13 Minutes to the Moon

Season 1 is essential listening. It’s not very long, and takes you through the journey of putting astronauts on the moon with tech far less advanced that what you’re reading this on. It came sooooo close to failure on more than one occasion. When that lander touched down, it had something like 8 seconds of fuel left.

Season 2 is the story in detail of the Apollo 13 mission. If you loved Season 1 and want more, then go right ahead. I liked season 2, but nowhere near as much.

I feel like my regular rotation is slight in comparison to what other folks are posting, but podcasts are an unwinding kind of activity for me, so I don’t really want to be inundated with current events or heavy topics. Accordingly, here’s a bunch of “Arts and Culture” type recommendations.

Bandsplain: Yasi Salek explores bands’ discographies, usually with a guest who is a self-described super fan of the band being discussed. I think it’s a Spotify exclusive, which is a bummer, but they leverage that to actually play relevant songs at certain points in the cast. A good way to remove blindspots in your catalog, or to achieve a greater understanding of artists’ holistic output, rather than just the hits.

Blank Check: A podcast about filmographies. Each “season” covers a different director, and the hosts examine their career chronologically. Fun, and it encourages me to finally tackle movie blindspots. They are doing the first half of Spielberg’s career at the moment, most recently discussing 1987’s Empire of the Sun.

Eye of the Duck: A podcast about movie genres / vibes. Each “season” is a different kind of film, and the hosts select emblematic examples to examine in chronological order, with a mind towards how the genre evolved over time. Examples of past topics include Alien Invasion, 80s Dark Fantasy, Space Movies, and so on. They are typically a little more “film school brain” than most amateur podcasts, which I appreciate, but may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Three Moves Ahead: Weekly video game podcast, with a heavy emphasis on strategy games. I’m not a regular listener, but I will often check to see if they’ve done an episode on a particular game that I’m playing.

Every F’n FF: Three folks (who I think are involved in the speed running scene) on a quest to complete every Final Fantasy game. This coincided with a replay of FFX that I embarked upon. Sadly I think X-2 may have broke them, as they’ve not uploaded since last October, but it does look like they completed 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 13, and Dirge of Cerberus.

The Regulation Podcast - A comedy podcast for “deep lore about nothing”

✏️

I don’t have as much time to listen to podcasts at the moment. The only one I’ve continued listening to is “Well There’s Your Problem”, it is sooo good. Just my kind of humor!

The fall of civilizations - it tells the story of the rise and fall of different groups of people through history. Often with readings in the original tongue.

From the same creator “vaccine” is the history of the creation of the works first vaccines. Neither podcast has any ads which is awesome.

Lastly factually with Adam conover is great. Comedian discussing often political issues.

History on Fire

Hardcore History

500 Rock songs in 500 Days

I love Throughline from NPR. Some of their episodes are very “cinematic” and great to listen too in bed with the lights off, though some might find some of the topics depressing, but you can mostly avoid thoose based on the titles (but those are sometimes the best episodes!!!)

“Even more news” general news and politics

“Trash taste” anime and japanese centric by 3 people who moved to Japan and are YouTubers

History podcast from the BBC : You’re dead to me

I enjoy 'This American life, depends on the topic but it can be very interesting.

If you’ve heard of QI from the BBC there is No such thing as a fish when they talk about a couple facts they’ve read. I find it pretty funny too.

Mike Duncan is doing a new seasons of Revolutions about the Mars revolution (fictional of course) but before he did a bunch of others including the Mexican and French revolutions which I particularly enjoyed.

Blowback does seasons about bad US foreign policy. For news about US foreign policy there is also American Prestige.

Also listen to 15 minutes history from the University of Austin Texas. They just did something about the King of Haïti for example. They do new topics each episode.

Also another history one if MartyrMade.

And Trillbilly Workers podcast because I like to have no clue what they’re talking about lol

Behind the Bastards has already been shouted out a lot. And I’m sure lots of folks on lemmy are big fans of Robert Evans as it is, but I haven’t seen It Could Happen Here or friend of both those pods Knowledge Fight mentioned. Both well worth listening to

Not rly a podcast but looong (3+hr episodes) video series caller “fall of civilisations” about fall of civilisations in ancient times , history of the civ , what lead to the fall , the fall itself and the aftermath

Everything from the Ranged Touch Network. Basically culture and media studies with good banter. They have:

Just king things (Reading every King Book in publication order)

Game Studies Study Buddies

Shelved By Genre (Units discussing different genre books).

Skeptoid.

• Swindled - Mostly white-collar true crime with dark humor and disdain aplenty.
• 404 Media - The folks who used to do the Cyber podcast before they left VICE and are doing far better work, indy.
• Better Offline - Another tech podcast by Ed Zitron. He loves tech and can’t stand how fucked up the tech-bros are making the whole thing, at our collective expense.