Podcasts: Radio for the online generation

Growing up, I remember coming into the kitchen most mornings to see my father at the table, eating breakfast while reading the newspaper and listening to the radio. That image is indelibly burnt into my memory, and is in all likelihood the reason why there is, to me, a sense of safety to talk radio programming.

These days, I don’t listen much to the radio. I don’t bring a radio with me where I go, and I don’t want to use my data package on listening to the radio. I also generally find that the radio programming available are unable to provide what I want from them. I do, however, listen to what I consider to be the successor of radio; podcasts.

I subscribe to a number of podcasts (more on that in just a moment), and use an app called Downcast to download and listen to them. The podcasts I listen to can be divided into fiction and non-fiction, and what podcasts I subscribe to changes depending on the quality of the show. Here’s my current list:

• Freakonomics Radio – the companion podcast to the books, Freakonomics Radio offers interesting insights into the world
• Mystery show – Starlee Kine goes out into the world to solve mysteries that can’t be solved through Google
• Planet Money – excellent economics reporting from NPR
• Play on Target – all roleplaying games, all the time
• Reply All – a show about the internet, and the people on it
• Serial – an engaging true crime show
• Star Trek: Outpost – a first rate Star Trek fan fiction show, chronicling the life and times of the personell at Deep Space Three
• StartUp – originally the story of how Gimlet media was started, StartUp now follows the trials and tribulations of other fledgling companies
• Stuff You Missed in History Class – an interesting and engaging podcast about parts of history that you might have missed
• Undisclosed: the State Vs. Adnan Syed – following up on the first season of Serial (above), this goes deeper into the evidence (and lack thereof) against Adnan Syed
• Upvoted by Reddit – the online community Reddit features many interesting stories, some of which are expanded on in this interesting podcast