Year in Review 2018: Podcasts

Best Podcasts of 2018

• The Allusionist
  Synopsis: Forays into the wild and crazy world of words.
  
  Though the one-off episodes of The Allusionist are usually enjoyable and interesting enough, the miniseries always feel stronger. The two-parter on the suppression of Welsh and Scots languages in the UK, and the 4-part series on names, also just feel more important than the health benefits of swearing or the differences between American and British English, as fun as those topics are.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Survival” (2-part series), “Names” (4–part series)
  
  Good places to start: “Step Away”, “Fix” (2-part series), “Big Lit”, “Generation What?”
  
  
• The Anthropocene Reviewed
  Synopsis: Each month, John Green reviews 2 facets of the human-centered planet on a 5-star scale.
  
  So, I was a bit wary going into this show for multiple reasons:
  1) I was never a part of the John Green fan club. I wasn’t a Vlogbrothers viewer, haven’t read any of his books—mainly I know him for hosting Mental Floss videos and that one video he did about the penny. I’d always secretly thought of him as an overrated hack because in my heart of hearts I am petty and mean.
  2) The premise sounded derivative, specifically of the late great Review, the show where Andy Daly plays Forrest MacNeil, a man who reviews life on a 5-star scale, which usually involves him injuring himself and/or others.
  
  Unfortunately for the part of me that wants to dislike things, it turns out John Green is actually a pretty good writer, and while he does review life on a 5-star scale, it’s not satirical, but rather an earnest engagement with everything from Mario Kart to the seed potatoes of Leningrad. Green’s seemingly effortless ability to unpack these things in a way that is both personal and universal is frankly infuriating, and that he does so with both deep emotion and dry wit is no less painfully impressive.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Googling Strangers and Kentucky Bluegrass”, “Hawaiian Pizza and Viral Meningitis”, “Tetris and the Seed Potatoes of Leningrad”
  
  Good places to start: “Canada Geese and Diet Dr Pepper”
  
  
• Behind the Bastards
  Synopsis: Robert Evans takes his comedian guests into the lives of history’s biggest bastards.
  
  If you see the appeal of true crime podcasts but don’t want to be strung along for a whole season, then Robert Evans’s 1-to-3-episode summaries of terrible people just might be for you. It’s the perfect combination of “things you didn’t know about these famously terrible people” and “here’s these terrible people you didn’t know about before.”
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Stalin: After Dark”, “Bill Cosby: A Life of Red Flags” (2-part series), “No Matter How Much You Hate Paul Manafort, You Should Hate Him More (And Here’s Why)” (2-part series), “Charles Koch: The Luke Skywalker of Rich People” (2-part series), “Alex Jones: The Godfather of Fake News” (3-part series)
  
  Good places to start: If none of those interest you, I suggest perusing the archives until you find someone you’ve never heard of or someone you want to know more about.
  
  
• Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything
  Synopsis: Benjamen Walker explores the connections between all things, sometimes blurring fiction and reality in his quest to develop a theory of everything.
  
  It’s impossible to pick any individual episodes out of this season, which was devoted pretty much entirely to the “False Alarm!” series. Walker explores the intersections of fiction and reality while asking if it’s right, in these troubled times, for him to blend the two in his podcast—while also continuing to do so. It gets a little meta. From the storytelling to the breadth of topics to the depth of the research, this is probably the best series TOE’s ever done, and probably even more relevant to modern times than last year’s surveillance series.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “False Alarm!” (15-part series about nonexistent nuclear threats that caused real panic, fake artists with real exhibits, pseudoscience, spiritualism, Nazis, Russian biker gangs, and more)
  
  Good places to start: “The Clouds” (3-part series), “Instaserfs” (3-part series), “Something will happen, eventually”, “False Alarm!” (15-part series)
  
  
• The Habitat
  Synopsis: Six people seal themselves up in a simulation of a Mars base for a year.
  
  What’s maybe most fascinating about this series is how mundane it ends up being. Sure, they’re pretending to be on Mars, and there are some real moments of drama centered around that fact, like when the Parisian crewmember learns of the November 13th Paris attacks and has to decide to stay in the habitat or leave, which would end the experiment. But what it all eventually comes down to is people being people around other people, in a small space that they’re not allowed to leave, and everything you would expect to happen happens.
  
  Start with Episode 1.
  
  
• Harmontown
  Synopsis: Dan Harmon (Community, Rick & Morty), joined by Comptroller Jeff Davis and Game Master Spencer Crittenden, talks about what’s on his mind, does improv, raps, and plays D&D, all in front of a live audience (most of the time).
  
  Picking the best episodes of a 2-hour long, unscripted, unformatted comedy/talk podcast that comes out almost every week is exceedingly difficult. So these picks are slightly arbitrary, but they do represent the many facets of Harmontown that make it a unique show: great D&D moments, hilarious long-form improv, absurd anecdotes, Spencer’s snappy one-liners, Harmon’s therapy insights and righteous anger, and audience interaction.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Oh Hitler, We Hardly Knew Ye”, “The Christmas with No Underwear”, “Live from The Wilbur in Boston 2018” & “Live from The Cradle of Aviation Museum in Long Island, NY”, “Dadfished”, “Twenty Sides of Booty”
  
  Good places to start: “Cleft in Twain”, “Harmoncountry: Austin, TX”, “Simulation”, “Grodily Plausible” (if you don’t like audiences), Harmontown (documentary film)
  
  
• The Memory Palace
  Synopsis: Stories from history.
  
  The ethos of The Memory Palace, the core idea, is that it matters what stories we tell, and it matters how we tell them. It’s one thing to be told something happened; it’s another thing to be told how it felt. Nate DiMeo’s voice (both narrative and literal) draws out not just the dry facts but the emotional truths of (often obscure) history. These episodes exemplify that, but are also, in their own ways, about the stories we tell and are told, and how.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Junk Room”, “Patience”, “Antidisestablishmentarianism”
  
  Good places to start: “High Above Lake Michigan”, “White Heat, White Lights”, “Butterflies”, or start with host Nate DiMeo’s favorites
  
  
• Radiolab
  Synopsis: “Radiolab is a show about curiosity. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience.”
  
  Besides their unique approach to production and their penchant for finding off-the-beaten-path stories, Radiolab is also great at amplifying other people’s voices, as they did in this year’s “Border Trilogy” and “In the No.”
  
  Best episodes of the year: “The Border Trilogy” (3-part series), “Post No Evil”, “Breaking Bad News Bears”, “In the No” (3-part series)
  
  Good places to start: “Cities”, “Desperately Seeking Symmetry”, “The Trust Engineers”, “I Don’t Have to Answer That”
  
  
• Radiolab Presents: More Perfect
  Synopsis: Deep dives into important Supreme Court decisions except this year it’s about the Constitution.
  
  This year More Perfect created 27: The Most Perfect Album, with songs inspired by the 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, while doing stories about the amendments (as well as interviewing some of the artists about their songs) for the podcast as sort of audio liner notes. They’re all pretty fascinating, and frankly, I don’t really want to pick a favorite, and since it’s a series I don’t have to. So there.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “The Most Perfect Album” (9–part series about amendments)
  
  Good places to start: “Cruel and Unusual”, “The Political Thicket”, “Object Anyway”,  “The Gun Show”, “Citizens United”
  
  
• Reply All
  Synopsis: Stories about technology—the good, the bad, and the goofy (sometimes all three).
  
  This is exactly the right level of tech journalism for me—not so inside baseball that it’s dense and/or boring, not so surface level that it doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Whether it’s finding out the surprising history of the now infamous INCEL movement or spending 40 minutes analyzing a tweet about basketball, it’s almost always something interesting.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Trust The Process”, “INVCEL”, “The Magic Store”, “The Crime Machine” (2-part series), “Surefire Investigations”
  
  Good places to start: “Exit & Return” (2-part series), “The Man in the FBI Hat”, “Long Distance” (2-part series), “Is Facebook Spying on You?”
  
  
• Rough Translation
  Synopsis: A look at how issues we’re dealing with in the U.S. are being dealt with elsewhere in the world. It’s like This American Life for not America.
  
  It’s a shame that Rough Translation always has such a short season, but they use it well. These are the kinds of stories you don’t get to hear elsewhere. Except “Intruders,” which I think ran on TAL, ironically.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Ghana’s Parent Trap”, “Intruders”, “War Poems”
  
  Good places to start: “Brazil in Black and White”, “Anna in Somalia”, “Ukraine vs. Fake News”
  
  
• Serial
  Synopsis: Season 3 focuses on the stories of “one” (three) courthouse(s) in Cleveland, OH.
  
  This season, covering a wide variety of stories instead of focusing on just one, harkens back to the show’s This American Life roots—really, the only reason they wouldn’t have been able to do this at TAL is the length, since the most that show usually does is a two-parter. While it lacks the sensationalism and true crime drama of the first season or the primetime news relevance of the second season (I assume? I didn’t actually listen to it), it makes for better journalism, and I think a better show.
  
  Best episodes of the year: On the episodes page it literally says, “Please listen to the episodes in order,” so…
  
  Good places to start: “A Bar Fight Walks Into the Justice Center”
  
  
• Showcase from Radiotopia
  Synopsis: A series of curated miniseries by different producers on a variety of different subjects.
  
  As with Small Beans, it’s nice to have some variety and surprise built into my podcast feed, this time with more scripted, produced content, as opposed to conversational.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Secrets” (6-episode series), “The Great God of Depression” (5-part series)
  
  Good places to start: “The Polybius Conspiracy” (7-part series), “Errthang” (8-part series)
  
  
• Small Beans
  Synopsis: A whole gosh-darn network of comedy and pop-culture goodness but also mental health, race, and dinosaurs. Hosts and guests include many people who were fired from Cracked, in case that means anything to you.
  
  Honestly, I could fill this whole list with just Tales From the Pit episodes, which feature some of the best writing and most valuable conversations about mental health that have ever been podcasted. Like, if Michael Swaim only put out Tales From the Pit once every couple months and nothing else it would be worth it. But there’s other good stuff too and it’s not fair to not have those be represented, so I limited myself to two TFtP picks.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Tales From the Pit: Stable Genius”, “Tales From the Pit: Jane, Get Me Off This Crazy Thing!”, “Frame Rate: Groundhog Day”, “The Coen Brothers Brothers: Barton Fink”, “1Upsmanship: Minecraft”
  
  Good places to start: “Tales From the Pit: Dungeon Crawl”, “1Upsmanship: The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild”, “Pop Culture Petri Dish: VR, 3-D Scanning and Poop-Shells”, “Rough Stuff: Maggie Mae Fish”, “The Coen Brothers Brothers: Blood Simple”, “Frame Rate: Wall-E”, “My Top 8: Bailey Norton”, “What Dinosaur Real Good? Glyptodon!”, “BOLD: Police Brutality, Black XMas, Jackie Lacey”, “Dan and Mike are Fighting” (if you’re personally invested in the friendship of Daniel O’Brien and Michael Swaim and/or want to learn more about the Cracked layoffs and the state of online media)
  
  
• This American Life
  Synopsis: Stories having to do with life in America. This one.
  
  I mean, it’s This American Life—out of 660+, there are very few “bad” episodes. So this is another one where the selections are somewhat arbitrary, but I tried to highlight different facets of the show, whether it be personal interviews, documentary, essays, investigative journalism, or just good old-fashioned reportáge.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Five Women”, “The Impossible Dream”, “Random Acts of History”, “The Feather Heist”, “Let Me Count The Ways”
  
  Good places to start: “Harold”, “Testosterone”, “Rest Stop”, “The Radio Drama Episode”, “The Problem We All Live With” (2-part series)
  
  
• The Truth
  Synopsis: Audio drama with modern production values.
  
  Honestly, I was kind of disappointed by last year’s season of The Truth, but apparently their new writing system is working out because this season was great. “Nuclear Winter” is legitimately creepy without being just a horror story, “The Hilly Earth Society” takes epistolary fiction (one of my favorite modes) into the voicemail age, “Wonderworld, USA” blends absurdity and pathos (also one of my favorite modes), “The Off Season” manages to avoid pretty much all of the traps it could have easily fallen into (including being predictable or trite), and “Murder at Cakery Bakery” is hilarious and superbly well-acted.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Nuclear Winter”, “The Hilly Earth Society”, “Wonderworld, USA”, “The Off Season” (4-part series), “Murder at Cakery Bakery”
  
  Good places to start: “Interruptible”, “Tape Delay”, “That’s Democracy”, “The Extractor”
  
  
• VS
  Synopsis: Hosts Franny Choi and Danez Smith interview poets about the obsessions that motivate them.
  
  I sometimes have a hard time talking about writing with people who don’t write, especially poetry. For example, I was talking to my boss about the idea of a story or poem “earning” a particular tone, topic, ending, etc., which it turns out is not an immediately intuitive concept, even to someone who has studied literary analysis and is smarter than me. So, while it can feel a little insular at times, it’s nice to have a show where poets are interviewing other poets and can build off of their shared understanding of the craft.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Jamaal May vs. The Multiverse”, “Kaveh Akbar vs. Bewilderment”, “Angel Nafis vs. Observation”, “Kamiko Hahn vs. Portals”
  
  Good places to start: “Eve Ewing vs. The Apocalypse”, “Natalie Diaz vs. the Lexicon”
  
  
• Welcome to Night Vale
  Synopsis: Welcome to Night Vale is a community radio show based in the small desert town of Night Vale.
  
  Though there are a couple of the lighter, more vignette-style episodes that marked the earlier seasons of Welcome to Night Vale, Fink and Cranor really doubled down on the narrative focus they had built up last season, with 4 multi-episode arcs comprising much of this season. My guess is it has something to do with the two books they’ve now got under their belts, but whatever the reason it’s undeniably some of their strongest writing yet.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “A Story of Love and Horror” (3-part series), “A Matter of Blood” (3-part series), “A Story About Us”, “Bedtime Story”, “Are You Sure?”
  
  Good places to start: “Pilot”, “A Story About You”, “One Year Later”, or the episodes listed on this page.
  
  
• Whiting Wongs
  Synopsis: Jessica Gao and Dan Harmon discuss race and writing.
  
  At its best, the show crashes Gao and Harmon together like a super collider and the bits and pieces that fly off are valuable insight into systemic racism and each of our roles within that system. At its worst it’s just them drunkenly arguing about sharks. So, mixed bag.
  
  Best episodes of the year: Boy howdy I really can’t narrow this one down. Each episode builds on the ongoing conversation. Also the show page doesn’t have links for individual episodes.
  
  Good places to start: If you’re not on board after the first episode, probably just go ahead and stop.
  
  
• You Are Not So Smart
  Synopsis: David McRaney interviews experts about all the ways we’re not as smart as we think we are.
  
  This season started out a little depressing, especially the episode on tribalism in which we learn that people will go out of their way to keep “others” from benefiting even if it’s harmful to their own tribe. But eventually we got back to my favorite topic from last year, how to actually convince people, which made me feel slightly less depressed (only slightly; one can easily observe that people who need to know this stuff clearly don’t and are making their arguments in the worst possible ways). But also apparently the more we’ve solved a problem the more we think we haven’t solved it, so that’s something.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “Tribal Psychology”, “Belief Change Blindness”, “The Marshmallow Replication”, “The Elaboration Likelihood Model”, “Prevalence Induced Concept Change”
  
  Good places to start: “The Replication Crisis” (putting this here, out of order, because you should probably listen to it first, as some of the theories implicated in the replication crisis are covered in earlier episodes of the show), “Survivorship Bias”, “Belief”, “Change My View”, “Moral Arguments”, “The Backfire Effect” (4–part series)
  
  
• 99% Invisible
  Synopsis: Stories about how design shapes our lives.
  
  99PI is just one of those shows that’s consistently good no matter what the topic is, and they put out a lot of stuff, so here’s just a random grab bag of goodness.
  
  Best episodes of the year: “City of the Future” (2-part series), “The Laff Box”, “Post-Narco Urbanism”, “Articles of Interest” (6-part series about the clothes)
  
  Good places to start: “Queue Theory and Design” (+“Q2”), “Barcodes”, “Ten Thousand Years”, “Unpleasant Design”, “Half a House”

Honorable Mentions: All Songs Considered, Conversations With People Who Hate Me, Flash Forward, The Good Place: The Podcast, Home of the Brave, Invisibilia, Life of the Law, No Such Thing As A Fish, On the Media, Reasonably Sound, Reveal, Song Exploder, Spontaneanation with Paul F. Tompkins, The Thrilling Adventure Hour Treasury, Unattended Consequences, A Way with Words, What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law, WTF with Marc Maron