I listen to several dozen podcasts, usually when doing boring tasks like errands, dishes, or car trips, on the order of 5-8 hours per week, and mostly at the expense of time I used to spend listening to music.
Podcast discovery is still a mostly-broken problem, so I thought I’d share what I normally listen to, and how I prioritize them. To date, I probably found most of these on the word-of-mouth recommendations of a friend or random links in Twitter or Facebook. There isn’t really a good app to share podcasts quite yet (Breaker seems to be getting there), so posts like this will suffice. I hope you spot something you’re interested in, because everything here is something I’ve enjoyed. Also, if you run a podcast and see it on this list, know that I love you and your work but I only have so many hours in the day so I had to prioritize somehow so try not to take it personally if your podcast is low on these lists.
I drop everything to listen to these, usually within hours of them coming out:
These are my next priority, and I usually listen to these within a day or two of release:
- Death, Sex & Money
- Judge John Hodgman
- The Golden Horseshoe Review: A Disney Theme Park Podcast
- The Good Place: The Podcast
- The Allusionist
- Welcome to Macintosh
- Omnibus! With Ken Jennings and John Roderick
- Heavyweight
- My Brother, My Brother And Me
- Earn Yr Death
- Movie Crush
- Who Shot Ya?
I listen to these within a week of them coming out
- 99% Invisible
- Bullseye with Jesse Thorn
- Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
- Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It
- the memory palace
- The Hilarious World of Depression
- Criminal
- Track Changes
- Invisibilia
- Medium Playback
- Couples Therapy with Candice and Casey
- Revisionist History
- Road Work
- Science Vs
- Zebracast
- On Margins
I get to these eventually, usually on a long road trip, or when I want to binge listen after letting a bunch of shows stack up:
- Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project
- StartUp Podcast
- Hello From The Magic Tavern
- Converge with Casey Newton
- Stoner
One-off, special short run shows that don’t come up often:
Shows I occasionally pick up an episode when I hear it’s a good one:
I miss these long-gone shows so much:
(by the way, it may seem like a shit-ton of podcasts here, but on average only about a quarter of them are publishing once a week steadily. Many go weeks or months without a new episode.)
A Whole Lotta Nothing 
That’s a lot. What app do you use? Do you listen at more than 1x? I find when running I can listen at about 1.75x but i struggle to keep up with my (smaller than you) list.
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I listen to things at 1.3x speed in Overcast. My total time per week might be closer to 10hrs sometimes, but I have something like 1.5Gb of unlistened to episodes and I don’t treat it as an inbox zero thing. I feel like I hit close to 100% on the first list, 75% of the second, and so on and so on, where I’m not listening to absolutely everything.
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Overcast is my podcatcher as well. There’s a lot on your list that I’ve never heard. For that, thanks.
I’d add, in no particular order:
‘Where Should We Begin? by Esther Perel’;
‘What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law’;
‘Song Exploder’;
‘More Perfect’;
‘The Bible for Normal People’.
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Oh god, I had to quit the Trump Con Law one, it was way too depressing…
Does Song Exploder make sense on unfamiliar songs? I never became a diehard fan since 75% of the guests were doing music I’ve never heard (the songs I did know were absolutely killer).
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I’ve heard both songs I know and new ones. But my music tastes are diverse. Song Exploder is the only podcast I listen to at 1x 🙂 Songs I know and love are unloveable at 1.75x.
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