Seven Podcasts That Made Me Smarter
In which I try to explain why podcasts are even worth mentioning on my resume.
August 7, 2019
As soon as I decided to make my own website, I knew that, somehow, somewhere on there, I had to list my podcast recommendations. I try really hard not to become the stereotypical “um, actually” podcast jerk, but I also don’t hide from the fact that I really enjoy them and learn a lot from them. So, for this post, I wanted to talk about some podcasts that I feel have made me a smarter person.
Now, I want to take a second to clarify what I mean when I use the term “smart”. I usually try to avoid using the word at all because it’s often taken to refer to some inherent intelligence that some people just have and others just don’t. I don’t really believe in that sort of thing. What I’m talking about here is a learned intelligence, something that no one is born with but that everyone can gain through the right sources. When I say these podcasts made me smarter, I don’t just mean that they gave me new trivia facts to obnoxiously spew at my friends. I mean that they showed me new ways of looking at the world and taught me how to see things in a different, more nuanced way. I genuinely feel that I would not get as much out of life today had I not started listening to these shows.
The Indicator
The Indicator is spin-off of NPR’s Planet Money. It drops a new episode every weekday telling a short story about the economy. Economics is a topic that’s easy to write off as dull and academic, but the hosts have a contagious enthusiasm that makes the show fun to listen to. It’s one of the shows where I let unplayed episodes pile up so I can listen to them all at once the next time I have a long car ride.
If there’s one broad takeaway from The Indicator, it’s that the world is complicated and, especially when it comes to the economy, nothing is as certain as most people say it is. The episode topics jump all over the place, from the treasury yield curve to student debt to why we still use the QWERTY keyboard layout. But throughout it all there’s a fairly common thread of someone making a bold, eye-catching claim and then the actual data not totally lining up with that claim. In almost every episode, there’s some point where one of the hosts cautions that they’re only going off a limited amount of evidence and there’s a lot that people still don’t know what’s really going on. That’s something that, while it would make a pretty terrible headline, is almost always the case when it comes to news stories about the economy.
Invention
Invention is a relatively young podcast from HowStuffWorks and iHeartMedia. In it, co-hosts Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick explore the histories of various technologies. It’s a concept that could have easily become just another trivia podcast about who came up with what idea in which year, but it ends up being something much deeper than that. Beyond just discussing the basic who, what, where, when, and how of these inventions, Lamb and McCormick spend a large amount of their time discussing the why questions. Why wasn’t the wheel invented earlier? Why were people so obsessed with death rays? Why did anyone ever bother making a museum?
Through these questions, these charismatic and witty hosts turn every episode into an exploration of the human experience – and how fundamentally that experience is impacted by such basic, everyday inventions as walls, roads, and toilets. It sounds a bit pretentious, and sometimes it definitely is, but in a sort of light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek way that makes it tolerable. In any case, Invention has made me think a lot more about all the different pieces of technology I take for granted, and how different my world would be without them.
Throughline
Throughline is another NPR podcast, and a pretty new one, having aired its first episode in February of 2019. It describes itself as the show “where we go back in time, to understand the present.” Hosts Ramtin Arablouel and Rund Abdelfatah interview historians and have conversations that explore the hidden history behind modern news stories. Past topics have included America’s first ever presidential Impeachment, Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, and how Evangelical Christianity became synonymous with right-wing politics.
Throughline’s secret ingredient is the tone of its hosts. Arablouel and Abdelfatah bring a genuine curiosity to their reporting. When they ask questions to scholars or other reporters, you get the sense that what they are learning is as surprising and confusing to them as it is to you, the listener. Rather than feeling like a lecture, it feels like you’re riding along with these two and sharing in their journey through these forgotten parts of history. It’s taught me to be more curious about the backstory behind current events, and what that backstory can teach us about the path forward.
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe
This is an old one, as far as podcasts go. The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe launched in 2005, but I only started listening a few years ago when my podcast app recommended it to me (shout-out to Podcast Addict for Android). It’s a weekly show that focuses on, as the name would suggest, skepticism and critical thinking, specifically applying scientific skepticism to modern-day myths, conspiracy theories, and science reporting. It is hosted by Dr. Steven Novella of Science-based Medicine, along with a panel of other hosts including Bob and Jay Novella, Evan Bernstein, and Cara Santa Maria.
I could go on and on about how much I think being taught to think critically has improved my life. The SGU is great, not just for learning those skills, but also for staying up-to-date on all the pseudoscience and misleading headlines that are being thrown about from week to week. The hosts are unapologetic when it comes to dismantling bullshit, but they also maintain a fun, casual demeanor that makes it entertaining to listen to. They frequently tackle hot topics like vaccines and GMOs, but they also apply skeptical thinking to things like the Chernobyl disaster or whether Thanos’s plan in Avengers actually makes any sense. The word “skeptic” often conjures up images of grumpy, condescending fun-haters – so it’s nice that there’s a show to remind us all that questioning things can make the world a lot more fun if you do it right.
Gastropod
Maple syrup! Peanuts! French fries! Gastropod is all about food, and it is so much fun. The hosts are delightful, the jokes are the best kind of stupid, and the things you learn are really, really interesting. Like, did you know potatoes grown in simulated Martian soil taste noticeably different than those grown in typical Earth soil? Have you ever wondered why Americans think it’s terrible to eat dogs, even though we regularly eat pigs (who are also quite smart)? Or how about this: did you know about the chemist at Purdue University who put together a team of students to eat different food additives and see if any of them were poisonous? We named a dining hall after him!
My favorite kind of podcast or book or class or whatever is the kind that makes me look at things I used to take for granted and think, “Huh, I wonder what’s up with this?” Gastropod is all about that. Listening to this show just made me a lot more curious about why I eat what I eat and where it all comes from. Like, what logical reason is there to only eat bacon and eggs in the morning? There isn’t one! We only do that because Sigmund Freud’s nephew convinced a doctor to say we should! As part of a marketing job! Isn’t that nuts!?
Anyway, it's a good show and you should listen to it.
Cyber
Cyber is a weekly podcast from Motherboard that, surprise, talks about cybersecurity. A typical episode reports on a notable story from the world of information security (“infosec”) and/or interviews some sort of specialist. The hosts have interviewed bounty hunters, penetration testers (people get hired to try to hack into systems in order to test their security), and even Edward Snowden.
Cyber isn’t exactly an uplifting podcast. The more I think of what it’s taught me, the more I realized it’s just made me more paranoid – but, like, in a healthy way. Listening to this show week after week helps me stay mindful of just how easy it is for nefarious actors to obtain my personal data – or worse. I’m not wearing a tinfoil hat or anything, but I do now cover up my webcams, use a VPN, and try to support privacy-valuing companies when possible. I see it as the digital equivalent of locking your doors at night - sure, the chances of someone trying to get in are pretty slim, but it's best to be safe. I’m pretty sure problems of digital privacy are only going to get worse in the near future, so I would recommend everyone learn a bit about how to protect their data, even if it’s just small steps. Every little bit helps.
Code Switch
Can you tell I like NPR? Code Switch is a weekly podcast about race and identity, hosted by two journalists of color. The hosts explore untold, often ugly, parts of America’s history and present-day politics. Like, they looked into where the term “Welfare Queen” originally came from (surprise, the story is a lot more complicated than most people thought). Or, recently, after President Trump told four congresswomen of color to go back where they came from (even though most of them were born in the U.S.), the show had a long talk about how journalists decide when it makes sense to call someone’s actions “racist.”
My grandmother on my dad’s side is Japanese, so whether or not I’m considered “white” mostly depends on whether I’m in Irish/Polish South Bend or Asian-American Palo Alto. In any case, I’ve definitely never encountered the sort of racial barriers that many others have had to face, and having a show like Code Switch to tell me what I’m not seeing is really valuable. If I’m being honest, I don’t usually look forward to listening to it. Hearing such explicit discussions about bias and privilege makes me kind of uncomfortable. But, to me, being a little uncomfortable is usually a good sign. It means that I’m learning.