Podcast Recommendations Part 7
Chicago History Podcast
As a new resident of Chicago, recent episodes and a few from their back catalog (2020 to present) have been giving me background on the neighborhood, parks, and more in-depth books about Chicago history if you’re up for a deep dive.
CS224U: Natural Language Understanding
Interviews since April 2022 by Stanford professor Chris Potts for a course. Nothing hugely surprising, but quite reasonable and in-depth coverage of current issues and practices in NLP/NLU.
Darknet Diaries
Fascinating episodes from security researchers at all different parts of the industry and (at times) various parts of the world.
Gastropod
A co-worker recently recommended this food-related podcast which began in 2014. Currently they post an episode roughly every two weeks.
I listened to an early episode on vitamins and a recent episode on delivery; both were quality.
How To F#€k Up An Airport
A straightforward, English-language podcast about Berlin’s new airport (code: BER) and years of failures in its construction. Episodes are from 2016–2017, plus one postscript episode about the eventual opening in 2020.
I appreciate the German humor, the lively narration to make bureaucracy interesting, and the background on the multiple previous Berlin airports (as someone who only visited Berlin once, I know there are strong feelings to rival New Yorkers’ feelings on JFK/LGA/EWR, but only glanced off of it).
I only saw this after it was featured on Hacker News, so likely most people have decided to listen to it or not already.
Integrated Schools Podcast
I should have included this in Podcast Recommendations posts. The mission of Integrated Schools is for parents to send their kids to local public schools and stop perpetuating stereotypes. They follow multiple stories and probe into common practices like ‘school within a school’.
In summer 2020 there was a New York Times series Nice White Parents which discussed several of the same issues.
Muslims Doing Things
Tech co-founder Layla Shaikley interviews Muslim Americans about their day job and experiences. There are 58 episodes from Dec. 2020 to Jan. 2022 [edit: resumed in September 2022]. I think that I’d seen this on Twitter before, but I started listening after Layla appeared on PBS mini-series The Great Muslim American Road Trip this summer.
Set and Setting with Madison Margolin
A podcast on psychedelics running from November 2021 to present. Margolin is a journalist with a specific focus on psychedelics and cannabis. The interviewees bring a variety of topics, but there is sort of an inevitability drive (it’s going to be legal, lots of people will do this) and a lot of New Age ideas about purpose, natural and religious connections to psychedelics, etc. If one slice or more of that sounds interesting then you can pick and choose from several episodes.
https://art19.com/shows/set-and-setting
The Right Scuff
A recent New Yorker article on Foley artists mentioned that one of the pros had a podcast. After some introductions, each episode brings in someone who puts together sound and/or music, usually a story of how they tried multiple things before getting sorted into this highly specialized career path. The podcast is put together by expert John Roesch and his daughter, so it has the vibe of a family pandemic project..? Yet it was recorded from 2017–2019.
Tilling the Soil
The Whitney Plantation began this podcast in July 2022. Unlike other tourist or event-based plantation sites, the Whitney Plantation has become known for committing to telling history from the perspective enslaved people. In the first episode the hosts talk about the importance of having a Black board and being open to answering all kinds of myths and misconceptions.
Unfinished: Ernie’s Secret
2022 podcast about a civil rights photographer who was posthumously revealed as an FBI informant. Interviews cover a variety of perspectives making up his enduring legacy.
Who Killed Daphne?
A 2022 podcast about an assassination in Malta (covered in-depth in this New Yorker article). The podcast host (Stephen Grey, an investigative journalist) was part of a team which provided an independent investigation of Daphne’s stories.
Side Notes
- 5–4 Podcast did a great reaction episode to the Dobbs ruling, appeared in the New York Times, and interviewed Senator Elizabeth Warren.
- Falling Out (the podcast about the Unification Church / ‘Moonies’) began posting Season 3.
- In response to a viral back-and-forth with Senator Josh Hawley about terms around pregnancy, Flip the Script posted a link to their 2018 episode with Dr. Khiara Bridges.
- While I was trying to find the Trader Joe’s in-house podcast again, Google recommended a 2018 Freakonomics episode on them.
Stores in Massachusetts and Minneapolis recently filed for a union vote [the Hadley, MA store successfully voted to unionize].
