Podcasts to try out

Good Job, Brain! was a quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. Good Job, Brain! began as a Kickstarter project on December 20, 2011. It is distributed on Stitcher, SoundCloud, iTunes, and the show's website.

The show's cast play pub trivia together as a team called "Baby Dog Time", named for hostess Karen Chu's dog.

The cast wrote a book, Good Job, Brain!: Trivia, Quizzes and More Fun From the Popular Pub Quiz Podcast, published in September 2016.

Generally, the program begins with "Pop Quiz, Hotshot", in which Karen reads questions from one randomly chosen Trivial Pursuit card. Most episodes are themed where the hosts prepare trivia and quizzes related to the theme. Every fifth episode is an "All Quiz Bonanza" where each host prepares a non-themed trivia quiz. A podcast listener wrote an "Um, Actually" jingle for Good Job, Brain!.

Criminal is a podcast that focuses on true crime. It is recorded in the studios of WUNC in Chapel Hill, NC, and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show describes itself as telling "stories of people who've done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle."

Steve Mirsky is a writer for Scientific American, the host of the magazine's longform science podcast, Science Talk. and the producer of the daily 60-Second Science podcast. Mirsky has also written Scientific American's monthly “Anti Gravity” column since 1995 until December 8, 2020.

Surprisingly Awesome was an American podcast formerly hosted by Adam Davidson and Adam McKay and subsequently hosted by Rachel Ward and frequently guest hosted by John Hodgman. In each episode, one of the hosts would take a seemingly boring topic, and try to make the other believe that it is interesting. These topics have varied from mold to interest rates. The podcast was hosted by Gimlet Media.

All Songs Considered is a weekly online multimedia program started in January 2000 by NPR's All Things Considered director Bob Boilen. At first, the show featured information and streaming audio about the songs used as bumper music on All Things Considered. The program has turned into a source of discovery for new music of all genres. In August 2005, the program began podcasting for free. In 2005, it began webcasting and podcasting live concerts from Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club, including acts such as Animal Collective, The Decemberists, Neko Case, and Tom Waits.

Boilen and producer/co-host Robin Hilton write a blog where they introduce music from unsigned and unknown bands and solicit ideas for shows from listeners. There was an online music channel, "All Songs 24/7", which used to stream music from the program's archive, however this was discontinued in March 2019.

HowStuffWorks is an American commercial infotainment website founded by professor and author Marshall Brain, to provide its target audience an insight into the way many things work. The site uses various media to explain complex concepts, terminology, and mechanisms—including photographs, diagrams, videos, animations, and articles.

Radiolab is a radio program produced by WNYC, a public radio station in New York City, and broadcast on public radio stations in the United States. The show is nationally syndicated and is available as a podcast. Live shows were first offered in 2008.

Mystery Show is a Gimlet Media podcast hosted by Starlee Kine that ran for one season in 2015. In each episode, Kine solves a minor mystery which cannot be solved with search engines alone. It was declared the best new podcast of 2015 by iTunes.

The Memory Palace is a monthly historical podcast hosted by Nate DiMeo that debuted in 2008. The program features historical narratives concerning such subjects as the Cardiff Giant and the CIA project Acoustic Kitty. It is currently distributed online by Radiotopia.

The Moth is a non-profit group based in New York City dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. Founded in 1997, the organization presents a wide range of theme-based storytelling events across the United States and abroad, often featuring prominent literary and cultural personalities alongside everyday people like veterans, astronauts, school teachers, and parents. The Moth offers a weekly podcast and in 2009 launched a national public radio show, The Moth Radio Hour, which won a 2010 Peabody Award. The Moth has published four books including The Moth: 50 True Stories (2013) reached #22 on The New York Times Paperback Nonfiction Best-Seller List; All These Wonders: True Stories about Facing the Unknown (2017); and Occasional Magic: True Stories About Defying the Impossible (2019) and How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth (2022). In September of 2022, The Moth published an interactive card deck called, A Game of Storytelling, which debut at #1 on Amazon's top selling card game list.

TED Conferences, LLC is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks in February 1984 as a tech conference, in which Mickey Schulhof gave a demo of the compact disc that was invented in October 1982. It has been held annually since 1990. TED covers almost all topics – from science to business to global issues – in more than 100 languages. To date, more than 13,000 TEDx events have been held in at least 150 countries.

HowStuffWorks is an American commercial infotainment website founded by professor and author Marshall Brain, to provide its target audience an insight into the way many things work. The site uses various media to explain complex concepts, terminology, and mechanisms—including photographs, diagrams, videos, animations, and articles.

The website was acquired by Discovery Communications in 2007 but was sold to Blucora in 2014. The site has since expanded out into podcasting, focusing on factual topics. In December 2016, HowStuffWorks, LLC became a subsidiary of OpenMail, LLC, later renamed System1. In 2018, the podcast division of the company, which had been spun-off by System1 under the name Stuff Media, was acquired by iHeartMedia for $55 million.

Ask Me Another is an hour-long radio puzzle game show that was produced by WNYC and National Public Radio. It was hosted by Canadian American comedian Ophira Eisenberg and featured as its "in-house musician" or "one-man house band" independent rock musician Jonathan Coulton. Episodes of the show were usually recorded at The Bell House in Brooklyn, New York, however the show did go to various states across the country and recorded one or more episodes from those locations. The show was produced by WNYC Studios. During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the show continued taping episodes from the homes of the participants, without a studio audience.

The show features four to five individual games based on puzzle topics, wordplay, and trivia, interspersed by chatter from the show's hosts, as well as a segment featuring an interview and one or more games involving the celebrity guest of the week, who was originally called the "Very Important Puzzler". More recent episodes have four games played in a two-round tournament format.

Freakonomics Radio is an American public radio program which discusses socioeconomic issues for a general audience. The show is a spin-off of the 2005 book Freakonomics. Journalist Stephen Dubner hosts the show, with economist Steven Levitt as a regular guest. The show is also distributed as a podcast, and is among the most popular on iTunes. Created in September 2010, it is a weekly podcast. From July 2018, production moved from WNYC to Stitcher Radio; Alison Craiglow is the Executive Producer. The staff of Freakonomics Radio includes Greg Rippin and Harry Huggins. Freakonomics is released at 11 p.m. on Wednesday each week. You can find the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and on their website.

HowStuffWorks is an American commercial infotainment website founded by professor and author Marshall Brain, to provide its target audience an insight into the way many things work. The site uses various media to explain complex concepts, terminology, and mechanisms—including photographs, diagrams, videos, animations, and articles.

Note to Self was a podcast hosted by Manoush Zomorodi that focuses on the impacts that technology has on everyday life. Before she began hosting Note to Self, Zomorodi was a television reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Note to Self debuted in September 2012 under the name New Tech City. It was renamed to Note To Self in 2015, and ran until 2019.

This is a list of notable podcasts that promote or practice scientific skepticism.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! is an hour-long weekly news radio panel show produced by WBEZ and National Public Radio (NPR) in Chicago, Illinois. On the program, panelists and contestants are quizzed in humorous ways about that week's news. It is distributed by NPR in the United States, internationally on NPR Worldwide and on the Internet via podcast, and typically broadcast on weekends by member stations. The show averages about six million weekly listeners on air and via podcast.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! was usually recorded in front of a live audience in Chicago at the Chase Auditorium beneath the Chase Tower on Thursday nights. They also do tours around the country performing in front of a live audience. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the spring of 2020 they converted to recording remotely, largely from their homes, and had sound effects and a virtual audience added for broadcast. Beginning in August 2021, they have held in-person recordings, when possible, with a live audience. Starting with the June 11, 2022 episode, the show returned to having a live audience every week in the Studebaker Theater.