10 Curiosity Provoking Podcasts to Sneak Into Your Day
From mental health to finance, to apply to your life and beyond
Everybody and their mother has been launching their own podcast, so it’s getting a bit difficult to navigate the space to decide which podcasts are worth keeping in your playlist. If you’re feeling this, you’re not alone.
At the start of the pandemic, I became overloaded, feeling like I “should” subscribe to all of these podcasts just to avoid Twitter and the news. Then, I realized I was just subscribed to a lot of podcasts that were noise rather than content that I actively engaged with, or changed my life in some meaningful.
That’s why it was especially important during the first months of the pandemic that I actively culled my list from my original whopping 50 podcasts to these few finalists who consistently expand my horizons, neatly boxed into five main themes for your perusal.
Topic 1: Facts & History podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
About: Anything and everything under the sun (and probably beyond)
Length: 5–10 minutes (“Short Stuff” episodes) to 1 hour (full episodes)
Episode examples:
- from something that sounds as painfully boring as sand (which is surprisingly controversial)
- to serious topics like the Tiananmen Square Massacre
- to … a whole 56 minutes and 7 seconds about frogs.
Why I love it: the conversational format and how concepts are broken down and presented in such a digestible and recognizable language
Gastropod
About: the history and science of food
Length: 1 hour episodes
Episode examples:
- more than I ever thought I’d know about ovens,
- where I learned to eat expensive olive oil right away instead of “saving it for special occasions”,
- and as The Eggcademic, my favourite EGG EPISODE
Why I love it: I cannot believe the level of quality this podcast is given that only two people (Nicola Twilley and Cynthia Gruber) work on it. The level of detail is amazing, and as an avid food lover, this podcast has introduced me to the history and science of the food I love so much.
Topic 2: Mental Health
Therapist Uncensored
About: attachment, trauma and how it affects us in our adult lives
Length: ~30–60 minutes
Episode examples:
- Understanding fight, flight, freeze… and fawn — how people-pleasing can be a sign of trauma too;
- and how the hosts are therapists, yes, but both of them not only share these skills but practice them in their own challenges too
Why I love it: Most of the therapists I’ve worked with a focus on CBT (reframing thoughts), which never really gave me an understanding of why I have certain thinking patterns. This podcast, created by actual therapists, complemented my existing therapy work with more actionable information about what trauma is, and how we navigate the world with that experience.
Savvy Psychologist
About: Bite-sized mental health tips
Length: about 10 minutes
Episode examples:
Why I love it: These are bite-sized tidbits of mental health tips and concepts that I can tangibly apply immediately to my day. I love Dr. Jade Wu’s emphasis on discussing racism in conjunction with mental health and her focus on sleep!
Topic 3: “Invisible Forces That Shape Our World”*
*Usually psychology, sometimes sociology
Invisibilia
About: Invisible forces that shape the world (quite often related to psychology)
Length: ~1 hour
Episode Examples:
Why I love it: The storytelling in these episodes are so well laid out, sharing stories that are really quite outside of the normal box of thinking. It encourages me to think beyond the ordinary.
Hidden Brain
About: a conversation about life’s unseen patterns
Length: 30–60 minutes
Episode Examples:
- how buying choices aren’t rational when in scarcity mindset;
- the proliferation of false beliefs, including a powerful story about a woman who changed her mind about being anti-vaccination;
- the importance of funding local journalism & what happens if local newspapers disappear
Why I love it: Similar to Invisibilia, Hidden Brain focusses on “invisible patterns”, which usually refers to psychology or sociology. Whereas Invisibilia uses anomalies to pique our curiosity about what ordinarily happens, I find that Hidden Brain urges us to reflect on the ordinary things we never think about or have fixed beliefs despite not ever questioning them.
Topic 4: Personal Improvement/ Freelancer Life
*This is an interesting section because this is the section I culled the most from. I removed a number of podcasts from this section after a number of them were called out for never interviewing BIPOC entrepreneurs; the remaining on the list are people who actively demonstrate that they are doing anti-racism work.
Detail Therapy — with Amy Landino
About: Amy is a “lifestyle/ organizational coach”, which is usually about habit formation, working from and being a freelancer/ being your own boss.
Length: 30–60 minutes
Episode Examples:
- Amy is a morning routine queen my favourite is her compilation of morning routines from everyone who has ever been on her show;
- if she doesn’t talk about the beauty of “morning pages” in a podcast or youtube episode I sometimes wonder whether the real Amy has been kidnapped;
Why I love it: She’s upbeat and authentic in sharing her experiences of working from home. Surprise, surprise, she’s organized about how she presents information about organization and habits! One of the best voices to wake up to.
Young and Profiting — with Hala Taha
About: Advice, interviews, tips for recent post-grads and every stage after that.
Length: 45 mins to 1hour
Episode Examples:
- I literally started this podcast last week and I’m already digging into the archives, so here’s my first podcast with Hala that led me down this rabbit hole: the path to financial freedom with Peter Mallouk
- The Power of Sleep with Dr. Daniel Gatenberg — because at this point you should know that I am passionate about sleep
Why I love it: It’s only been a week since I subscribed to this podcast and it’s made it on to my permanent list! Hala speaks with enthusiasm and interviews with a targeted and supportive technique that is often missing in podcasts.
Topic 5: Economics
Planet Money
About: Economics explained at a level understandable by someone who’s never taken economics in her life
Length: 30–60 minutes; (10 minutes for the sub-podcast “The Indicator”)
Episode Examples:
- the one that I still think about from time to time is this one from 2018, about how 900 hundred calories is the maximum of the cheapest food you could buy from one day’s worth minimum wage in Venezuela.
- The time people told them not to, but the hosts shorted a stock anyways and gave us the full story about it.
Why I love it: I used to think economics was boring and irrelevant and this podcast really broke things down into tangible bits and pieces that I could work with. The hosts also speak with a certain kind of excitable energy and try out the weirdest experiments ever (something I can deeply relate to).
Freakonomics Radio
About: Economics about things you’d never thought about (e.g., sleep)
Length: ~1 hour
Episode example:
- on the sudden switch to telehealth
- on how to make meetings less terrible, a MANDATORY ASSIGNED READING to everyone who ever utters the phrase “oh it’ll just be easier if we meet to talk about this”
Why I love this: This podcast redefined my understanding of what economics can be connected to (e.g., sleep) and what intersects with economics (e.g., the entire field of neuroeconomics) to make the economy a tricky unpredictable thing sometimes (spoilers: because people often make irrational decisions).
These five categories are ones that consistently bring my value, expanding my understanding of the world and myself in ways that haven’t come up in my daily life.
If you get a chance, I highly recommend Marie Kondo-ing your podcast list down to the ones you actively connect to and engage with the most. Once distilled, you can start to see patterns in what priorities and intentions you have in life.
For me, I learned that:
- I’m passionate about self-improvement and individual change (topic 2 & 4 are about how I can improve my own mental health and finances/productivity) but also am so curious about how the world works (topics 1, 3, 5 about world facts, and how psychology and finances shape the world around me).
- I’m also extra curious about certain themes like psychology/ mental health (topic 2, 3) and finances/ side hustles (topic 4, 5) regardless of whether it applies to myself as an individual or to a system that I belong to.
My final thing to add is that this is not a static list. Like I mentioned with Hala Taha’s podcast, I experiment with new podcasts and decide whether they go into this typical rotation once in a while.
If you have any podcasts you’re passionate about, be sure to share it with me so I can expand my horizons too!
Lucy (The Eggcademic) also passionately loves podcasts because they jazz up boring chores to help her tackle chores on bad days. She also writes poetry about writing and wants to recommend reading Galit Birk, PhD’s piece: Gentle Breeze.
