Podcasts for Everyone

If you don’t have time to listen to a podcast, you’re lying to yourself

Do you find yourself unloading trucks in a warehouse on backshift? Do you go for long-numbing walks on the beach? Walking back to the apartment after evening class? Picking a friend up at the airport? Are podcasts still cool? Too many questions?

Here is a short introduction to an assortment of podcasts and shows. If you’re new to the podcast scene, don’t worry too much. Everyone may be talking about what episode of Spittin’ Chiclets they just listened to or what Joe Rogan last said on his show the other day. Material we hear on podcasts is becoming the latest “You know what I saw the other day on Facebook?” Listening to a show is our modern-day filler. If you have a spare 11-48 minutes on hand, why not subscribe to a new show or take a crack at a random episode on Audioboom, Soundcloud, Spotify or that purple-coloured app on your iPhone you may be neglecting.

New to this? Try your mom’s house. The podcast “Your Mom’s House” is hosted by comedians Tom Segura and Christina Pazsitzky. The couple will start a conversation on literally anything. Start here if you’re looking for a good prolonged laugh. There are over 300 episodes dating back to 2012, you should get to it.

If you like spewing interesting facts or if you’re looking for conversation starters at the kitchen table for the holiday season, have a crack at “Hidden Brain.” With topics ranging from North America’s Opioid Crisis to understanding the psychological forces of the #MeToo Movement, to the subject of compassion,to the evaluation process of personality test like the Myers-Briggs, you could learn about a range of topics.

If you’re checking your banking on the daily, trying to make a budget, afraid of your credit card bill, and spend a few too many bucks at the Pub more times than you’d like to admit, perhaps “Bad with Money with Gaby Dunn” or “Optimal Finance Daily” may tickle your fancies. Each episode narrows in on money talk and makes finances more understandable and more real. These shows break it down into digestible chunks for 20-something-year-olds to understand and appreciate. Finances are a real issue, and if you’re looking to take it seriously, allow yourself to listen to the podcast. That X-ring isn’t paying for itself.

Want more comedy? Stone two birds at once by listening in to the following two hilarious and simultaneously educational shows: “Red Man Laughing” by Ryan McMahon and “Métis in Space” with Molly Swain and Chelsea Vowel. The latter describe the show as “unapologetically indigenous, unabashedly female and unblinkingly nerdy,” and their statement is true. While sharing a bottle of wine, the two Métis women examine and exploit the misrepresentations, and the accuracies, of indignity in historical and contemporary science-fiction. Does Lilo & Stitch mirror some modern-day indigenous socio-political issues? Let’s pick apart Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a little while.

Ryan McMahon, also a host of the Canadian Documentary Colonization Road, sheds a light on the living-breathing cultural erasure that still exists today and the conflicts of the past, all the while making his audience keel over laughing. Maybe comedy is one of the many gateways to understanding the true meaning of reconciliation.

Lastly, though there are thousands more to mention, if you’re human, you may find this one particularly relatable. “Invisibilia” speaks to human behaviour and the many means we use to communicate, feel and think. What does it take for a community to organize a riot? How does one realize that they’ve been living in a bubble in society? How do social norms come to be? Some questions we never question until we take a few moments to hear more about them.

If you don’t have time to listen to a podcast, you’re lying to yourself.