Podcasts I’m Listening To: Spring 2025

This is my eighth year of annually¹ listing the podcasts I’m listening to. As the title says, this is meant to come out in spring but this year I’m writing it well into summer, though²; forgive me.

As with previous entries, the list is broken down into ‘Currently Subscribed’ and ‘Previously Subscribed’ sections. If a podcast came into and went out of rotation within the last 12 months it still goes in ‘Previously Subscribed’. Podcasts that are new to the list are in bold and paid podcasts are marked with a 💰 emoji.

Happy listening!

Currently Subscribed

• 22 Goals: I finally succeeded in getting a friend to listen to at least one episode of this show. It remains my favourite podcast.

• Accidental Tech Podcast 💰: I said last year that while this is still the premier Apple podcast, it had fallen off since the glory years of the late 2010s. That’s true but it does still occasionally hit those highs. There’s exactly one podcast that made me laugh out loud as I walked down the streets of Urayasu on a balmy summer night in June 2024 and it was ATP. (I’ve added a 💰 this year because although you don’t have to pay for the show, I do.)

• Against the Rules: Michael Lewis’ podcast about modern American life took a hard look at the rise of legalised sportsbetting in the United States. After the letdown of the season that accompanied Lewis’ Going Infinite, this was a welcome return to form.

• Asianometry 💰: This podcast was added to the stable of podcasts available to subscribers to Ben Thompson’s Stratechery Plus. In it, host Jon Yu puts audio recordings of the episodes from his Asianometry YouTube channel. These tend to be explainers about certain aspects of materials science that have a connection to Asia (especially related to the semiconductor industry) but Yu isn’t afraid of venturing further afield.

• Astral Codex Ten Podcast: An audio version of the posts of blogger Scott Alexander. Pseudonymous host Solenoid Entity had to take a couple of weeks off over the past 12 months and I didn’t realise until he was gone how central his voice has become to my weekly routine.

• Cautionary Tales: Pop economist and long-time columnist for the Financial Times Tim Harford didn’t take my advice from last year and avoid stuffing something in his feed weekly but when you prune the filler out, the actual episodes are still great.

• CoRecursive: Programmer Adam Gordon Bell continues to find interesting stories from people in the software engineering community. By editing his conversations down into a narrated guide through each episode, the show never overstays its welcome.

• Decoder Ring: Willa Paskin put together another year of great essays about cultural mysteries. I complained last year that it was a shame how much filler was put into the feed cross-promoting other podcasts from Slate. I’m sad to say this has not improved.

• Dithering 💰: Apple blogger John Gruber and tech analyst Ben Thompson’s paid podcast about technology does feel a bit worn by this point but the fact its 15-minute episodes are only twice a week helps protect it from ever feeling completely worn out.

• Fiasco: Leon Neyfakh was the original host of Slow Burn and I was extremely disappointed when he left to make the Fiasco podcast for closed-platform Luminary (and then Amazon). Fortunately, those deals have now come to an end and he’s brought Fiasco to the Pushkin network. The most recent series they’ve published was about Iran-Contra and it was terrific.

• Geopolitical Cousins: Jacob Shapiro and Marko Papic are analysts who write advice for clients about geopolitics. In March 2025, they started a podcast to discuss geopolitical topics in a more casual form. If you wish more geopolitical analysis contained references to the NBA, this is the show for you.

• Greatest of All Talk 💰: As I did last year, I stopped listening to this show until around the time of the NBA Playoffs. Ben Golliver of the Washington Post and Andrew Sharp formerly of Sports Illustrated have terrific chemistry together and when I need a hit of basketball chat, this is where I go.

• Hit Parade: I wrote last year how impressed I was at the essay Chris Molanphy writes each month. That feeling hasn’t abated and he keeps finding topics to writing about that pique my interest. If you’re remotely interested in the history of American pop music, I heartily recommend it.

• How to Japanese Podcast: I don’t remember now how I came across this podcast but I’m glad that I did. Host Daniel Morales, a professional Japanese to English translator who lives in Osaka, records an episode each month where he riffs on some aspect of the Japanese language that was the subject of his monthly newsletter. I say ‘riff’ because while the simple thing to do would be to just read the newsletter, Morales instead uses each episode to present the same topic from a slightly different perspective.

• The Jacob Shapiro Podcast: Jacob Shapiro describes himself on his website as ‘a geopolitical analyst who provides strategic guidance to families, investors, and corporations’. His podcast features him interviewing experts about major geopolitical issues. I don’t listen to every episode but I feel like I learn a lot when I tune in.

• Land of the Giants: This podcast is a quasi-audio documentary about one of the giant tech (or tech-adjacent) companies that dominate our lives (the most recent season was about Disney, for example). The main thing I praised this podcast for last year was how disciplined it is about its seasons. They put episodes from the show itself in their feed and nothing else. More like this please.

• Molly White’s Citation Needed: Blogger Molly White records a new episode for each edition of her newsletter about A.I., cryptocurrency and the world wide web. I wish more writers would do this.

• The Party Room: Much to my extreme frustration, this podcast about Australian federal politics was folded into an omnibus feed from the ABC featuring episodes from across its roster of political shows. So of course I did what any self-respecting programming nerd would do and created my own filtered version of the feed so that I could listen to veteran ABC presenters Patricia Karvelas and Fran Kelly in peace. That feed is here if anyone else is similarly interested.

• The REPL: From May 2024 until May 2025, host Daniel Compton released precisely two episodes of his podcast about Clojure. One was in September and the other in October. A totally acceptable cadence in my book!

• Revisionist History: I noticed that Malcolm Gladwell recently changed from introducing this as ‘my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood’ to ‘my show about things overlooked and misunderstood’. I preferred the dorkier ‘podcast’.

• Serious Trouble: I love the rapport between journalist Josh Barro and lawyer Ken White as they break down recent legal issues that have arisen in U.S. politics. White’s sober analysis and Barro’s incisive questioning are what makes every episode feel like time well spent.

• Slow Burn: In 2024, the Slow Burn team focused on the rise of Fox News and it was another great season of six or so episodes. The other 46 weeks of the year? Chock-full of episodes from other Slate shows.

• Software Unscripted: I continued to enjoy listening to Richard Feldman’s programming-oriented interview podcast but I’m a little cooler on it than I was last year. I think that’s mostly the fault of the medium: audio isn’t the best format for the deep technical discussions I sometimes want Feldman and his guests to do.

• The Stratechery Podcast 💰: As mentioned above, I’m a subscriber to Ben Thompson’s Stratechery Plus service and one of the perks is this feed featuring audio versions of his written posts. Thompson has an enviable hit rate for great writing.

• The Talk Show: Here I am, in 2025, still subscribed to The Talk Show after more than 15 years. I’m not sure what else to say about John Gruber’s podcast about Apple and technology. He’s got to be doing something right.

Previously Subscribed

• Chinese Whispers: I’m sad to say that within months of me discovering this excellent podcast in August 2024 about Chinese society and politics from Cindy Yu (formerly of the Spectator), the show had wrapped up. Yu is now at the Times but hasn’t started a show that’s equivalent to Chinese Whispers.

• Hi-Phi Nation: Last year I retained a sliver of hope that philosopher Barry Lam might return to his podcast. Alas, it looks like it’s time to admit that’s not going to happen.

• One Year: This is another podcast that hasn’t officially ended but which hasn’t seen a new episode in long enough that I suspect it’s done. I miss your dulcet tones, Josh Levin!

• Panic Podcast: In 2023, I said this show was over. In 2024, it came back. It’s 2025 and it looks like it’s gone once more. What will 2026 bring? Only time will tell!

• Sharp Tech 💰: While I mostly enjoyed Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson’s paid podcast about the consumer software industry, I unsubscribed to make way for some of the newer shows I started listening to this year.

• Talk Easy: Sam Fragoso’s interview show was another victim of me prioritising other podcasts. Fragoso is a terrific interviewer and I recommend it for anyone who is interested in popular culture.

• Under the Radar: Developers Marco Arment and David Smith produce a tight fortnightly discussion of issues in the world of iOS development. I unsubscribed to make way for other shows.

See you next year when this will hopefully be published on time! ✺