ILTP: A Podcast Lover’s Love Letter to Podcasts
My PocketCasts Playback 2024 report tells me that I've listened to 57 days, 16 hours, and 27 minutes of podcasts this year. So far.
That's across 77 shows and for a running total of 2,555 individual episodes.
You get it. I listen to a lot of podcasts.
My father has coined an acronym for me: ILTP ("I listened to a podcast"). As in, "ILTP about the history of cake", "ILTP that explained why dogs and cats use their ears differently", "ILTP and I learned how romance languages spread the way they did".
Since it feels like a heavy moment of uncertainty and held breath right now on so many fronts, and the holiday season can be intense—ripe with both the deliciousness of good times in loving family company and the fraught dynamics between differing world views gathered around one table—I thought I'd write about something (mostly) a little lighter today.
In homage to Ross Gay's beloved collection of essays The Book of Delights, I'm highlighting some of the podcasts that are delights to me. That is, definitionally, podcasts that bring me "a feeling of extreme pleasure or satisfaction", going all the way back to the Old French verb delitier: "to please greatly, to charm".
Some of these are little audio worlds I love inhabiting. Some tip me down fascinating rabbit holes of esoteric knowledge. And some feel like a hang with good people who have great chemistry with each other. Some are even a bit of all of those things.
Because I am many kinds of nerd, this is actually quite tied into my work, as well as a personal pleasure. Personal life and working life aren’t that different, after all. I’m still me. I love the interdisciplinary tidbits that come to me in the wide net of my podcast listening. It’s one of the channels I use to take in stories and perspectives that are different from mine.
Interdisciplinarity is a key component of how I do my work in a way that’s not quite like anyone else. It lets me come at things with a pirate-inflected “but could I do it differently somehow?” approach.
Right now, that means I’m prepping SEED:Management, which is the next upcoming collaboration from the SEED trio. It’ll be a full-day training plus two virtual follow-ups for managers in cultural organizations, and I promise it’s going to be the most fun and supportive management training day our participants have ever experienced. If that sounds right for you, your registration deadline is December 20 for this NYC event (at The Morgan Library & Museum) on January 13, 2025. Come join us!
OK, musings on the value of interdisciplinarity aside, here’s my ode to 10 of my favorite podcasts. May they augment your audio diet, give you some possible family conversation topics, and occupy your cold, dark nights (if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, that is).
The Memory Palace
The Memory Palace is the first podcast that I can remember bringing me a feeling of delight. Not just a podcast that taught me something interesting (a delight of a different sort), but a podcast that immersed me in a historical moment and mood and made it feel like I was inside the story it was telling.
This podcast works best when you don't know anything about the story before the episode, and the episodes don't go in any sequential order, so you can truly dip into eclectic snippets of history by listening to any of the 5-15ish minute episodes. Plus, the search modes on the website are fun. Play a random episode. Pick a tag that intrigues you. Choose an evocative episode title.
FYI, Nate's got a new book out, The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past. While there's nothing in it monetarily for me to promote his new project, there's a great deal in it communitarily for me to spread the word about someone's work I admire and appreciate.
I've picked out a few of my favorite episodes of the podcast and linked them here.
Developments in the Design and Manufacture of American Menswear 1840-1860, a Fable
Inspired by Nate's approach to The Memory Palace, I'm intentionally avoiding descriptions of any of the specific episodes I link to in this post. If the description of the podcast interests you, take a leap and try some of my faves. See how they speak to you.
Everything is Alive
This is probably the podcast whose new episodes I prioritize listening to above all others. It is, at its root, interviews with inanimate objects (or, for one season, animals). But it's also host Ian Chillag in deadpan conversation with comics and voice actors and others you may recognize, each of whom takes their role of object very seriously.
You will certainly laugh. You will also probably learn some interesting tidbits from the experts who get called in the middle of each episode. And sometimes, you'll end up thinking deep and philosophical thoughts about life.
It's quite a ride.
You should probably start with episode 1—Louis, Can of Cola—but then feel free to bounce around. As with The Memory Palace, this one works best when you don't expect anything going in. Just let the conversation take you where it will.
Here are a few of my other favorite episodes:
Alex, Alex, and Sebastian, Russian Dolls
Chioke, Grain of Sand & its sequel Chioke, Pane of Glass
Stuff the British Stole
Marc Fennell serves as host for this exploration of… you guessed it… stories of British colonial looting. Some might be familiar if you're a museum-interested person. There's an episode about the Parthenon Marbles, and another about Tipu's Tiger, and another about the Benin bronzes.
This is a co-production of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and there's something that much more pointed about it being funded by the national media of two former British colonies. (There's also been a tv show made of some of these episodes, although I haven't watched it.)
Whether or not you're familiar with each episode's particular topic, Fennell's storytelling is compelling and evocative. Each episode becomes a larger indicator of the many and varied ways that imperial colonization led to problems that are very much still with us today.
Highlight eps include.
The Allusionist
I'm many kinds of nerd, and one of them is definitely a word nerd. So this podcast, hosted by Helen Zaltzman, who dives deep into word nerdery of all kinds with many different guests, is a real treat in my feed.
There are episodes about etymology and conlangs (constructed languages) and word game competitions and translation and crossword construction and all kinds of other fun with language.
Helen's got a mellifluous voice, and she's recorded a whole series of Tranquillusionist episodes that are simply her melodiously reading lists of things (constellations, salads, Westminster Dog Show dog names) to soothe you.
The show's been going since 2015, so the back catalogue is long and varied, but here are a few of my favorites of just the past couple years.
Films to Be Buried With
Comedy is not a genre I'm all that familiar with, so my first exposure to Brett Goldstein was as writer and Roy Kent on Ted Lasso. And then, oh my god, was I delighted to find his podcast and discover that he's also a huge film nerd.
Each episode's guest comes on, talks about their work, and then Brett tells them they've died and proceeds through the same sequence of questions. The first segment can get pretty existential. "What do you think happens after you die?" and "Are you afraid of death?" levels of existential. And then he tells them that in the afterlife, people want to discuss their life through the films that meant the most to them, and we come to know a bit more about the guest's life.
It's funny. It's poignant. It's a great reminder of films I've loved and alert to films I haven't seen. It's all-around heartwarming and clever, and it cements my love for Brett Goldstein every time.
Here are some of the episodes I've loved, always for Brett, and these especially for his repartee with the guests.
any episode with Nish Kumar or Ed Gamble (there have been multiple)
Twenty Thousand Hertz
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I am many kinds of nerd. So this show, hosted by Dallas Taylor, who runs a sound design studio, is yet another one of my assorted pockets of nerdery. It's all about sound design: sometimes things in the everyday world around us, sometimes deep dives into one particularly famous sound, sometimes about a way sound is created and/or shared.
This might be the best fodder for party stories you can hope to find in podcast form.
These are some of my faves.
Misophonia (yep, different ep from The Allusionist one above)
Scene on Radio
If you want to know more about some of the major systems underpinning much of our life (especially in the USA, but also applicable more broadly), then this podcast from Duke University's Kenan Institute for Ethics is your key.
Each season focuses on one big topic and explores its evolution, its ramifications on our world today, and what alternatives we might find. Each season has two co-hosts: John Biewen along with someone whose topical knowledge and lived experience are especially relevant to that season's focus.
It's pretty unapologetically progressive in its approach, but even if that's not your particular lens, the reporting is solidly fact-based and will shed new light on a whole bunch of the systems that are actively harming a lot of people in the world right now.
All the seasons are worth listening to, but these are probably my top three.
Honorable mentions to a few podcasts that are in an indefinite hiatus. I don't know if they're coming back, but I miss them, and I stay subscribed in the hopes that more will eventually come.
Still Processing
The very brilliant and very entertaining Wesley Morris and J Wortham tackle all kinds of culture related topics. As the homepage synopsis puts it, "That means television, film, books, music — but also the culture of work, dating, the internet and how those fit together." This podcast fits into the category of "two hosts who are besties and who I parasocially wish were my besties", which always makes for an engaging and interesting listen.
Keanu Reeves Will Be Your Mirror
Bande à part
Also a "two hosts who are besties and who I parasocially wish were my besties" pick is this podcast about fashion history, hosted by Rebecca Arnold (an academic who teaches—or at least taught, since I'm not sure what she's up to right now—at my alma mater, the Courtauld Institute of Art) and Beatrice Behlen (the senior curator of fashion and decorative arts at the Museum of London). These conversations are freewheeling explorations of exhibitions or catalogues or movies or pop culture fashion moments that are sometimes interspersed with specific style recs and/or Rebecca's dog Koda chiming in.
Museum behind the scenes and Collecting Fashion
The Uncertain Hour
I can't recommend any specific episodes of this podcast, because their whole deal is that they take one big, complicated issue per season and dissect it over the course of 6 or 8 episodes. They've got seasons about the opioid crisis, about government regulation, about the welfare system in the USA. It's fascinating. I hope there's more.
OK, there are 10 of my favorites.
I am always open to more podcast recs, so please comment with your own faves here, and may 2025 perhaps be a year we're all introduced to some new audio content.
Creative Prompt Coda: At the end of your day, write a haiku about a moment of insight or connection to nature you had that day. Bonus: do it for a week.
