It's Critter Time!

Podcasts! Broadcasts for iPods! They're like radio shows you can download. There's infinite variety in the podcast world, so post some of your favourites for the rest of us to read about.

I listen almost entirely to comedy podcasts, so if they're not for you, might as well skip on down.

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The Greatest Generation and Greatest Trek
Two shows by the same guys who comedically review episodes of Star Trek. They both have backgrounds in television and film production, so there's a good mix of insightful commentary alongside the stupid dick and fart jokes. Greatest Gen covers 90s Trek (TNG, DS9, VOY, and currently ENT); Greatest Trek covers nu-Trek (DIS, PIC, LD, Prodigy, and currently SNW).

Contains many in-jokes, so takes some listening to familiarise yourself with them all. Best listened to whilst doing a Star Trek watchalong of the relevant series, rather than starting right at the beginning.

Fun fact: The hosts of this podcast had a character in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew named after them.

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The Beef & Dairy Network
The podcast of a fictional beef and dairy farmers organisation, set in a universe where cattle farming is the most important job on Earth, drinking milk whilst pregnant results in birthing nine-foot tall super babies, and lamb is the work of the devil. Contains guests in virtually every episode, so it's not just the same one or two guys talking to one another all the time.

This also contains quite a few running jokes and recurring guests, but you don't really need to go back to pick up on them.

Fun fact: Guest appearances have been made by the likes of Greg Davies, Nick Offerman, and Ted Dansen.

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Three Bean Salad
Comedians Benjamin Partridge (host of Beef & Dairy), Mike Wozniak (him off of Taskmaster), and Henry Paker (a book illustrator and sometimes stand-up) discuss a listener submitted subject every Wednesday, unless that Wednesday is the fifth Wednesday, in which case they don't. Frequently goes on insane tangents and has a ludicrous number of jingles in their back catalogue.

Fun fact: The Soup Dragon Café in Drymen, Scotland (north of Glasgow) will give discounts to anyone who quotes the secret phrase from this podcast.

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The Unmade Podcast
Two Aussie blokes (one of them Brady Haran, who runs a bunch of educational YouTube channels) discuss their ideas for podcasts that don't exist and, sometimes, make episodes of those podcasts themselves.

Fun fact: Their most recurring episodes centre around Tommyball commentary and history.

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'Til Death Do Us Blart
An annual podcast where the McElroy brothers, Guy Montgomery (of Taskmaster NZ and now host of his own game show), and Tim Batt re-watch and re-review the film Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 every American Thanksgiving for the rest of linear time.

Fun fact: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 apparently works really well if you play "The Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd over it.

I'm not a big podcast person, but I've gotten into listening to The Vibe Consultant recently. It's a weekly radio show on Melbourne's 3CR community radio station, and each week is just an hour of the host playing music they love for you. Really interesting stuff, all kinds of styles. Been a great way for me to find new things. It's live radio, but it's published as a podcast after it airs every week, so... that counts as a postcast right? Haha

Funnily enough, most of my podcasts I listen to are aftershocks of the great shuffling of Giant Bomb talent

The Nextlander Watchcast is former Giant Bomb stars Alex, Brad, and Vinny watching various movies and TV Shows and talking about them. They have done things like the entirety of Twin Peaks and are currently going through all of Star Trek: The Original Series.

The Jeff Gerstmann Show is my primary video game podcast as Jeff's Still A Threat and has pretty good insight on the industry.

I'm not a big podcast person, but I'll always go to bat for CheapShow. It's two guys going around the charity shops and cheap-o stores looking for treasure amongst the trash, complete with silly games and the occasional outing in parts of London, all held together with EXTREMELY mucky humour (so content warning there). The semi-antagonistic chemistry between the two is what really makes this so much fun to listen to, and if you gel with it as much as I do then you'll have a grand time.

The only podcast I've ended up getting really into is What Is Music: A Music Podcast About Music. Basically it's a set of three hosts going through artist discographies album by album, analysing the context behind each record and discussing each album track-by-track. The "gimmick" is that they intentionally pick artists where one of them is a big fan while the others have limited-to-no knowledge and the three generally approach music very differently (big analytical nerd, vibes man, the "normie"), so it's a great mixture of expert depth of knowledge and a real-time journey of discovery: e.g. the current season is on Arctic Monkeys, where the main host is the huge fan (as he usually is) and the other two either know just some of the big hits or dropped off after the first two albums. The three hosts have also been close IRL friends since school which lends a really lovely, fun, comradery vibe to it all with plenty of humour. Previous seasons have included e.g. Manic Street Preachers, Radiohead, R.E.M. and Billie Eilish. Very well recommended if you're a big music nerd who likes to listen to other fans. They've also got some monthly bonus series for Patreon Subscribers like a monthly random album club, which have also been really fun.

LeinaWahMom wrote: Wed Aug 20, 2025 9:49 pm I'm not a big podcast person, but I'll always go to bat for CheapShow. It's two guys going around the charity shops and cheap-o stores looking for treasure amongst the trash, complete with silly games and the occasional outing in parts of London, all held together with EXTREMELY mucky humour (so content warning there). The semi-antagonistic chemistry between the two is what really makes this so much fun to listen to, and if you gel with it as much as I do then you'll have a grand time.

Ooooh, I knew CheapShow was a thing on YouTube (via Barshens, RIP again), I didn't know it was a podcast. Might have to give that one a try.

It's less of a "podcast" as such and more of a radio drama, but The Once and Future Nerd is probably my all-time favorite non-musical audio thing, period.

From the website:

THE ONCE AND FUTURE NERD is a serialized audiodrama podcast about three teenagers from modern-day Pennsylvania who find themselves trapped in a High Fantasy world full of powerful magic and feudal intrigue. Will they survive their new surroundings long enough to get back home? Will their genre-awareness be an asset or a liability? And what is it like to be a rabbit?