Favorite Podcasts

Podcasts are a great way to learn more about yourself and others, as well as just about any subject you might be interested in! You can listen to any of these via your favorite podcast app (my current personal favorite is Stitcher.)

Personal And Spiritual Growth

On Being
The groundbreaking Peabody Award-winning public radio show and podcast. Conversation about the big questions of meaning in 21st century lives and endeavors — spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and the arts. What does it mean to be human? How do we want to live? And who will we be to each other? Each week a new discovery about the immensity of our lives. Hosted by Krista Tippett.

Tara Brach
Tara Brach is a leading western teacher of Buddhist (mindfulness) meditation, emotional healing and spiritual awakening. She is author of Radical Acceptance, and True Refuge. 

Good Life Project
Inspirational, intimate and disarmingly-unfiltered conversations about living a fully-engaged, fiercely-connected and meaning-drenched life. From iconic world-shakers like Elizabeth Gilbert, Brene Brown, Sir Ken Robinson, Seth Godin and Gretchen Rubin to everyday guests, every story matters.

Design Matters
Design Matters with Debbie Millman is one of the world’s very first podcasts. Broadcasting independently for over 13 years, the show is about how incredibly creative people design the arc of their lives.

Dear Sugars
The universe has good news for the lost, lonely and heartsick. The Sugars are here, speaking straight into your ears. Hosted by the original Sugars, Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond, the podcast fields all your questions — no matter how deep or dark — and offers radical empathy in return.

A Brave Writer's Life In Brief
The Brave Writer podcast is a big juicy conversation about how to bring learning to life for your kids! Julie Bogart and guests talk about how parents and children are partners in the learning adventure.

Politics

It should come as no surprise that these come from a mostly liberal perspective. However, what I look for in a political podcast is more thoughtful discussion and trying to better understand the issues at hand and less ranting about the outrage of the day, so I hope that you find something useful. 

The Ezra Klein Show
Ezra Klein gives you a chance to get inside the heads of the newsmakers and power players in politics and media. These are extended conversations with policymakers, writers, technologists, and business leaders about what they believe in and why. Look elsewhere for posturing confrontation and quick reactions to the day's news. 

FiveThirtyEight
Nate Silver and the FiveThirtyEight team cover the latest in politics, tracking the issues and "game-changers" every week.

Political Gabfest
Each week the Slate Gabfest Team of Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson and David Plotz focus their attention on the week's high profile political developments with their trademark banter, incisive analysis of the important issues of the day, plus a nugget of fun water cooler conversation. 

The Daily
This is what the news should sound like. The biggest stories of our time, told by the best journalists in the world. From the New York Times.

My History Can Beat Up Your Politics
A podcast that uses history to elevate the discussion of today's politics. Today's political debates, particularly on cable news, talk radio and blog comments can be limiting. In this podcast, Bruce Carlson applies as much history as possible to the politics of today.

History/Linguistics/Literature

Slow Burn: A Podcast About Watergate
You think you know the story, or maybe you don’t. But Watergate was stranger, wilder, and more exciting than you can imagine. What did it feel like to live through the scandal that brought down President Nixon? Find out on this eight-episode podcast miniseries hosted by Leon Neyfakh.

Uncivil
America is divided, and it always has been. We're going back to the moment when that split turned into war. This is Uncivil: Gimlet Media's new history podcast, hosted by journalists Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika. 

Lexicon Valley
Lexicon Valley is a podcast about language, from pet peeves, syntax, and etymology to neurolinguistics and the death of languages. Hosted by linguist John McWhorter.

History of English Podcast
The Spoken History of a Global Language.

Lend Me Your Ears: A Podcast about Shakespeare and Politics
Readers and audiences have turned to Shakespeare’s greatest plays for their insights into power and performance, sex and religion, demagoguery and populism. Every month, Slate’s Isaac Butler takes listeners deep into a different play to find out what Shakespeare has to say about politics in our troubled age.