Best Podcasts of 2025?

BetterOffline [0] by Ed Zitron [1] dissecting AI hype and boosters. By a long shot.

The information density and clarity are outstanding.

0: https://www.betteroffline.com/

1: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

My gotos for listening while I do chores or drive this year have been:

    - Stuff You Should Know https://stuffyoushouldknow.com/
    - How to do Everything https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510384/how-to-do-everything

Hardcore History 73 - Mania for Subjugation III [1]

Fall of Civilizations 20 - Persia - An Empire in Ashes [2]

[1] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-73-mania-...

[2] https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/

Most of my podcasts are movie related. If I had to purge them all and start with just 5 though I would go with.

Blank Check The Flophouse 99% Invisible Cautionary Tales The Rewatchables

I maintain The Flophouse is the funniest podcast around.

The Rest is History is good, depending on the topic. Both guests have a bit of bias which you have to sort of take into account, not that different from The Rest is Politics. Mishal Husain has a new podcast on Bloomberg TV which so far was excellent. Also from Bloomberg TV, Big Take is often interesting. I still enjoy Lex Fridman, again depending on the guest. Dwarkesh Patel same shit as Lex, but he pretends he knows something about AI.

Citations Needed: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/

Advent of Computing:

  https://adventofcomputing.com/

  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/advent-of-computing/id1459202600

  https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.com/rss

  https://www.youtube.com/@adventofcomputing4504/videos

Call me simple or provincial, but I really enjoyed "Good Hang" from Amy Poehler. It's a breezy interview with interesting people (doesn't hurt that I'm a long-time SNL fan).

I’ve been a fan of The Ezra Klein Show for years - whatever your thoughts of his personal politics, he’s a fantastic interviewer, and I think he does a great job at both helping define and then interrogating the strongest construction of his guest’s beliefs. He’s not a soft interviewer, but he’s genuinely trying to understand his guest, and I’ve learned a ton about how people who I disagree with view the world.

Dwarkesh, Lenny, Latent Space, A16Z, BG2Pod and 'Founders in Arms' have all had some good episodes this year.

Some other episodes I've bookmarked are in this feed: https://feeds.listennotes.com/listen/rahim-nathwanis-listen-...

Felipe, the founder of Quest Learning (joinquest.com) started a podcast series about the future of learning. I was his first guest:

https://youtu.be/t_Y6wtdcnpc

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2CjsPEKYwx8eirYlBYjxwp

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-of-learning...

Dwarkesh - AI + some history Lex = AI + some history Dishcast - politics + books Sam Harris - everything All In - tech news Tyler Cowen - random good shows Pirate Wires - news Joe Rogan - famous interesting guests at least once a month Ben Shapiro - if you want to hire the opposite of the NYT

  Acquired (Long episodes about companies, recents include: 
  coca-cola, trader joe's & alphabet)
  Dwarkesh Podcast (Inquisitive curious host, mostly "AGI"
  related)
  Conversations with Tyler (Wide ranging, polymath host,
  distinctive, hard to describe style)
  The Marginal Revolution Podcast (Tyler cowen & Alex Tabbarok
  discussing economics)
  Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson (you sort of mentioned)
  The Morning Meeting (US Politics mostly. Neutral tone,
  informative, forward looking i.e. what will happen next not
  who is bad etc)

Robin Pearson ended the 1000-year long epic of The History of Byzantium earlier this year: https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/

The podcast started as a sequel to Mike Duncan's classic The History of Rome, and in my opinion surpassed it. Where THoR eventually falls into the narrative trap of turning into "The Lives of Roman Emperors", THoB spends a lot of time talking about economic, demographic, societal, and technological changes within the Empire and the world.

Extremely recommended if you want a proper history podcast.

I really enjoyed the "Michael Hobbes Podcast Universe" this year. He's a reporter who is now making entertaining podcasts debunking claims in the media/zeitgeist. I appreciate that he takes a pragmatic approach -- to paraphrase something he said: "There's probably an impact on kids having so much screen time, but this data you're citing doesn't show what you're claiming."

If Books Could Kill: https://www.ifbookspod.com

Maintenance Phase: https://www.maintenancephase.com

You're Wrong About: https://yourewrongabout.com (Hobbes retired from this one around Oct 2021)

There's a similar podcast where he's also made an appearance:

In Bed With The Right: https://open.spotify.com/show/7JirL3UVKjyy5MTy8PouHh

I learn a lot listening to the Money Stuff podcast.¹ The newsletter² is also great but I don’t always have time to read every one. I also really enjoy Why Is This Happening.³ Chris Hayes really shines as an interviewer and policy wonk when he’s not in the cable news format. While Ezra Klein seems to be leaning into Democratic Party whisperer, Hayes is leaning into policy nerdity that I miss from Vox-era Klein.

¹ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1308-money-stuff-the-podcast-...

² https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/money-stuff

³ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-is-this-happening-...

I enjoyed Shell Game, which explores using voice agents in ever more personal situations.

The specifics of the journey are going to date quickly given the speed of AI development. But the shape of the journey and the dilemmas posed are going to be relevant for a lot longer.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/shell-game/id175311776...

Fall of Civilizations: https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/

Each episode is of exceptional quality and retells history in an engaging manor. Since it's history, the entire backlog is still relevant.

• If You're Listening (well produced Australian news items)

• The Rest is History

• Pivot (Kara Swisher, techlash)

• Marketplace (stock market, with surprising bumper music)

• Inside Europe (Deutsche Welle English-language news)

A new one I started listening to is fun so far...

• Business History

Sean Carroll’s Mindscape for physics, philosophy and science

- "Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)"

- My First Million (www.mfmpod.com). I just don't know why, but for some reason I stopped listening to them in the past 2 months, but rest of the year I was really enjoying their content. Even older ones.

- Pivot and Prof G, mostly because of Scott Galloway. I really like him.

- Under The Influence with Terry O'Reilly. Amazingly good. Very fun to listen to and almost always brings joy and help me learn something new.

- All In, can't say I'm still enjoying this. It's way too political these days. But it's still something I listen to occasionally. When I listen I usually end up skipping half of the content to find something I like.

My favourite podcast right now is Let's Learn Everything, three science geeks taking turns to explain things to each other. In a standard episode, there's a deep dive into a science topic, followed by a lighter miscellaneous segment. Special episodes, such as the yearly HaLearnDays or the occasional guest episode, take a different format.

The three all have science degrees, and do proper research for their deep dives. This is a podcast which comes with supporting citations.

https://letslearneverything.com

I would have put Coder Radio on this list but ever since Mike took over without Chris the show has lost its appeal for me.

And sadly, there are no more Jupiter Broadcasting shows left without crypto or mostly inside baseball.

Anyone know of shows in the category of two or three lads discussing computing, coding, devops, but in the style of two older guys crumudging that everything used to be better in the old days?

Currently loving Revolutions Podcast by Mike Duncan. Highlight seasons so far: [3] French Revolution [4] Haitian Revolution.

Startups For The Rest Of Us is a great for bootstrappers or other non-VC-backed founders. I find that even episodes that are not specifically relevant to the work I'm doing are good to listen to because they may bring ideas to the surface in helpful ways.

The best ones I've discovered in 2025 - not necessarily the best ever

The David Frum Show - https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/the-david-frum-show/ Overthink - https://overthinkpodcast.com/ Singletrack - https://www.youtube.com/c/SingletrackPodcast The Glenn Show - https://glennloury.substack.com/podcast

I've really been enjoying Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11) of HN fame. Additionally: Odd Lots, Money Stuff, Chat with Traders (hit or miss, some guests are not great).

Diabolical Lies

From a intrigue POV:

After Skool: https://www.youtube.com/afterskool | https://open.spotify.com/show/36mIOrFwTKIDER8KF0aGrx | https://www.afterskool.net/

Academy of Ideas: https://www.youtube.com/academyofideas | https://open.spotify.com/show/2dio7KUNuDHErlMumZtNt6 | https://academyofideas.com/

The SGU. There is only one podcast that I always come back to! https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts

Wookash (https://wooka.sh/) for low level programming and game development with a surprising cast of guests

The Koerner Office[0]. I have a lot to learn about all facets of business and Chris does a good job of keeping things practical and simple. The episode about hummingbird food[1] in particular blew my mind.

The Wookash Podcast[2]. Some of the best technical programming conversations I've heard in recent years.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/@thekoerneroffice

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcFBcfrmC2k

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/@WookashPodcast

The Economics of Everyday Things Podcast. These are ~20 mins podcast and talk about the products we use daily.

I have really been enjoying the early Jordan Peterson podcast episodes. They are good for the soul. Unfortunately, I listened to a couple of the latest ones and they seem much more angry and less nourishing; this may have been a fluke though.

Redbar is the only thing I listen to but unfortunately this has been a bad year for shows.

Acquired

Scamfluencers

Business Wars

The Social Radars

Big Technology Podcast

HN would probably hate it but I've been digging Panic World. They investigate mostly modern media or internet-driven moral panics and discuss how they've led us to our current moment. Lots of 90s/2000s internet deep dives, but I mostly appreciate how well the host connects the dots between cultural/political zeitgeist (of any recent era) with some seemingly minor niche movement or idea seeded years prior.

https://www.garbageday.email/panic-world

I’ve been really impressed by how much I’ve learned listening to Panic World. At first I thought it was a humor show but it’s basically internet anthropology detailing all the ways the internet makes us insane.

This episode about eating disorders was harrowing and sad but really informative to how toxic communities form https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-eating-disorder-co...

Lions led by Donkeys https://www.llbdpodcast.com/