I made this post quite some time ago, and then it disappeared into my drafts. So I just updated it with some more recent episodes recommendations as well!
It was difficult finding a category for these kinds of podcasts, the journalistic ones where there’s a host or two, but mainly they’re based on telling people’s stories. They’re not talking about a random subject from their lives, but something specific they’ve investigated. Where often a single occurence leads to a much bigger story, one that’s worth listening to.
I’ve done other lists of my favourite podcasts. Here’s a list of general, two-dudes talking type. Here’s science and productivity. Here’s book and mythology podcasts. And finally here’s even weirder interests like space, robots and chronic illness.
– stories –
Reply All
- It’s about the internet
- I’m just going to give a list of my fav episodes, because there’s a lot of places to start this one
- Zardulu (#56) talking about a weird internet fenomena that is rat videos and the possible mind behind it
- Long distance (#102 og #103) where Alex Goldman goes on a hunt to find out who the telephone scammers are, leading him to travel to another country and making some strange new relationships.
- Shipped to Timbuktu (#28) about a girl guide troop ending up in the Weihsien concentration camp in China
- Hello? (#82) where they take call-in’s for 48 hours straight
- Pain funnel (#121) about the US rehabs and how they’re run
- Boy in the photo (#79) about the long road trying to track down a guy at a college party (here’s the photo)
- The founder (#136) about Paul Le Roux, who went from a programmer to build himself up as the leader of a drug cartel from behind his computer.
- The reply all hotline (#139) with call-in stories, ending with a story from a Syrian refugee living in Turkey about the difficulties trying to create any future and wanting help navigating the Canadian college system. I cried so much. Everyone deserves hope.
The Good News Podcast
- Tired of the bad news each day? Here’s some adorable, heartwarming or funny news to balance it out. From the Cards Against Humanity team.
The Anthropocene Reviewed
- Author and youtuber John Green’s new podcast where he reviews a couple very unrelated things that are “facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale”. With his calming voice and poetic phrasing.
- Fav episodes: #10 about Tetris and the seed potatoes of Leningrad and #11 about teddy bears
S-Town
- One day an email arrives with the subject line “John B McLemore lives in Shittown Alabama.” John is a man who takes contact with the journalist Brian Reed, asking him to look into a possible murder in his town, which no one else is talking about. He lives in this small town, which he doesn’t have lack of problems with. As the journalist travels down to John he realizes his life and person comes of as interesting and slightly eccentric. But all his actions doesn’t make sense, he comes off as a loner, but then there’s all these people who knew him and slowly the story of John unfold.
- LABYRINTH, he made a freaking awesome labyrinth. It has nothing (and everything) to do with the story btw
Heavyweight
- In most peoples life there’s something that changes, some occurence or relationship that you don’t deal with or got to say everything you wanted to. This podcast host doesn’t let it be with that, as he drags everyone along trying to make things right. From trying to reunite grumpy men in their eighties to a woman finallly getting the answer from her step-mom to why she made her quit basketball. It all went in direction I didn’t expect.
aquapages 