and an actor or crew member. It’s very pleasant. There’s no agenda, so they just chat about life and the film industry. Sometimes it’s incredibly technical, and other times it’s funny or philosophical. For technical, the Matthew Libatique episode. For philosophical, Frances McDormand or David Dastmalchian.
Midnight Burger is a sci fi soap opera which is fun to listen to while doing things.
Car Talk is an old style radio show where people call in and talk about car troubles but even for non car enthusiasts it’s very relatable and entertaining as the hosts are great.
Secretly Incredibly Fascinating is akin to How Stuff Works and has a bunch of topics and two hosts that learn from each other on the topic.
We Were Told by the VLDL crew. If you aren’t familiar, they are YouTube creators out of NZ who started by make skits lovingly mocking video games and now have expanded into stuff like doing TTRPG and own their own studio with the biggest green screen in NZ, but they actually seem like really sweet, down to earth guys. I haven’t listened to their podcast since some of their early episodes, but it’s basically them just chatting with each other or a guest about random topics and it sounds like listening in on a conversation between some good friends. They don’t take themselves seriously and their first podcasts they liked to joke that they’re “3 white men doing a podcast, something that has never happened before”. Topics I listened to included mental health, the fact that two of them were an extra in Avatar and one actually has a blip of recognizable screen time and what it was like, their careers, having kids (one has a kid, one doesn’t want kids, and one is on the fence, and they even stopped to get the opinion of their woman producer when they started talking about how pregnancy affects women’s careers because they acknowledged it was sort of weird not to let a woman talk). I really need to add their podcast to my gym podcast playlist, I’ve just been catching up on podcasts related to my job.
Speaking of which, super niche, but if you have any interest in learning anything about EMS, I highly recommend the EMS 20/20 podcast. It’s two paramedics who are good friends who either review cases sent to them or who give each other DnD type medical scenarios and roll D20s to determine outcomes and there’s tons of educational stuff but it’s also really funny and light hearted and makes me laugh a lot.
Old Art Bell Coast to Coast AM shows, alien vampire ghost trails & the people who love them the older the better
The mighty boosh radio shows, scripted but it plays more like a podcast like comedy bang bang, lots of songs and the main focus is on two friends
It’s been a few years when I used to have a longer commute but I used to listen to Jay and miles X-Men podcast that was pretty fun, and philosophy bites interview style two hosts interview on a bunch of philosophy topics
Have you ever listened to Complexly’s Dear Hank & John? I enjoy that one, it’s usually the right kind of light and casual for background while still being interesting enough for active listening.
Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers is also pretty good if you like Seth Meyers’ style.
I enjoy the deprogram because it’s mostly lighthearted but the discussions generally revolve around radical politics. The members are an American communist propagandist, A Serb who experienced the destruction of Yugoslavia, and an Iraqi doctor who experienced being Iraqi in 2003. Its an interesting mix of perspectives and they are charismatic/entertaining people. They sometimes have guests on the show for when they want to discuss topics they don’t have experience with. Solid 8/10 podcast
I have a show called Fireside Fedi where I talk with folks from around the Fediverse. Sometimes it’s tech, sometimes it’s not. People getting to know people and projects.
https://tubefree.org/c/firesidefedi/videos
Also starting a new show called Works On My Machine Live. Where I try to install software and have the Dev on a call with me. Obviously that one will be techie though. :-D
Stoppodcastingyourself
I’ve been listening to Shite Talk: An Irish History Podcast (two friends talking a lot of shite, but also learning about Irish history), and have just listened to the first episode of The 2 Johnnies podcast (a pair of Inner city Dublin blokes, not sure what their topics are yet).
My partner has listened to Tommy, Hector and Laurita.
Lots of shite talking in all podcasts, which make them fun to listen to.
Shite Talk songs deadly! I’ve been trying to relearn Irish history for ages but haven’t found the right format yet. I have hopes for this one!
Gods they are so funny. They get the balance of shite talking and history down pat so you don’t feel like you haven’t learned anything.
I would also recommend the Blindboy Podcast as well. He does it solo, but he talks about anything and everything. Big mental health advocate so has episodes on that, some history, sometimes just what happened on the day.
Perfect, just what I want. Learning through entertainment while I hang laundry.
Blindboy I have a lot of respect for but haven’t been about to get into his podcast. I think I just like when there’s more than one person and they bounce off each other.
Yup. There are references that I don’t get, and probably never will, but they’re still really fun to listen to.
For Blindboy, I have to be doing something calm and nearly mindless to really focus on what he’s saying… So usually I’m either playing Slitherlink (at your own pace, just know how to count from 1 to 6), or stitching.
