Brief descriptions/genres definitely recommended. Please don't be afraid of being :LIB:, I feel like so many podcast recs on this site focus of Political Pods which while fun, I can find myself listening to audio content for 6 hours on some days and I don't always wanna blast politics into my ears, and I know a lot of other people don't either.
I’m not going to list lefty podcasts. Just about everyone here listens to the same shit, with little exception.
:rat-salute-2: "okay, i have idea for podcast. 2-4 guys. they are all marxists to various degrees discussing current events. perhaps we will even do deep dives on specific history subjects that our listeners have also read about extensively. The podcast opener will be a bit that only ourselves and our most parasocial listeners will find genuinely funny followed by an obnoxious theme song. Perhaps we will be ironically problematic and then go 'ehh i'm leftist what are yagonnadoaboutit im better than most men amirite?"
I'm so not mad about it
Starting with non-leftist stuff, then leftist stuff people here may not have heard of, then the stuff I’d be shocked anyone here doesn’t know.
Non-Leftist:
Shrieking Shack - Chapter by chapter review of Harry Potter looking at all of the issues but also not overly cynical. Not explicitly leftist but one of the hosts drops a lot of jokes I only expect from people on this site.
Dear Hank and John - Hank and John Green of VlogBrothers and other things answer questions from their listeners and give advice.
SciShow Tangents - Also Hank Green, with some of the cast of SciShow, lightly competitive science game show. Fun science facts.
Slightly Something Else - Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation and a couple other guys talk about video games. This one I only listen to if the specific topic stands out to me.
Leftist/Leftist Adjacent:
The Dollop - History comedy podcast. One comedian tells a history story to one who doesn’t know what the story is, and they riff on it. I specifically recommend 323 - 1908 New York to Paris Car Race or 101 - The Death of George Washington as first episodes to try.
TrashFuture - :ukkk: focused politics, reviews of super dumb tech startups, and Chapo-style reading series.
Death Panel - Social health policy, lots of getting angry about the response to covid. Wrote a book called Health Communism.
The West Wing Thing - Episode by episode review of The West Wing, absolutely roasting it and becoming more and more miserable as the show goes on. Hilarious, and no you do not need to watch The West Wing to enjoy it. Has lots of great guests including :matt: :will-fancy:
Trillbilly Workers Party - Kentucky communists. I kinda think the quality’s started to drop as covid’s continued on, but still good. Anyone know what happened to Tanya?
The Obvious:
Blowback - S1 Iraq War, S2 Cuba, S3 Korean War. Best and most horrifying thing I’ve ever listened to and should be legally required listening for every single person in the United States. You could literally assign this in history classes.
Citations Needed :citations-needed: : - You all know it, media criticism and analysis. So helpful to understand how the US propaganda machine works.
:wtyp: - Podcast about engineering disasters, with slides. Hilarious. :wtyp-gang:
Chapo Trap House - I know it’s divisive on this site, but I like Chapo :shrug-outta-hecks:. It’s entertaining. Matt’s rants and analysis are decent. It’s probably not good enough to deserve the insane success they’ve had in comparison with actually better shows, but it’s still a decent show.
I think (I'm really not sure) that Tanya was getting harassed by chuds at her work so that's why she stopped.
Jesus, that fucking sucks. I hope she’s doing okay.
If you have white woman true crime brain or are interested in like cults or high strangeness shit(catch all term for UFOs and cryptids and ghosts and ghouls), Last Podcast on The Left is a pretty good mix of informative and comedic.
Just two caveats, the further back you go they are more kinda assholeish and more likely to make disrespectful jokes about victims, and avoid anything to do with Russia or China like the plague because these guys are lib comedians.
Also while they are like conditionally cop critical when it comes to cops fucking up in a specific case or topic, they don't ever really go full ACAB and they will do cop praise if theres like a cop that did a "good job", but this is kinda inherent to all true crime content just by virtue of how cherrypicked it is.
I tried starting LPOTL from the beginning after getting it reccomended to me and it put me off forever :sadness: i feel like we should recommend a start point or else it needs a CW for Dudes Being Dicks About Gruesome Crimes
I'd say probably like anything below 100-150 is likely to either be half baked or have really shitty unfunny bits, or both.
After that I think its probably best to see if theres a topic thats already slightly interesting to you and start there.
Starting from the most recent is also isnt a terrible idea cause there arent that many running gags or references usually, or they go by fast and dont occupy a ton of time, their relatively recent MKULTRA series is pretty indepth.
Fiction/Audio Dramas:
Batman Unburied - A batman story heavy on detective work and psychological fuckery that features Barbara Gordon and the Riddler (more like BTAS Riddler tho not The Batman Riddler) prominently. Lots of other fun C-listers and deep cuts wind up being heavily important, but I'd consider saying their villain alias a spoiler.
The Silt Verses - A vaguely post-collapse society I believe in the UK where something caused animist/chaote religion to be real, basically. So you have all these Forgotten Gods of various sizes cropping up again. And the remnants of the government basically exists to regulate and control people thru the cults of these gods. So there’s like licensed and unlicensed religions. Licensed religions are like gods to capitalism basically, you have an electricity god, a coffee god, a train god. They’re literally made in a marketing department. Unlicensed gods are mostly gods of nature, that a lot of people turned against after Whatever Vaguely Apocalyptic Event poisoned much of the land. The story follows two unlicensed river cultists trying to rebuild their religion after their river turned poisonous and their people got progromed.
bviously there’s a lot of Political Allegory, but it doesn’t really delve into jerking itself off about politics, which I like. A glut of queer characters. Some of the most beautiful prose I’ve heard in a podcast.
The Magnus Archives - A skeptic gets a job at an institute in London that interviews eye witnesses of "paranormal" events. A digital corruption has required a number of files to be backed up on a physical medium, cassette tapes. However, the institute winds up being much more than it seems. Starts off feeling vaguely SCP-y, but by the end of season one its clear that everything is connect, important to thru plots and sub plots, and that there's Much More Going On than "Oooo the ghosts are real."
I Am in Eskew - David Ward finds himself in a dark city filled with ghouls, spirits, lost souls, and a perpetual rain. Once again starts off very "horror in an urban fantasy setting with loose connections," about 1/4 of the way through though, Riyo finds herself hired by David's mom to investigate his mysterious disappearance. After this, the structure changes to Riyo and David exchanging narration every episode, and the story finds its footing/pace really well.
Leftist Politics:
It's Going Down - Anarchist news and current events
Coffee with Comrades - Anarchist interviews
Live Like the World is Dying - Post-civ views on various topics
Political but not necessarily leftist:
Knowledge Fight - Two homies who have found themselves accidentally in the shoes of the World's Most Well Regarded Alex Jones Researchers, Dan and Jordan take you through Alex Jones's current and past escapades, and take some occasional detours on other quacks.
5-4 - Lawyers Peter, Michael and Rhiannon go over various supreme court decisions, justices' opinions, etc. As they say, "Welcome to 5-4, a podcast about how much the supreme court sucks."
Media Analysis:
Madoka Magicast - 3 queer women analyze Madoka Magica and related media. Only 3 episodes deep but so far their analysis is phenomenal. Two of them run the biggest english language Utena fansite in the world.
Eat the Rudecast - A podcast analyzing Hannibal's TV show and movies. Have not watched personally.
Cop Critical True Crime:
Serial Season 1 - An investigative journalist goes over how the Baltimore PD framed the murder of a young girl in high school as an "honor killing" by her ethnically muslim but not (at the time) religious ex boyfriend. Just got the subject of the podcast released from podcast and inspired me to make this thread.
Algorithm - A journalist with an interest in stats gets his hands on the General Homicide Report, a list of data associated with various unsolved homicides. Captivated, he attempts to train an algorithm to detect when an area has an uncaught serial killer.... and it works. What's even more disturbing, is the Gary Indiana Police Department is ignoring his calls and pleas, and they have 100's of missing women on their hands.
Seriously the BEST True Crime podcast I've ever heard. If you ever wanted to hear an extensive serial killer recounting that also leaves you with "fuck fuck fuck ACAB ACAB ACAB" thoughts, this is it chief.
Le Monstre
(HEAVY CW CHILDHOOD SA
) -In the 80s and 90s, a serial killer, pedophile, and kidnapper, Marc Dutroux, terrorized the country of Belgium. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of law enforcement agencies to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. With hundreds of thousands taking to the streets in protest. Le Monstre will tell the story of these crimes and their aftermath, known as the Dutroux Affair, in an attempt to address unanswered questions, and to hopefully bring closure to one of the darkest chapters in Belgium’s history.
Hobby:
Shut Up and Sit Down - Reviews and analysis of board games, and more recently, RPGs :)
Serial Season 1 - An investigative journalist goes over how the Baltimore PD framed the murder of a young girl in high school as an “honor killing” by her ethnically muslim but not (at the time) religious ex boyfriend. Just got the subject of the podcast released from podcast and inspired me to make this thread.
Oh damn so that's why Felix was asking about Serial on Twitter, totally missed that. But because he asked about that somebody linked this (https://theintercept.com/2014/12/29/exclusive-interview-jay-wilds-star-witness-adnan-syed-serial-case-pt-1/) which I thought was an interesting read. I remember listening to the podcast when it was new and thinking they were leading towards a theory of "Jay killed Hae and framed Adnan" which never really got resolved in the show as far as I remember, so it was interesting to read his side of things.
Yeah, I definitely think the most irresponsible part of that journalism was the suspicions they cast on Jay, not the questioning of Adnan's conviction
Although, I guess at the end of the day, Jay and/or Adnan has to be involved in some way. He's the key witness and knew key details.
https://www.youtube.com/c/MadokaMagicast/videos still up on this channel
oh shit, empty movement did the madoka magicast? i really need to listen to that then
I basically only listen to post-marxist theory pods, with one exception: Pendejo Time. Cum Town but without the slurs or general bigotry. Two funny Texan friends who just fuck around for an hour. The one bit that stands out in my mind is when one joked about there not being enough Mexicans at his birthday party, to which the other responded there weren't enough PoC in general. This devolves over the course of 10 minutes and they end up with a party attended by a skinwalker and Adolf Hitler's soul on a USB drive.
They're both left-wing (Thomas described himself as "probably Marxist-Leninist but I don't really... care.")
I enjoy a good audio drama.
Alice Isn't Dead is probably my favorite, a woman thinks she's a widow but then sees some evidence that her supposedly dead wife, Alice, is alive and well somewhere in the US, so she becomes a long haul trucker to travel around and look for her. Season 1 is the best, Season 2 was good, IIRC, like many audio drama it falls off a bit at the finish line in season 3.
They're kinda bad, but Pacific Northwest Stories is fun (The Black Tapes, Rabbits). Big "NPR journo unraveling an occult mystery" energy. Similarly, Season 1 tends to be best.
Archive 81 is about an audio engineer restoring a bunch of old interview footage that, you guessed it, turns out to be haunted, in an isolated facility in the woods. Season 2 shifted gears a lot and I fell off of it.
Limetown is about an NPR type investigating a cult and/or company town where a bunch of people disappeared years ago. Uh, you can probably guess but after season 1 they didn't seem to know what to do with the plot they'd built up.
**Podcast podcasts: **
I enjoy Last Podcast on the Left a good amount. They did a series on the history of the Mormon church that is pretty great.
The Nonsense Bazaar: Mixed bag, they're definitely into new age stuff, but they have a lot of episodes discussing dangerous new age cults and are very critical of all the crypto Nazi stuff like I AM Activity. Listened to several eps after QAA sent me down the I AM rabbit hole. Eps 22-27 and 38-39 are of interest if these theosophical cults are interesting to you.
ALICE ISN'T DEAD IS SOOO GOOD i still need to listen to season two omfg
Season 2 had a lot of good episodes IIRC, which is a good run for an audio drama lol.
i added descriptions to my comment, i think you'd like a lot of the audio dramas on my list if you enjoyed Alice Isn't Dead
Algorithm sounds VERY interesting, and your description of I Am in Eskew makes me a lot more interested. Person on the outside investigating it is always more interesting to me than the actual supernatural element.
The Silt Verses I actually started and couldn't finish because the audio was so quiet I couldn't understand it on full volume while mowing/doing dishes. I might try again because the premise is so cool.
the direction they take the question of "what is eskew from the outside" is very cool
cant reccomend TSV enough but it is very quiet. the official transcripts are great with things like tone indicators and captioning background noise, might be worth just knocking out a reading of it in a week
They’re kinda bad, but Pacific Northwest Stories is fun
This. They are kinda bad. They're also fun. Only one I really lost my patience with was TANIS.
Full corpo media but I liked that podcast about some soldiers who get their minds wiped by a shady government contractor. They made an Amazon show based on it. Homecoming.
In the same vein, I liked The Left Right Game. Kinda weird sci fi horror show about a convoy taking turns down the road until they cross some boundary into a strange fae world, but with pretty good production values. Made by the company QCODE, never liked any of the their other shows I tried, but this one was great.
There's a few SFF short story magazines that put out monthly podcasts where they read a story they published. My favorites are Clarkesworld and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. https://escapeartists.net/ is also good, they have four separate podcasts (Horror, Sci Fi, Fantasy, and YA) depending on what flavor you like.
ALAB - lawyers dunking on the justice system and highlighting how fucked up it is. Very inconsistent schedule, but worth listening to the backlog. Their most recent episode was wild, they had on someone that they talked about in a previous episode who sued them because of it and they talk through the case and their strategies, never heard anything like it.
Just King Things - reading every Stephen King book in publication order and doing deep crit and analysis. Really reveals what shit politics King has, but always a fun listen, especially if you've read a lot of King.
A More Civilized Age - rewatch of Clone Wars, good analysis, the Jedi are bad, actually. Featuring Austin "Fuck Capitalism, Go Home" Walker among other great hosts.
Waypoint Radio - lefty gaming podcast, it's still great even without Austin.
Oh I’m gonna binge A More Civilized Age so hard, I’m so excited thank you for mentioning that
it's so good! they're almost through clone wars and have brought many extremely wild things to my attention (mon calamari being genocidal colonizers, grevious being from space palestine, many more!) i super recommend subbing to the patreon for like a month to get all the bonus stuff once you've caught up, the q and as are great
i'll second all of these (especially a more civilized age, which i am a patron of currently)
Not going to dive into the ones that basically everyone listens to, but you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't listen to Trillbilly Worker's Party.
Something that I just started listening to is Minion Death Cult - there's a lot of the same content as other leftist pods, but they spend a good portion of the show reading ridiculous Facebook comments by chud boomers on various political articles.
my favorite podcast of all time is hey riddle riddle, an improv comedy riddle-solving podcast. basically, three comedians solve riddles and then do improv scenes based on whatever scenarios they can come up with relating to the riddles they solve or the tangents they go on. they're really, really funny people. plus, one of them (JPC) is a communist, so that's a nice bonus.
it's worth listening to from episode 1 onward, since there are a bunch of running jokes and the quality is pretty consistent anyway throughout the 200 or so episodes that exist currently.
comedy bang bang
the socialist program
radio sputnik - https://cloud.mave.digital/36281 or https://sputnik.mave.digital
red nation podcast
lex fridman - he gets good guests but he's a lib and asks the worst questions. "your mom is dead, your dad is dead, my question to you -- do you miss them?"
Episode One (the podcast) is basically completely hour-long one-off bits, and WTNV is always a classic
Common Descent Podcast - A podcast all about paleontology, evolution, and the like.
Lingthusiasm - A pretty introductory linguistics podcast.
Small Beans - More of a collection of different podcasts than a single podcast on its own. It's got a bunch of Cracked alumni, including Michael Swaim.
1Upsmanship - A spinoff of Small Beans where the hosts discuss video games and decide which ones belong on a sort of hall of fame hardrive.
History of English Podcast - Exactly what it sounds like. It discusses the ways that English has evolved since before it was even English, including a lot of relevant non-linguistic history.
Sardonicast - Three Youtube movie reviewers discuss recent films and one that each of them recommended the others at the end of the previous podcast.
Violating Community Guidelines - Sarah Schauer and :kombucha-disgust: discuss various internet phenomena in depth, like Furries, A.I Influencers, and Thirst Traps.
Conlangery Podcast - Good for making your own languages for fun and just learning about linguistics in general. One of the hosts (Bianca) uses the r-slur a few times in earlier episodes but I don't think it happens at all in the episodes she isn't on.
Street Fight Radio was always fun for something laid back to listen to on long drives. Two guys shooting the shit about work stuff, news items - particularly around labor or cop shit, and just kinda whatever.
Oh damn nvm looks like they just split up a week ago and now Bryan is doing it alone. That's a shame.
I used to like the Sleep with me podcast but I stopped listening when it became like 50% ads by volume.
