Podcasts are excellent for long drives. Though the interior noise of a car soon sorts out their sound quality. (Same as for music, my car may be noisy but classic country music is tailor made for it while hip hop can’t often be heard).
They are also hard to find, even though there are millions of them. I usually do a search for an author or a historical period or character that I want to hear about but its still hard to work your way through them. So I thought I’d put up a list.
I have provided links to Apple Music/iTunes Podcasts and some of the podcasts individual websites. . There is an Apple app on every iphone and also one called Podbean which helps to search. You can find most on Spotify, Youtube and elsewhere. It is a chaotic world.
At the moment I am up to episode 12 of an 18 part Ned Kelly series on Australian Histories Podcast.
The sound production is excellent and the narrators voice (Jenny) has a lovely, warm and friendly voice (a rarity on the internet!) . She must actually be a History teacher. Or a librarian. The research is great and the website that it comes from has copious notes on each podcast. The narrator, presenter, writer also delivers it very straight. No gimmicks, no laughing with mates or silliness, she is really good.
The history is mainly confined to the white history - post 1788 - so I will probably look elsewhere for a broader scope. Perhaps Henry Reynolds has a podcast?
I listened to a lot of episodes from The Boxing Podcast Network . Mainly the Legendary Nights or Career Profiles. They are more social histories than simply sports related stories. The profiles of Jack Johnson and Sonny Liston are amazing. I recommend the Tex Rickard episode and also the boxer he promoted, Jack Dempsey. Thrilling stories.
The two British historians who started The Rest Is History, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook tour the world playing big theatres. They can be great. They can be twee. The Little Big Horn epsiodes were terrific, as were the Aztec series. The road to the Great War was exhaustive.
But their episode on French Presidents was so British in its attitude, as was their history of Australian Prime Ministers. They are quite conservative and one is often talking of his christian beliefs while Dominic Sandbrook obviously loved Margaret Thatcher. They recently did an episode on the Rolling Stones. I didn’t need to hear that. From these two know all (British) conservative boys.
The late Gilbert Gottfrieds show was an amazing resource for interviews with all the great tv comedy writers of the 40s/50s/60/s/70s golden age. Brilliant people. He had a special focus on Jewish comedy and writing in America. Loved Jerry Lewis and the Three Stooges. There were occasionally musicians on the show and the Peter Noone (Hermans Hermits) episode was spectacular. I also really loved the two part Brenda Vaccaro episodes as well as the Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentice ones.
Nymphet Alumni is the universe and voices of three highly intelligent and articulate New York women. They pull you in. They talk in grand themes. This particular episode was about older women as seen on tv shows of the 80s and 90s through the perspective of 21st century young women who cannot imagine having so much slack , time, space and money. Its an affectionate but knowing look.
The BBC Desert Island Discs radio shows are archived going back to the 70s. I listened to a lot of the light entertainment tv people like Bruce Forsyth and Terry Wogan. They talk about their lives more than their music preferences. The interviewers style changes over the decades, becoming very disrespectful in the 80s and 90s with ex news reader Sue Lawley. This episode was with snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan and was quite incredible with the stories of his upbringing by his Soho sex shop owning father in the 70s and 80s. (The interviewer gently moving the story along ever grimier and stranger turns…)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001mc30
Alec Baldwin does a podcast called Here’s The Thing. His occasional music interviews are very good. He obviously loved the prog band YES and Jon Anderson does not hold back. In being Jon Anderson.
Sizzletown is produced by Tony Martin and Matt Dower and its been going for about seven years. A fake “phone in” podcast show with Tony creating all the characters who call in. His interviews with film directors such as William Friedkin and David Lynch are hilarious. They also often talk with Tonys cat, Pikelet Man. The use of sound effects and voices is like a radio theatre programme. The production values and skills are unmatched, and then there is the comedy genius of Tony Martin.
https://sizzletown.podbean.com/
Past Present and Future is generated from the offices of the London Review Of Books.
Their series on Bad Ideas was very good, as were the episodes on Political Films. They also did some alternative history episode - what if something hadn’t happened?
I got depressed listening to the presenter talking with an American historian who spoke of how intelligent and well read was “one of the two greatest Presidents of the Twentieth Century” in the episode on Ronald Reagan.
There aren’t many Steve Jones podcasts online but this one with Chrissie Hynde was a pearler.
https://www.jonesysjukebox.com/ppodcast/2022/5/16/jonesys-jukebox-episode-2
One day I just typed Man In A Suitcase into a search box and found a podcast which is all about ITC Productions. Many interviews with people who worked on Dangerman and Department S and many others. If not the people involved its their children.
https://jazwiseman.podbean.com/
You Must Remember This is a very long running - probably pre podcast world - website/setup.
Brilliantly researched stories on old Hollywood. I loved the recent six or seven part series on Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jnr.
https://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/
A History of Rock Music in 500 songs is surely the most ambitious and best of the rock music podcasts. Very well researched and the sensitivity of the writer and podcaster is to be applauded as he navigates social and cultural and politically charged themes and identities while being true to 2025 sensibilities. He focuses on an artist through the pole of a particular song. The Grateful Dead’s Dark Star went for three quite daring and thrilling hours. The Kinks episode is full of detail I had never heard before.
The Bureau Of Lost Culture is all about underground streams of knowledge and lore.
Clare Moore enjoys UNCANNY. A very highly polished and produced BBC podcast about encounters with ghosts and other unexplained phenomena. The host really brings the stories to life.
Also worth a listen. Out to Lunch with Adrian Edmonson. Aimless talk with comedians and actors. It seems to be a show that changed drivers at some point.
As this last one shows, being produced by Sony Entertainment, it is a world that is in the throes of being tamed and commercialized. Everything is free, though the more popular ones have more ads. Personally, the only one I have really stuck to is Sizzletown because it is so unique and always great.
If you are into the continuum of American-Jewish-comedians-humour-satire, post the Great Genocide of Israel, you should check out this American bloke Brace Belden and his 'True Anon' Podcast. The guy is sort of like Friendly Jordies or John Saffron if he wasn't a 'Yeshiva boccha'.