How to Find the Best Podcasts

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There are more podcasts out there than you could ever try, but most of them are crap or just not for you. How do you find good things? I spoke with Caroline Crampton, editor of the Listener electronic newsletter, where she recommends three to five great podcast episodes every day. To find them, she listens to 2-6 hours of podcasts a day and is constantly looking for shows to try them out. Here’s how she finds so many good podcasts, and how you can do it too.

Read newsletters

You can of course find the show through the Crampton newsletter . A daily release costs $ 30 per year, with periodic free releases every week or two. But you don’t have to spend money looking for new shows. Crampton recommends the Bello Collective , a group blog and email newsletter for listeners and podcast creators. Start with our list of the 100 Outstanding Podcasts of 2018 .

And you can accumulate reviews with these free podcast recommendation newsletters:

You’ll also find podcast recommendations in many general newsletters about what we like, such as the Rex Sorgatz’s Recs newsletter.

Follow podcast guidelines

There are many blogs highlighting and recommending podcasts, like the 30+ shows listed here (with a focus on audio drama) and newsletter related blogs above. Whenever you get good reviews, look up the author on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to see if they recommend the show there.

The r / podcasts subreddit has over half a million subscribers and there are always multiple recommendation chains on the first page. For example: “I’m looking for podcasts to distract my mom from watching evil cable TV. Cooking, romance, news – anything a 45-year-old mom might like! The subreddit even has a daily free recommendation thread and a weekly thread where podcasters can write their own shows.

Search for “best of” lists

A simple Google search of the podcast will find listings from blogs and news sites. Crampton is always looking for blog posts that have great podcast episodes, especially those made years ago that are still worth updating. You can search for reviews for each year and / or search for a specific topic: “Best Knitting Podcasts of 2018” or “Music Theater Podcasts” or “Best Chemistry Podcasts” or “Best Podcasts of 2017”.

Try the most specific version of your search first; You will be amazed at what topics are cataloged, saving you the hassle of finding and listening to everything in the genre.

Wait for good episodes

Crampton often sees a promising podcast, the best releases of which are yet to come. Instead of subscribing to her on her podcast player, she will subscribe using an RSS reader . Crampton uses NewsBlur , but you can use any reading program you want. You can watch all the new podcast episodes available every day, or check them out every few weeks and collect all the good episodes.

It’s also something you can do when one of your favorite shows starts to get less interesting: put it on trial to read RSS like Crampton does, and watch a particularly noteworthy episode. It’s a way to keep track of many shows without watching them build up in your player, taking up space and mental energy.

Create your own podcast from different shows

Instead of searching for each podcast in your app and then downloading the episodes you want, use the Listen Notes podcast search engine to combine episodes from multiple shows into one podcast feed. Lifehacker has instructions here.

This makes it easier to watch many different shows, especially if you are more interested in specific episodes than participating in each show. Searching in podcast apps can be a headache, as many of them won’t let you search for specific episodes without first searching for the show name.

Use it as small talk

Crampton loves to discuss podcasts: “When I meet people, I just ask them, what are you listening to?” She especially loves when someone pulls out their phone and shows it to her, so she not only finds out what they are subscribed to, but also what their “listening system” is: which app, how do they order episodes, do they continue to download the show after of how they finished.

Change your country

Apple and Google, of course, regularly publish New and Noteworthy podcasts on their official apps and list the most popular shows and episodes in different genres. But if you want to develop further, try changing your country of residence. This will show you what is popular in different countries. Crampton uses this to find local shows, including regional sports podcasts, and other genres that are particularly popular in certain regions. (Europe, she says, loves the interview show.)

Here’s how to change the country on the Google Play mobile store and the iTunes mobile store . But in iTunes on Mac, everything is much simpler:

  • Go to the podcast home page (select Podcasts as the media type in the upper left corner and go to the Store tab).
  • Scroll down the page and under Management select Country or Region.
  • Choose a country.

Choose short podcasts

Most podcasts should be shorter, according to Crampton. “Everything can always be denser. [Podcasters] ask someone for a day as long as possible. ” Her favorite shows are Opinion in Seven Minutes from The Week news magazine (ended 2017) and Rob Long’s 4-minute Hollywood podcast, Martini Shot .

My favorite podcasts up to 30 minutes in length include:

  • Song Exploder (10-15 min): The musicians break down their own songs, lyrically and instrumentally.
  • Piece of work (15-25 min): Broad City star Abby Jacobson demystifies major works of contemporary art in a limited edition with guest stars and experts
  • Eerie Japan (10-20 min.): Exploring Japanese Folklore and Mythology
  • Radio Desert Oracle (28 min): Journalist Ken Lane delivers Art Bell-inspired tirades about UFOs, cryptids and tourists destroying the fragile desert ecosystem of the Southwest.
  • Earth Break (24 min): Jenny Slate plays amazingly well in an audio drama about the last survivor of an alien invasion.
  • 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy (9 Min): A Brief History of Major Technologies and Their Economic Impacts

Listen all the time

You don’t need to listen for hours a day, like Crampton does, or resort to fast-paced speaking. Instead, find a show that suits your time frame or your mood: a 20-minute episode where you have 20 minutes to spare; free chat show like Comedy Bang! Clap! when you’re distracted, and a tense, attention-demanding show when you can focus. In most podcast apps, you can queue episodes like a playlist.

And don’t try to get into a show that doesn’t get your attention. Crampton loves to give podcasts plenty of time to shine, but that’s up to you. Personally, I like to switch off the first time I get bored and start another show. It doesn’t look like you will ever run out of podcasts to try.

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