Podcasts are one of my most consumed forms of media, followed closely by serialized TV dramas. In 2020, according to my screen-time and time tracker, I spent on average 2 hours per day listening to podcasts. While that may not be very much on a daily level, there are absolutely some days where I binge hours and hours of podcasts, and some days where I don’t listen to any podcasts at all.
So, because I have nothing better to do with my time currently, and I am all caught up on my current podcast queue, I thought I’d share with you some of my favorite news podcast series.
Today, Explained
Hosted by Sean Rameswaram and produced by the Vox Media Podcast Network, Today, Explained is a weekday news podcast that dives into important stories of the day or week. The content is perfect for when I was commuting back and forth to work, but since working from home, Today, Explained has become the podcast I listen to when I go to do grocery shopping or errand runs.
Worldly
Zack Beauchamp, Jennifer Williams, and Alex Ward discuss important and newsworthy stories with the broader history and context needed to understand the story in our ever-evolving chaotic world. Also produced by the Vox Media Podcast Network, the episodes are around an hour long, and they help provide important context to the world around us. It isn’t one of my regular podcasts, but it definitely is one of my binge podcasts for when I need to catch up on what is happening in the world.
Cyber
From Motherboard and Vice.com, the Cyber podcast is less-than-hour long episodes that focus on technology, hacking, cybersecurity, and infosec. It’s another one of my favorite binge podcasts to catch up on the broader strokes of internet and infosec news.
Embedded
In this long-form serialized news podcast, host Kelly McEvers takes a deep dive into important and relevant news topics that you may not know the full story of. The style of deep investigative journalism scratches an itch in my head and I find myself wanting more episodes than exist. The series is great for binging, but be warned, the episodes are incredibly slow to come out due to the nature of the reporting.