10 GREAT PODCASTS

A list of ten recommended podcasts you may never have heard of before.

1. Hardcore History - While technically a podcast, subscribing to this feed is actually like having an unabridged history audiobook delivered for free. Individual episodes can run to three or four hours and a complete topic could be nine or more hours of listening. If you're a history buff like me, this is a great feed.
2. Blogs of War: Covert Contact This podcast takes an interesting and in-depth look into many of the major national security issues of our time.
3. Song Exploder - This amazing show takes a look at a single song in each episode and breaks it down into its component parts. Drums, guitar, vocals, etc. Each of these elements is then explored in-depth by the composer in a fantastic interview.
4. Startup - Startup is a podcast that takes a narrative approach to telling the founding story of different companies. Each season they pick a different company to profile and tell the ups & downs, ins & outs of how the company got started.
5. The History of Rome - I found this podcast after it had been completed but I went back to the beginning and added all 180 episodes to my feed. Starting at the founding of the city of Rome around 470 B. C and following it's history through nearly a thousand years to 476 A.D when the last emperor was exiled from the city, listening to this podcast was akin to taking a great history course in college.
6. Roderick on the Line - This weekly podcast is simply a conversation between two fantastic storytellers and close friends. Their frank conversations move fluidly from music to popular culture, to personal reminiscences, to the minutiae of every day life.
7. The Memory Palace - Host Nate DiMeo curates amazing stories from collective past and tells them in engaging and well-produced five to ten minute episodes.
8. Robot or Not - This very funny and very short podcast (think about 3 min per episode) answers one question: is the object in question a robot. Daleks and Cybermen? Swimming Pool Cleaners? Pinocchio?
9. Reply All - This is a show about the curiosities of the Internet — stories about how the Internet shapes people; and how people shape the Internet.
10. 99% Invisible - Nominally about architecture and design, this lovingly produced show tells the stories and histories about objects, buildings, structures, and ideas that have shaped our modern world.