What podcasts have you been listening to the most during the year?

I love Behind The Bastards and It Could Happen Here. They do have significant episode counts. BtB does a great and looooooong series on Henry Kissinger that I think is a prime example of what you are going to get. If you listen to that one and don't enjoy, I would move on from them.

I have exclusuvely been listening to "The History of Rome" by Mike Duncan

still not done with it lol

His follow up Revolutions is even better
- That's how I was made aware of "The History of Rome". I listened to the last chapters of "Revolutions" and decided to start from the beginning before listening to the rest.
  My current "roadmap" of sorts is to finish "The History of Rome", then "The History of Byzantium* (not made by Duncan) and listen to the rest of "Revolutions" afterwards
Make sure to follow it up with Robin Pearson's History of Byzantium. He's still centuries away from done, but I like it even better than Mike Duncan's after it gets going.
I'm gonna give this one a shot. Thank you!

Lions lead by donkeys

Well There's Your Problem

Kill James Bond

The Delta Flyers

Decoding The Unknown

P3 Dokumentär

Damn Interesting

P3 Dystopia 👍

Main one worth sharing is Blowback. The rest are comedy slop.

No Such Thing As A Fish!

From the makers of BBC's "QI," a (nearly) endless collection of useless facts that will not change your life, but will make you more fun to talk to at parties. Not that you go to any parties.

Anna from No Such Thing as a Fish recommended an Australian podcast called Smart Enough to Know Better years ago and I've been thoroughly enjoying both since. And I would say if you get the opportunity to see No Such Thing as a Fish live go for it. They are excellent live.
I've heard about this one before, but I'm downloading an episode now.
The one thing I hate about QI is that I've already seen it all and there aren't any more episodes.
Edit: That was great. It totally scratched the QI itch. Among many other tidbits, I now know how leech treatments were discovered, that there's a specific frequency that is arousing for badgers and sets off car alarms, and that in one year, over 700 American students were arrested for owning pagers.
Edit: Holy shit. The author of Goodnight Moon literally died from an overly-enthusiastic "can-can kick". She did it to prove she was feeling fine... (ironically) but she dislodged a blood clot that instantly killed her.
- Well now I know you're the type of person who starts a podcast newest to oldest instead of the other way around lol

English:

Lateral
Darknet Diaries
Artifexian
Exolore
The White Vault (caught up on old episodes)
World's Greatest Con

German:

Geschichten aus der Geschichte
Geschichten aus dem Altbau
Darwin gefällt das
Mord auf Ex
Bayern 3 True Crime
Weird Crimes

All in no particular order.

I might add to the German column:
Wochendämmerung
Lage der Nation
Übermedien
Piratensender Powerplay
UKW
- Logbuch Netzpolitik Das Universum Sternengeschichten Besser Wissen AstroGeo Hoaxilla CosmicLatte Future Histories OmegaTau (RIP)

You might also like:

Search Engine
Tech Won't Save Us
Moderated Content
Mystery AI Hype Theater

Search Engine had been my favorite podcast in the last year or so.
Curious if anyone who has search engine has paid for incognito mode?
- I'm sure people have but my guess is they're more likely to be bluesky people instead of lemmy people.

I’ll always recommend Blowback. Specially season 3. Death to America.

Castle Super Beast is what I put on for grinding in video games. Woolie Madden & Patrick Boivin from SBFP made their own podcast after dissolving the channel, and it's now been going on for about as long as their old podcast. It's about a bunch of nerd bullshit like video games, but with a slight veneer of a focus on industry news.

Always neat to see another fan of CSB/Woolie around. I haven't seen your instance name before, at least that I can remember.
- funny enough, the tbfp subreddit is what actually got me onto lemmy. There was a tiny sbfp community that popped up around the blackout protest, but it faded pretty quick.
  I was on the Pathfinder.social instance for a little bit until that died off too, and then hopped over to a tiny art instance called crystals.rest, and now onto the warframe instance. This one's surprisingly resilient for how niche it is!

It Could Happen Here is often talking about what's going on that week in the world. I wouldn't try to listen to their whole backlog, but I usually catch an episode or two a week.

Behind the Bastards is great. Since I found it (Summer 2020, I'd reckon), I've listened to most of what has come out since.

Cool People who did Cool Stuff is a sort of spin off of btb. Deep dives on people and movements who were resisting the bastards. It's only been going on a couple of years, so the backlog is more manageable if that's your thing.

I listen to Past Times on the Dollop feed most weeks. The Dollop is another deep dive history podcast. On Past Times, they read headlines and articles from different newspaper every week. Usually from the late 19th through early 20th century, but they've gone as far back as the 1600s.

Anything by Jamie Loftus is great. She's mostly done short run things on a single topic. She's on the Bechdel cast, too which I listen to occasionally.

You might enjoy The Deprogram, which has a less daunting backlog.

It could happen here is very hit or miss, unfortunately. For me personally, about 70% is garbage, the rest is pretty good.
Their resident middle east anchor woman (Shirin?) and Andrew are just completely unlistenable to me, simply because of their voices. And there's a lot of USA internal politics, which just isn't all that interesting to me.
I want to like Cool People who did Cool stuff, but the way information is presented by Margaret almost reads (listens?) like fiction storytelling. I appreciate the source quotes and media critiques of BtB which the few episodes of CPWDCS I’ve listened to didn’t really have.

Behind the Bastards and Knowledge Fight are my two favorites, and I sprinkle in some Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff and Today Explained

Seconding Knowledge Fight and Behind the Bastards! Hello fellow wonk!
I keep meaning to look into CPWDCS, but my podcast backlog is ridiculous.

Behind the Bastards
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
A Podcast of Unnecessary Detail
Cozy History

Blowback, The Dollop, and occasionally Citations Needed but I've let that one accrue a huge backlog I may never get through.

Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons
Surveillance Report
2.5 Admins
Self-Hosted
Philosophize This
Frequent Miler

•Bear Brook

•We’re Here to Help

•Reveal

•Radiolab

•Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me

I listen to these podcasts at work

Unfuck the Republic (unftr)
Behind the Bastards
The Deprogram

I also like to listen to news, video essays, and speeches while working. It helps keep the variety up. Something else to consider is getting a library card to checkout audiobooks on some streaming apps

I just figured out I can see my own playback stats. For this year, my top ten in order of most played:

Last Podcast on the Left
Behind the Bastards
Harmontown
Hardcore History
Wizard and the Bruiser
That Happens
The Bugle
State of the World, NPR
Hood Politics with Prop
The Rest is Politics

I think I like your list better.

I was never a podcast person until I listened to Otherworld. It gives a platform to people to tell their paranormal stories without sensationalism or judgement. They cover a wide range of topics from hauntings to cryptids to aliens. Really cool stuff even if you're a skeptic

The Cool Zone people do put out a ton of content, I don't know how they do it. I commute and hour each way to work, and between Behind the Bastards and It Could Happen Here, that gets me through almost the whole week.

I know they all have other shows now too. I have listened to Margaret Killjoy's Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff a few times now as well. It's like BtB, but more like the BtB Christmas Special where it focuses on people that have tried to make positive changes instead of the villains. It's nice to have the same quality content but with a somewhat positive spin.

If you want to get into it without it taking up all your time, see if Robert's or Margaret's topic is something that really looks good, or if it doesn't you can check out ICHH, which is split up into segments anyway and you can enjoy that in smaller portions.

Besides those, I enjoy Threedom (comedy show with Scott Aukerman of Comedy Bang Bang, Paul F Tompkins who was Mr Peanutbutter on Bojack Horseman, and Lauren Lapkus of Jurassic World, OitnB, and a ton of other things), How I Built This with Guy Raz, and Planet Money from NPR.

Where things fell apart
Conan O'Brien needs a friend

Chapo Traphouse
Canadaland (all)
America This Week
Weird Studies
Hermitix

Recently I've started listening to Off Menu

Rough Translation
P3 Dystopia
Madigan's Pubcast
Omnibus

The only podcasts I listen to are the unexpectables ones. I don't even really like DND but MontyGlu is an amazing voice actor and role player... Like you can tell she genuinely cares for her NPCs and can tell the differences in characters from the nuisance of her characters and the candor in which they speak. I haven't had much luck finding that else where. And that's ignoring the fantastic world she has built for her players.

WARK.

I listen to a lot of podcasts. Lately it has been

English:

Steam Rollers Adventure Podcast
Desert Skies
Copperheart
Derelict
Tower 4
The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings
SCP Archives
Margareth's Garden
Thirteen

Swedish:

P3 Dystopia
P3 Dokumentär
USA-podden
Gräns
Det Politiska spelet
Europapodden
Radiokorrespondenterna Ryssland
Rollspelsklubben

And probably a dozen more

Behind the bastards is great, but don't bother subscribing to ICHH, those get out into the feed weekly. I'm not a fan of the daily series (too hit and miss for me, and I have too many as it is), but the original season or two were good.

Other than that, I've been working on catching up to current on the dollop (us history) and staying current on Some More News (news/current events), Beau of the Fifth column (current events/analysis) and knowledge fight (mainly Alex Jones/InfoWars analysis and deconstruction). I'll listen to In Retrospect (pop culture nostalgia analysis) or Security Now (tech news/concept breakdowns) or Risky Business (tech news) as I have time.

My pocket cast stats: You've listened for 115 days 14 hours

Honorable mentions not yet seem in this thread (English only):

The Guardian: The Audio long read - full articles read by real people (30-45 min.)
Economist: Drum Tower - China correspondence about culture and politics
Aquired - 3h+ episodes about tech IPO and the history of companies. Sounds boring but it gives a look behind the curtain of the tech industry from the 30s to today (fun example episode: PowerPoint)
WNYC: On the media - Meta talk about media topics and enshittification
Law and Chaos - Previously on Opening Arguments, now in their own podcast: US justice topics, GOP bashing and of course: Trump

The only podcast I have listened to this year is maybe 3 episodes of trueanon.

https://www.theblindboypodcast.ie

Hosted by Blindboyboatclub, who is an artist and author. An eclectic podcast containing short fiction, interviews and comedy.

The Indicator by Planet Money from NPR: they talk about what they feel are important indicators for the current economy, and expand on various economic topics in ways that I think anybody can understand, and are rather short.

The 1A from NPR: they talk about various topics that are affecting the US. They like to get people to chime in with their views, and have some experts on the topics to discuss context and how certain groups are or aren't pushing for changes. Its usually close to an hour long, and not all topics interest me, but they do talk about fake news, presidential elections, housing, mental health etc.

Planet Money from NPR: longer form discussions of economics, somewhat similar to the Indicator, but not as short form and they really expand on economic stories that I think are really interesting. Some topics include how, many, random people, can relatively accurately determine the weight of a cow (and how this defines the economy), the real estate trail that recently occurred and its background.

Global public square by Fareed Zakaria.

Pivot by Kara swisher and Scott Galloway

On Point.

Freakonimics.

99% invisible.

Tosh Show
Talking Counter
HLTV Confirmed

Sometimes listen to

The Daily
StarTalk
Behind the Bastards

I've been loving Tosh Show. His guests are way more interesting than listening to comedians talk to comedians all the time. Don't have any kids, so I find the bedtime stories at the end hilarious as well.

Fall of Civilizations podcast.

Great insight it a number of civilisations that have collapsed throughout human history. Explains their rise, peak and of course collapse in great detail.

Love that podcast. If only there were more episodes.
- They released one on Egypt pretty recently.

I'm fully in the Nick Weiger podcast universe so I listen to:

Doughboys
Doughboys Double
Get Played
Get Played Season Pass

Which are all comedy podcasts with similar people appearing. They're about chain restaurants, random side bullshit, Video Games, and Anime respectively. Then I also listen to:

Quick Question with Soren and Daniel
The Film Reroll

Which is a podcast by 2 former cracked writers which is the only reason people listen to them and a podcast about playing through movies as role playing games

Film Reroll is a top-tier AP podcast.
If you like them, check out Dungeons and Daddies; it has a similar energy. I wish they'd guest on each other's shows!
- The only reason I listen to Film Reroll is because it's about movies. I don't even listen to all of them, just movies I know will be fun/I've seen. Fifth Element, Mighty Ducks, Aliens, Last Action Hero, and Memento (which was incredibly cool how they did it) are the ones I've listened to since 2020.
  Something about actual play just irritates me, especially for D&D. I'd just rather play myself

Been going through Behind the Bastards and I enjoy it a lot. I started from the beginning which was excellent for understanding some of the memes and ongoing jokes.

I skip the “It Could Happen Here” episodes personally because they are very long and tend to bring me down, but they’re also really good and they really highlight the vulnerabilities of contemporary systems of government.

The Daily Beans
Jack: A Special Counsel Podcast
Cleanup on Aisle 45
Opening Arguments
Dear Old Dads
The Scathing Atheist

Any recommendations for podcasts in Spanish? Preferably where people speak in turn (not where 3+ people are speaking at the same time).

I'd be interested in this as well.
I follow the Duolingo Spanish Podcast, which has had some moderately interesting stories over the years, but I'd like to hear something a bit more challenging for sure.
- I have 2 that I've finished that I could recommend:
  El verdadero Robo del Siglo (duolingo actually has a short version of this; but this is the original one in pure Spanish)
  La Cruda (Argentinean podcast, where he interviews an expert/specialist in a very specific field; e.g., a pilot, ER medic)

Python Bytes
Talk Python to Me
The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe
Behind the Bastards
Geeks without God

This week in Tech
This week in Google
No such thing as a fish
Waveform
Vergecast

I subscribe to a few more, but I often skip them, but the above i listen to every episode.

Brad and Will made a Tech Pod Last podcast on the left Nextlander Old Gods of Appalachia

Not a lot, but several haven't been mentioned yet:

Darknet Diaries
SANS ISC StormCast
538 Politics
Lawfare
Rational Security
Perun - Technically a Youtube series, but there is a podcast feed for the audio

For college football fans, Shutdown Fullcast, the only college football podcast. They occasionally accidentally talk about football.

NECRONOMIPOD

You get: Aliens Cults Cryptids Conspiracies True Crime

And so much more. It may just be three dudes from Ohio bullshitting around in a basement but I fucking love it

F**k Face and Face Jam were my jam, but I have no clue how long they’ll be around what with Rooster Teeth being shut down. Otherwise, I try to keep up with Factually! as often as I can.

I'm a sucker for true crime, so I would recommend anything like that.

Then there's No Such Thing as a Fish, which I find fun. Star Talk... Oh and I've been listening to that one with Zach Braff and Donald Faison where they rewatch Scrubs together and talk about each episode together with a relevant guest per episode. The Scrubs one happens during the pandemic as well, which they talk about sometimes, and it's interesting to hear how they are reacting to it and losing their loved ones.

Even More News
Behind The Bastards
Party Girls
Translash
Antifada
Tech Won't Save Us
Better Offline
Factually
Knowledge Fight
The Hamilton Morris Podcast

The one podcast I listen to every week as it comes out is Lateral, a trivia show hosted by Tom Scott with rotating guests.

Other than that, I have a thing for casual and conversational history podcasts, including:

The Lesser Bonapartes (old but gold, the full backlog's only available on spotify under the title 'From the desk of Glen')
Dead Ideas
Some 'leader ranking' podcasts with the same formula: Rex Factor (British monarchs), Totalus Rankium (Roman Emperors and then American Presidents) and Pontifacts (Popes)

I wanted to finish Wheel of Time, but couldn't slog my way through all the books again, so I listened to the Dragon Re-Read. A ton of fun conversation and saved me so much time and reading.

Give Srsly Wrong a shot! The Wrong Boys are funny and earnest and I always learn something from them.

Hard Fork - I love the hosts and the current popular tech news Pantsuit Politics - some really thoughtful nuanced views (Sarah can get a little spicy but it’s fun and informative) Knowledge Fight Maintenance Phase (only releasing intermittently right now but the hosts are hilarious and it’s good info about all things health and nutrition…good myth debunking)

And these ones are very popular and probably not unknown to you but I listen to Up First (NPR) and The Daily every single day as they’re good, short to moderate length current news podcasts…relatively unbiased.

I also listen to Pod Save America, Slate Political Gabfest, FiveThirtyEight, The Bulwark and Strict Scrutiny for a wide range of political arenas (lefty, righty, polling, judiciary…not in that order necessarily)

The Decentered Podcast - discussions about fediverse projects and interviews with the people working on them
SANS Daily Stormcast - daily cybersecurity alerts
Risky.biz - weekly cybersecurity news and discussions with industry professionals
Security Now - weekly cybersecurity news and topical deep dives
NPR: Up First - daily US and global news
LeVar Burton Reads - LeVar Burton reads short stories

I've been listening to a lot of This American Life this year. Gosh the stories are good.

Also this is pretty woowoo and the commercial part is really heinous but the Expanded podcast by To Be Magnetic is genuinely a really good self help podcast. It's a lot of white women in fedora schtick but their advice is actually really very good.

Serious Trouble, by the further hosts of (and essentially a continuation of) All the President's Lawyers.

Nocturne, by Vanessa Lowe. A podcast about the night, and things that happen during the night. Favorite episodes: Night ways about what ancient people use to do at night and how archeology and anthropology are changing their perceptions; Finding the Void about a guy who lived inside a mall; On the North Face about a guy who got lost while climbing Mount Shasta; What's Would You Do about the fear of night.

I usually check in on The Daily like once a week to see if anything interesting has been covered.

And This Week in Virology, which I got into during the pandemic. Usually the weekly update on Friday on what contagious diseases are currently circulating, and about half the time their Sunday episode.

I like listening to people play RPGs. I mostly enjoy them playing Pokemon but have run out of them I used to listen to M&M and now listen to DnD.

Metis in Space!

Never been one for podcasts but man—the past few years have been super inundated with Drawfee and the related Secret Sleepover Society content on YouTube. It’s just so comforting as background noise while working.

Guys: A Podcast About Guys and

Guys+: A Podcast About "Guys: A Podcast About Guys"