podcasts

Shankar Vedantam is an American journalist, writer, and science correspondent. His reporting focuses on human behavior and the social sciences. He is best known for his Hidden Brain family of products: book, podcast, and radio program.

99% Invisible is a radio show and podcast produced and created by Roman Mars that focuses on design. It began as a collaborative project between San Francisco public radio station KALW and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. The show has been distributed by PRX for broadcasting on a number of radio stations and as a podcast on the Radiotopia network. On April 28, 2021, Roman Mars announced in an introduction of a re-released episode that 99% Invisible had been purchased by Sirius XM and marketed as part of its Stitcher Radio brand.

The name of the show was derived from a quote by Buckminster Fuller that, "Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable." The goal of the show is to expose the unseen and overlooked aspects of design, architecture, and activity in the world. Each episode generally focuses on a single topic or specific example of design, often including interviews with architects, experts, or people who have influenced or been influenced by a given urban, industrial, graphic or other design.

Lore is a documentary podcast on topics such as folklore, legends, and historical events, often with a focus on the macabre. Each episode examines historical events or ancient/urban legends that show the dark side of human nature, and is presented in a style that's been compared to a campfire experience. The series was created in 2015 by Aaron Mahnke as a marketing experiment and received the iTunes "Best of 2015" Award. The podcast was also given the award for the "Best History Podcast" by the Academy of Podcasters in July 2016. At the end of 2016, the podcast was included in the top lists by The Atlantic and Entertainment Weekly. As of October 2017, the series has 5 million monthly listeners.

Wendy Zukerman is an Australian-American science journalist and podcaster. She is best known as the host of Science Vs, a program that dissects areas of scientific controversy and public confusion.

Planet Money is an American podcast and blog produced by NPR. Using "creative and entertaining" dialogue and narrative, Planet Money claims to be "The Economy Explained."

The podcast was created by Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson after the success of "The Giant Pool of Money," an episode they recorded for This American Life. Planet Money was launched on September 6, 2008, to cover the financial crisis of 2007–08 in the wake of the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In early 2020, Planet Money celebrated its 1000th episode, bringing back many former hosts and contributors to mark the occasion.

As of 2020, episodes are hosted by Robert Smith, Stacey Vanek Smith, Kenny Malone, Jacob Goldstein, Amanda Aronczyk, Mary Childs, Sarah Gonzalez, Karen Duffin, Cardiff Garcia, and Greg Rosalsky.

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."

Welcome to Night Vale is a fiction podcast presented as a radio show for the fictional town of Night Vale, reporting on the strange events that occur within it. The series was created in 2012 by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. Published by Night Vale Presents since March 15, 2015, the podcast was previously published by Commonplace Books. Cecil Gershwin Palmer—the host, main character, and narrator—is voiced by Cecil Baldwin, while secondary characters are sometimes voiced by guest stars or recurring guests—such as Dylan Marron, who voices Carlos the Scientist. The podcast typically airs on the first and fifteenth of every month, and consists of "news, announcements and advertisements" from the desert town, located "somewhere in the Southwestern United States." In an interview with NPR, Joseph Fink said that he "came up with this idea of a town in that desert where all conspiracy theories were real, and we would just go from there with that understood."

Earyn McGee is an American herpetologist and science communicator. She is an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) IF/THEN Ambassador and a 2020 AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellow. In response to the racism faced by Black birdwatcher Christian Cooper in the Central Park birdwatching incident, McGee co-organized Black Birders Week to celebrate Black birders.

Reply All is an American podcast from Gimlet Media that ran from 2014 to 2022, featuring stories about how people shape the internet, and how the internet shapes people. It was created by P. J. Vogt and Alex Goldman, who were the show's original hosts; they had previously hosted the technology and culture podcast TLDR for WNYC. Emmanuel Dzotsi became a third cohost in 2020.

The podcast received critical acclaim, winning several awards. In 2021, Vogt and a producer left the show following backlash critical of the work environment. Both Goldman and Dzotsi left the show in 2022; the final episode was released on June 23.

Reply All was an American podcast from Gimlet Media, hosted by Alex Goldman and Emmanuel Dzotsi in its final year. Producer P. J. Vogt was Goldman’s original cohost. Before joining Gimlet, Vogt and Goldman hosted a technology and culture podcast called TLDR for WNYC. Reply All premiered November 24, 2014, the second podcast to be developed by Gimlet Media. The Atlantic included the episode "Shine on, You Crazy Goldman" on their list of "The 50 Best Podcast Episodes of 2015".

Stuff You Should Know, often abbreviated as SYSK, is a podcast and video series published by iHeartRadio and hosted by Josh Clark and Charles W. "Chuck" Bryant. The podcast, which releases episodes several times a week, educates listeners on a wide variety of topics, often using popular culture as a reference, giving the podcast comedic value.

Since debuting in 2008, the podcast is consistently ranked in the Top 10 on iTunes and is one of the most popular podcasts in the world, being downloaded millions of times each month. On October 3, 2018, the podcast started releasing additional short episodes titled Short Stuff, where they cover topics that don't warrant the length of a full episode. A number of other types of media, including a TV show and books, have been spun off by the podcast.

Revisionist History is a podcast by Malcolm Gladwell produced by Gladwell's company Pushkin Industries. It began in 2016 and has aired six 10-episode seasons.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This American Life (TAL) is an American monthly hour-long radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internationally, and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays, memoirs, field recordings, short fiction, and found footage. The first episode aired on November 17, 1995, under the show's original title, Your Radio Playhouse. The series was distributed by Public Radio International until June 2014, when the program became self-distributed with Public Radio Exchange delivering new episodes to public radio stations.

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.

Song Exploder is a music podcast created by Hrishikesh Hirway, who hosted it from its 2014 inception until late 2018 and again from December 2019 onwards. In January 2019, Thao Nguyen became a guest host for the year, with Christian Koons serving as producer, and Hirway moving to executive producer. The biweekly show features musicians talking about the creative process behind an individual song while "deconstructing" the song into its component parts. As of 2021, the show's team is composed of host and producer Hirway, illustrator Carlos Lerma, and Music Clearance Director Kathleen Smith.

The podcast launched on the Maximum Fun network, became independent in February 2015 and joined Radiotopia in June 2015.