Previous Best Podcast lists: 2017/2018/2019/2020/2021/2022/2023

In 2022 we saw the podcast industry take a hit, in 2024 we saw the response in the form of paywalls. For the first time, I am unable to link to majority of the podcasts that I have listed as the companies look for a more sustainable revenue source beyond advertisements. We should expect to see more of that in the future.

Best Podcast Episodes

5. What’s Wrong with Eric, Against the Rules

Michael Lewis has a new season of his great podcast that looks closer at sports fans (a group he discovered is understudied). The Eric from the episode title is a sports fan and a scientist who doesn’t know why he tortures himself with his never ending dedication to a hobby that brings so much pain. The episode features surprising facts like: Sports fans are more likely to have a higher GPA and are more likely to go to museums and theaters. Also 93 of the 100 most watched broadcasts in 2023 were sporting events. Sports fandom is a form of tribalism with extremely low stakes. The episode proposes that we could study sports fans to understand how to better encourage unbiased thinking and cooperation with people outside their group.

4. The Late, Great Hannibal Lector, Today Explained

I thought I had a good idea of what Trump spoke about at rallies. I had no idea. This podcast tracked his repeated mentioning of Hannibal Lector as if he were a real (and deceased) person during his speeches. The team comes up with theories for this odd behavior, which is quite entertaining. Later in the podcast they cover cognition and linguistics experts’ trend analyses on Trump’s speeches that provide some interesting explanations. This podcast is a consistently impressive mix of humor and insight about our world.

3. Poor Baby Raul, Serial

Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis focused this season of Serial on Guantanamo Bay, not just focusing on the detainees, but also the enlisted that served there. When I pictured life at the base I would not have guessed it was a year-long spring break-style party for many of the enlisted. Part of what drove many to excessive drinking was likely the difficulty in maintaining the mission despite the glaring injustices.

2. Me and My Scammer, Shell Game

I knew chat bots were advancing enough to make them hard to distinguish from a person, and I knew voice cloning could take samples of someone’s voice and generate speech, I just didn’t know the two elements could be so effectively combined. It is fascinating to hear it work, to see where it excels, where it fails, and when it disobeyed its instructions. Evan Ratliff wrestles the ethics of unleashing the new technology on friends and customer support centers, so he instead starts using it against telemarketers! Some of my favorite moments are when the AI confidently gives its account number or phone number as 123-456-789, causing a good bit of confusion on the other end of the call. While I knew some of the messages I get are robo-calls, I now wonder if they had the ability to chat if I had answered my phone. But…I still won’t be answering my phone to find out.

1. How I Learned to Shave (Episode 815), This American Life

It is no surprise that This American Life has continued producing great episodes, however, this one deserves some extra attention. The highlight is a story from Simon Rich, from the perspective of his fictional great grandson who is interviewing him for a report on what it was like to live on Earth before survivors fled to space. It might not sound like it from that description, but few things have made me laugh harder. I loved the description of the early 2000s courtship ceremony involving Arrested Development, which the narrator cannot believe occurred without first exchanging “even the most rudimentary of nude photos.” Another fantastic part of this episode is a story from Rick McIntyre, who tracked the wolves in Yellowstone for decades. McIntyre was so familiar with the wolves that he knew their personalities and social dynamics. His story is compelling and astonishing, while providing incredible insight into the behavior of wolves. And as he has done many times over the years, Ira gets personnel with a beautiful prologue to the episode.

Best Overall Podcasts

• The Pirate of Prague
• Hysterical

5. Plain English with Derek Thompson (tied)

As you might expect from the name of the podcast, Thompson is very good at breaking things down and explaining complex concepts and issues with a great analogy while driving home the relevance. He takes a measured approach to complicated issues like diet, exercise, medicine, and psychology examining the research that has been done on the subject and highlights what research is missing. Expect some great facts sprinkled in like: 30,000 years ago strawberries and mangoes likely had the sugar content of a carrot before they were selected for sweetness. Topics are as diverse as the Stanley water bottle craze, the current status of flying cars, and how we are breathing wrong.

5. Things Fell Apart (tied)

Jon Ronson has been doing great work for years (including the first season of this podcast in 2022). In the second season he provides thorough and insightful examinations into hot button cultural clashes exasperated by the pandemic. Many of the topics included subjects that I thought I understood completely, but Ronson’s historical perspective and even-handed approach provides a fascinating listen. He takes a compassionate look into how smart people start believing and propagating pseudoscience or conspiracy theories that further divide our society.

4. The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast

This podcast initially provided insights regarding how it feels to go from being ignored/tolerated to being breakout talents. Occasionally someone will share fantastic details about a well known sketch like when they first played Justin Timberlake the demo for Dick in a Box, he responded, “wow, that’s great, but do you want to make it sound good?” He showed them some tricks that changed the way they layered and mixed music for the rest of their careers. It is also just entertaining to hear these four hilarious comedians interact and mess around.

3. Unexplainable

This science-based investigative podcast is reliably interesting. Things that I misunderstood, like how few traces of civilization we would leave behind if humans suddenly disappeared and is it possible that humans weren’t the first advanced civilization on Earth. The podcast also introduced some things that I had never considered, like did the trees cause a mass extinction event when they first spread across the world? Or just fun deep dives like what the dinosaurs actually sounded like (shots fired at Jurassic Park).

2. History’s Secret Heroes

This podcast features a series of thrilling stories that take place during WWII with great narration by Helena Bonham Carter. I always appreciate a story about normal people doing incredible things when they find themselves doing their part to save the world. Whether they are craftspeople who would create fake armies to draw in Nazi artillery, artists who would sow doubt into the minds of occupying soldiers, or a circus performer who was very good at escaping Nazi prisons and helping unite a resistance.

1. Animal

Animal lover Sam Anderson has a series of animal encounters that help him understand nature and understand how to better navigate his own life. Similar to Connor Ratliff in the Dead Eyes podcast he repeatedly is able to create surprisingly poignant and insightful observations that connect back to the subject of the podcast. Each episode has a very different feel as Anderson learns about how the animals behave, whether they are overcoming difficult challenges, surviving human impacts on their environment, or just living their lives. The final episode focused on bats was very powerful as Anderson’s fear of bats reflected his fear of death, and his immersion in bat colonies created a beautiful moment of clarity.