The Best Podcasts to Listen to During Self-Isolation
As the U.S. enters our second month of self-isolation, the GQ editors have rounded up the best podcasts out there to help fill any free time you might have, time otherwise occupied by your brain wandering to darker recesses. We've broken them down into easy-to-navigate categories to help you skip ahead to the topics that interest you most (you're welcome). These are the best podcasts to listen to right now.
History
Chart Topper: The Throughline
The Throughline is a thoughtful link between past and present. The team at NPR takes headlines and big contemporary issues, then traces them back to historical comparisons and origin points. Take a piece on Spanish flu and how it compares to COVID-19, or the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and what it tells us about the impeachment of President Trump. Each episode is a powerful reminder of why history matters.
Off the Beaten Path: Nice Try!
Nice Try! is a slightly niche podcast from the folks at Curbed about architecture and urban planning. Specifically, they look at projects that have tried to build some kind of utopia, whether it’s Walt Disney and a theme park or Jawaharlal Nehru and a capital city for a newly liberated India. The utopian adventures on Nice Try! never end in success, but they make for great content.
Personal Favorite: In Our Time
In Our Time predates podcasts as we know them. In fact, this BBC4 radio program has been around since the ’90s. Get educated on the Aztecs, Wagner, or anything else from 30 years of broadcasting to the soothing English tones of host Melvyn Bragg.
True Crime
Chart Topper: My Favorite Murder
If you’re a true-crime fan, chances are you’re already fully onboard the My Favorite Murder train. If you’re not, hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark will convert you fast. No better time than the horrific present to get into the two ladies who proved that murder podcasts could be as hilarious as they are riveting.
Off the Beaten Path: All Crime, No Cattle
GQ loves Texas in all its weird, wild glory. That’s why we love this podcast dedicated exclusively to Texas crime.
Personal Favorite: The Vanished
The Vanished is an unnerving but addictive listen; each episode is dedicated to someone who seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Nearly all of the cases they’ve explored remain unsolved, but host Marissa Jones has a gift of taking you inside the hidden lives of missing persons. For an example, check out the four-part series on the disappearance of Amos Mortier, where Jones lands exclusive interviews from family, friends, and law enforcement to piece together a case from 2004.
Narrative
Chart Topper: My Dad Wrote a Porno
What would you do if your father pulled you aside at your sister’s birthday party and shared with you an erotic novel he’d written? Make a podcast about it, obviously. That’s what Jamie Morton did, anyway. Now you can listen to him read chapters of his dad’s porno, with commentary from his friends. If you need a raunchy, mortifying laugh, My Dad Wrote a Porno is sure to deliver.
Off the Beaten Path: Harry Potter and the Sacred Text
Harry Potter and the Sacred Text sets up two Harvard Divinity School grads with a simple premise: What if you read J. K. Rowling’s beloved series like it was the Bible? Hosts Vanessa Zoltan and Casper ter Kuile take each of the books in the series and unpack the Big Ideas you never realized were there, like class consciousness, gender identity, and the nature of suffering. Go back to your college English class to close read and overthink the most popular children’s series of all time.
Personal Favorite: Welcome to Night Vale
An oldie but a goodie, OG oddball pod Welcome to Night Vale is as compelling today after eight years and three spin-off novels. This science-fictional newscast from a mysterious desert town remains one of the most creative podcasts of all time. The outside world is weird these days; it helps to escape to an even weirder one.
Science/Tech
Chart Topper: Reply All
To call Reply All a technology podcast is to undercut it. Really, it’s a series about culture and the way people behave in our bizarre post-internet world. In one episode, they try to track down a man who claims credit for staging the "pizza rat" photo. In another they fly to Delhi to track down the voice on the other side of a robocall. No matter the episode, Reply All always reveals the human aspect behind the screen.
Off the Beaten Path: Ologies
Is there an -ology for everything? Alie Ward is finding out on her podcast, where she quizzes experts on everything from cocktails to scorpions about the weirder corners of their discipline. Ward is as funny as she is smart, as are her guests. A season of Ologies will leave you armed with a lifetime of fun facts and trivia tidbits.
Personal Favorite: The Secret History of the Future
Professional smartypants from Slate and The Economist join forces to explain how everything new is really just something old, but different. The Secret History of the Future is an excellent collection of technological origin stories to the innovations shaping our world, from the fork to online dating.
Interview/Longform
Chart Topper: Death, Sex & Money
The titular premise of this one is pretty straightforward: Death, sex, and money are often uncomfortable topics to talk about. On this radio special cum podcast, people talk about them. Sometimes it gets weird, and it always gets interesting. Check out a prime example with GQ EIC Will Welch and our recent feature Jason Isbell.
Off the Beaten Path: Table Manners
You know singer-songwriter pop savant Jessie Ware? You do? Did you know she also hosts a podcast with her mom, dedicated to friendly chats with fellow famous people? Well, now you know. It’s lovely. Listen to it.
Personal Favorite: Longform
We at GQ love longform journalism, and we love the people who write it. So naturally we love Longform’s interview series with the best journalists in the game.
Fashion
Chart Topper: Hodinkee Radio
Hodinkee Radio is the leading watch pod from the leading watch pub. Check out GQ EIC Will Welch talking about Rolexes and rock 'n' roll on a recent episode.
Off the Beaten Path: The Cutting Room Floor
Recho Omondi isn’t just one of the brightest talents in a new generation of designers; she’s also one of the smartest fashion critics operating today. On her podcast The Cutting Room Floor, Omondi pushes her guests to engage with pressing, often challenging questions. It’s an essential listen for anyone who thinks critically about the fashion industry.
Personal Favorite: Corporate Lunch
Obviously. Come hear GQ break down all you need to know in fashion once a week.
Sports
Chart Topper: The Bill Simmons Podcast
Many sports podcasts are overly dense, with too many stats or too much crosstalk. Somehow, The Bill Simmons Podcast manages to avoid both pitfalls. Simmons and guests can debate the over/under lines for week six of the NFL season—and engage in marathon debates about whether Allen Iverson or Steve Nash had a better career—and you're going to listen, even though it sometimes feels absurd to do so.
Off the Beaten Path: The Right Time with Bomani Jones
Jones had his own radio show once upon a time (a very good one at that), so it's no surprise he's able to riff efficiently and effectively on his podcast too. He can go deep on the x's and o's like the best of 'em, but is at his best contextualizing the biggest stories in sports in ways you may never have considered before.
Personal Fave: The Lowe Post
Zach Lowe is the media’s best basketball mind, and his insights translate remarkably well in audio format. He brings on the right mix of pundits and players to keep things fresh, and unlike most podcasters, he never monologues for too long. Also, his sometimes-crabby-sounding takes come off as endearing, which isn’t easy to execute in an infamously crabby-sounding sports talk profession.
Comedy
Chart Topper: Comedy Bang! Bang!
Improv is very often (read: almost always) exhausting, eye-rolling material, and that's putting it politely. Comedy Bang! Bang! is the rare sliver of hope for the genre: Likable, talented personalities who can execute recurring bits that are actually funny. Host Scott Aukerman has mastered the craft.
Off the Beaten Path: Podcast: the Ride
Your friendly neighborhood editor swooping in here to stump for a laugh-out-loud series that takes popular theme park attractions (in the loosest sense of the phrase) and, week by week, unpacks their enduring appeal. From Disney hits to obscure, abandoned middle America wastelands, to a multi (and I do mean multi)-part series on Universal Hollywood’s “iconic” City Walk, Podcast: the Ride has something for everyone—even if you’ve never set foot in a theme park in your life.—Brennan Carley
Personal Fave: Bodega Boys
In the olden days, the highest compliment you could pay a singer is that you'd listen to them perform anything—even crooning the names in the Yellow Pages. Desus and Mero can't sing (at least, as far as we know), but if you plopped a dusty phone book in front of them and turned on their mics, they could easily create a two-hour podcast off of it—and make you laugh the entire time. That is, more or less, the actual structuring of their podcast episodes, but it works anyway.
Life-Hacking/Personal Improvement
Chart Topper: Hidden Brain
As we wrote last May, on NPR's Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam reports out a number of fascinating questions: Who created God (and why)? Where did the phrase “be a man” come from, and what can it tell us about masculinity? How can we best cope with chaos? As it turns out, there’s plenty to glean about how our brains dictate our behavior and beliefs.
Off the Beaten Path: The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish
Shane Parrish runs a popular blog called Farnam Street, on which he blends a deep library of literature with his own thoughts, all in search of mental models that can help you make better decisions. As we wrote last May, his podcast is a natural extension of the blog, and it features NFL coaches, maestros, ultra-rich people, and professors. Subject matters can be abstract, but you’ll never leave a Parrish pod without a new idea to chew on.
Personal Fave: Airplane Mode
GQ's very own Clay Skipper is a man whose curiosity and relentless self-reflection have set him on a quest to interview the most thoughtful people we know—business geniuses, writers, comedians, influencers (but the good kind), and beyond—in order to steal their secrets to creativity, success, surviving tech, and staying sane. Season Two of Airplane Mode focuses on confidence: how to get it, how to keep it, and what to do if you lose it. Recent guests include Steve Stoute, Shea Serrano, Joel Kim Booster, and J.J. Redick.
Pop Culture
Chart Topper: The Watch
Maybe you *think* your favorite podcast hosts have good chemistry, but I guarantee they don’t hold a candle to *The Watch*’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald, committed BFFs who have known each other since their teens and spent their adulthood privately obsessing, professionally reviewing, and publicly arguing over movies, TV, music, and books. Come for the recaps of Devs, stay for the inside jokes about the Phillies, second-wave emo, and Christine Baranski.—Yang-Yi Goh
Off the Beaten Path: Waypoint Radio
A Vice podcast ostensibly about gaming has morphed into something with a much wider scope, touching on culture and media at large. There's a level of nuance and insight to each episode that you won't get elsewhere, with a diverse, all-star collection of hosts. "It rules," declares GQ producer Gabe Conte. Say no more.
Personal Fave: How Did This Get Made?
There are few greater pleasures in life than sitting around with a few of your best buds, putting on an absolute dumpster fire of a feature film, and then ruthlessly roasting that movie straight to high hell. Since the quarantine has made those kinds of get-togethers close to impossible, though, How Did This Get Made? is a worthy replacement—and possibly better than the real thing, because there’s no way your friends are as funny as Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas.—Yang-Yi Goh
News/Politics
Chart Topper: Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill
Centrism is presented as the only “fair and balanced” framing of breaking news on broadcast networks. Maybe you agree with that premise; if so, this isn't the podcast for you. But if you lean left, value original reporting, and crave smart voices, then give Scahill a try: he doesn't pretend he's above formulating his own political opinions, and he's willing to criticize anyone in a position of power.
Off the Beaten Path: Citations Needed
There are no Pinocchio designations on Citations Needed, a podcast about the "intersection of media, PR, and power." But hosts Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson provide a much more valuable service: Lengthy, fascinating breakdowns of how viral, sometimes inaccurate stories permeate news cycles. Episode titles include "The Conservative Sanctimony of Journalistic Impartiality," "The Cruel, Voyeuristic Quackery of Rehab TV Shows," and "Porch Pirate Panic and the Paranoid Racism of Snitch Apps."
Personal Fave: TrueAnon
If you're left-leaning, or value the truth, there is no better podcast right now than TrueAnon, hosted by Liz Franczak and Brace Belden. Though the mysterious death of Jeffrey Epstein has been memed into a sick joke, there are real, disturbing, unanswered questions about Epstein and his powerful associates, which Franczak and Belden examine via exhaustive research. Epstein isn't the only focus, either—American imperialism, international relations, COVID-19—it's all covered with a one-of-a-kind flair you won't get anywhere else.
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Originally Appeared on GQ
