The first list in my Best of 2018 series is a new category for my annual consideration: podcasts.
I know podcasts (particularly the ones I subscribe to) don’t represent any ‘food, drink and travel treats’ as I said in my introduction post that I would be highlighting. However, I felt it would be good to include my podcast recs for your listening pleasure.
For me, travelling without getting to listen to my favourite podcasts would be considerably less enjoyable. They make wait times, long flights and train journeys more tolerable. Starting and ending days by myself in unfamiliar places are better as well when I have the chance to catch up with the shows I follow.
I work on two podcasts (my solo tikichris Talks project and All Consumed, which I co-produce with journalist Neil Davey). So podcasting is often on my mind. That seems to be the case with all sorts of other folks too though – whether they have any desire to podcast or not. What podcasts people are listening too and which are worth checking out is an increasingly common topic of conversation.
Without further ado, here’s my list of favourite podcasts of 2018 (and yes I’m really into politics and shows produced by WNYC).
Items appear in alphabetic order, not ranked.
Best Podcasts
WYNC talk show host Brian Lehrer leads the conversation about current affairs in the New York area, as well as US and international politics. I started listening to Brian Years ago when I lived across the river from New York in Hoboken, New Jersey. The New York stuff doesn’t apply much to me these days but it’s still interesting. The national and international content is riveting and excellently analysed by Brian and his knowledgeable guests. I’m a far better informed person for listening to this show.
Twenty minutes a day and five days a week, host Michael Barbaro and guest journalists break down the day’s biggest news event for this New York Times podcast.
Statistician Nate Silver and team cover the latest in politics, tracking the issues and “game-changers” every week with insightful and sometimes provoking analysis that’s data-based and usually proved right.
This weekly review of British politics presented by Sebastian Payne features the Financial Times’ political commentators and correspondents in thoughtful conversation about the week’s biggest stories (usually that means Brexit) with to-the-point analysis that they can back with the FT’s spot-on journalism.
This show delves into the “nitty gritty of Brexit” in an effort to make “some sort of sense of it” with views by Britons and Europeans, Leavers and Remainers, politicians and ordinary people, economists, businessmen, lawyers, researchers, campaigners and many more about what Brexit means for them, how it might work – or not.
“Imagine if your dad wrote a dirty book. Most people would try to ignore it – but not Jamie Morton.” Instead, Jamie decided to read a chapter a week in this comedy podcast with commentary from friends James Cooper and Alice Levine. Four seasons in and this show is still hilarious.
For one hour a week, On the Media “lifts the veil” to reveal the process of how media, especially news media, is made and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad.
Serial is a true story podcast from the creators of This American Life and hosted by Sarah Koenig. The show has won every major award for broadcasting, including the duPont-Columbia, Scripps Howard, Edward R. Murrow, and the first-ever Peabody awarded to a podcast. For Season Three, Serial goes to court in Cleveland with a year inside a typical American courthouse. One courthouse, told week by week with extraordinary stories of ordinary cases. The storytelling is compelling, reasonable, full of humanity and important.
Trump, Inc. is a joint reporting project from WNYC Studios and ProPublica that digs deep into questions about how President Trump’s business works and who might be profiting from his administration.
More of the Best of 2018 to follow!.
