Podcasts you listen to religiously

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This year I’ve found myself with a longer, more frequent commute to work, so to keep it interesting, I got back into (mostly games-related) podcasts for the first time in years.

There are a couple of dozen I listen to sporadically if the description sounds interesting. But this thread isn’t about those… it’s about the podcasts where you listen to almost every episode. Here’s mine!

Post Games

Former Polygon editor-in-chief Chris Plante’s NPR-style show with each interview-filled episode focusing on a single topic: the threat of AI to game devs, payment processor censorship, the ‘too many games’ problem. Astonishingly high–production for a show created by one person week-in and week-out. Now also available in video.

Into the Aether

The best ‘two dudes talking about video games’ podcast and it’s not even close. Brendon and Stephen talk about the games they’ve played that week… which are typically not all games that came out that week, or even that year! They have an infectiously positive attitude and if they dislike a game, they won’t bother talking about it, which means you’re only finding out about good stuff. Also known for their occasional multi-hour mega-episodes where they review the best games from a single platform’s library after spending literally months playing as many as possible.

MinnMax

Six years old this week, this independent podcast/site/YouTube channel was founded by a bunch of ex-Game Informer staff and has gone from strength to strength. They do a bunch of stuff but the weekly podcast is the anchor, presented each week by a panel drawn from their large and diverse group, covering the week’s events and new releases. Pew Pew Bang is another standout: a spinoff podcast fronted entirely by women. Intelligent, positive, chill and funny.

So what podcasts do you never miss an episode of? Share your best recommendations!

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The only podcast i listen to is world’s beyond number, an actual play podcast that has a few different stories (currently one where the system they are playing is the clue tabletop game), but with the main one being The Wizard, The Witch and the Wild One. It’s a story heavy dnd game that is so well edited, makes me wanna scream when i see a critical role episode reaching 5+ hours runtime. It’s about 3 childhood friends that are each from a side of a brewing conflict, trying their best to navigate a world that is beaultiful and dangerous in equal measure

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I don’t listen to many podcasts, but the one I always come back to is Mobile Suit Breakdown. I’m a fan of Gundam (who would have guessed) and they go into a lot of great detail on the show’s narrative, background, characters, and historical/cultural context, episode by episode. The tangents they can go down when trying to puzzle out the meaning of moments and concepts that might seem strange to modern viewers are always entertaining, and very well researched.

Honestly wish there were more anime podcasts that didn’t just gush over things, and actually tried to piece together intention and mindset from the staff involved in production.

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I don’t listen to podcasts often, but when I do I listen to Fine Time. It’s 3 dudes talking about what they’re playing, but they also have weekly bonus episodes based on a certain game or topic or something else.

I also like Into the Aether, which kinda inspired my podcast, Super Ghost, but we tend to talk about more than games and get really fucking stupid with our humor.

Fine Time:

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Pretty much just AdRic on youtube at this point. Constantly funny Warhammer lore podcast where the hosts constantly go on bizarre tangents. I appreciate that their editor uses a lot of funny images and visual edits in the video versions, only way to listen in my book. Their recent series on the god awful The War of The Beast book series is absolutely hilarious. They also branch out on occasion into other goofy, grimdark universes, like Trench Crusade and Helldivers, but they seem to be making a new podcast for that stuff, while focusing the main channel on 40k and classic Warhammer.

https://www.youtube.com/@Adeptusridiculous

https://www.youtube.com/@AcceptableLossesPodcast

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Great thread, I was about get round to a topic like this sooner than later.

I’ve a top three I’m listening to at the moment;

Retronauts is probably my number one. They look at retro video games (any game more than 10 years old). They’ve been going for years and years but if you’ve somehow not listened to them there’s a treasure trove of content to look back on. More recently they’ve added new hosts and they’ve brought their special interest to the table. Of particular interest to me is the glowing deep dive of Sonic 3 & Knuckles they did which does about as good a job of capturing my excitement about this game as I’ve ever heard.

Outside of games I’ve been enjoying 52 Pickup which is a look at the DC comic 52, which was a weekly comic book released over 52 weeks detailing a missing year of continuity after a recent reboot. I’ve sort of been into comics and have enjoyed the Marvel movies but have had my fill, so it’s been fun getting to know DC a bit better. On and it’s given me a bit of an obsession with The Question who I’d never heard of before.

Lastly I’ve got to recommend Shelved by Genre who analyse different types of genre fiction in great detail. They’ve looked at sci-fi, fantasy, manga and traditional comics. Most things I’ve never heard of and some I’ve actively disliked, but it’s always fun hearing the hosts discuss whatever book they’re talking about in an insightful but funny way.

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I will second Fine Time!

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I’ve had trouble sticking with podcasts for a long time. I usually go through phases. Currently I’m listening to a history podcast entitled The Rest is History, specifically their series on the French Revolution.

History podcasts have been hit or miss for me - have had a few times where I’ve gotten into one and then eventually said to myself, “Hey wait I think this person may not actually be the best person to let influence my perception of historical events.” So far I’ve really liked Tom and Dominic though.

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I like Rocket Sloth. It’s a podcast but they also upload it to their YouTube as tops videos.

It’s just a couple of dudes talking about games and they’re pretty chill. They mostly talk about the PS3/Xbox 360 era.

I used to listen to Dead Rabbit Radio on Spotify when I was working at an office, it’s a supernatural podcast hosted by Jason Carpenter. He’s a pretty cool guy too, usually throwing humor in.

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I fell in love with Sacred Realms: A Zelda Retrospective Podcast many years ago now. I’m a regular guest on their show now, but I was listening for a long time before that came about.

I’ve been slacking lately and haven’t been following their Tears or the Kingdom season very closely, but I love listening on long drives.

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I’m a big true crime person, so Last Podcast on the Left, Necronomipod, The Casual Criminalist and Morbid are all frequent listens for me.

When it comes to history which is another subject I like, Real Dictators, You Must Remember This (Hollywood history), American Scandal, Historical Blindness, The Dollop, Timesuck are some that I enjoy.

You can also find several people on posing as podcasts on various services who are just uploading classic episodes of various shows hosted by Art Bell which are my biggest guilty pleasure.

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Guys: A Podcast About Guys

Each episode delves into a specific type of guy and finds some real wild people.

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Guys: With Bryan Quinby | Libsyn Directory

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Ooh, thank you for the heads-up on this! Sounds right up my alley.

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One of my faves that used to be a listen religiously but is now a very irregular one, but for fans of old Interactive Fiction of the Infocom variety, I’ll recommend ‘Eaten by a Grue’. There’s a big enough backlog of episodes to keep anyone interested going, and it’s a chill and informative listen.

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Two podcasts I think everyone should listen to are SFULTRA and Ghost Stories for the End of the World. I’ll start by describing the latter because it’s the more depressing of the two, covering as it does a lot of parapolitical crimes and fuckery. Matt, the host (both of these are solo podcasts) did an incredible deep dive into the Marc Dutroux affair and what it tells us about Belgium (and what Belgium can tell us about Britain) which was super-grim and left him psychically damaged for a while, but he’s firing on all cylinders again and doing a series on the relationship between fascism and the establishment in Britain, the prologue to which is an examination of Tommy Robinson. A lot of podcasts in this space are right-wing, but Matt comes at all this material from a solidly left-wing perspective, which I think makes his analysis on the money.

SFULTRA, despite its title being ripped off from MKULTRA, is a largely more cheerful affair. It began with the conceit that its host, Sean McTiernan, was trying to brainwash himself into liking science fiction by forcing himself to read 100 SF novels he bought in Hay-on-Wye, but it has migrated away from this concept recently to do deep-dives into the works and milieux of Iain Sinclair and most recently William Burroughs. Sean has been podcasting for years (SFULTRA’s podcasts archive takes you way back into his previous podcast series, All Units, and more) and has reached the point where he can do innovative stuff with the form - I got into his work after finding out about his epic six hour look at Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, which sounds like it should be impossible to listen to but is actually brilliant.

With Sean it’s definitely worth subscribing for his bonus content, too, which tends to fall into two strands: Confessions of a Crap Artist, in which he will muse on some issue in online discourse which has struck him recently, and Perfect Taste Forever, in which he, as a person afflicted with Perfect taste, tries to pass said affliction on to you by recommending various cultural artifacts. That may sound pretentious, but I have found that tracking down the films, books and other texts Sean recommends has genuinely been an enriching experience, and one that has brought me into contact with so much amazing stuff I would otherwise have missed out on. He’s currently doing a Halloween series, 31 Murders to Midnight, in which he watches a bunch of weird horror films and talks about each one for precisely 31 minutes, and just as a result of following along as best I can with that alone I have seen so much stuff that I can only describe, in the best possible way, as Mad Shit.

Other stuff I’d recommend: Podcasting is Praxis, Death is Just Around the Corner, Death/Sentence, If Books Could Kill and A Meal of Thorns. But I won’t go into more detail on those as this post is already too long.

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Came here to rep SBG, like @pixel.str337. I cannot explain my excitement at seeing a 4.5 hour ep drop for FROM HELL.

I’ve read everything they’ve been through apart from the Mercedes Lackey series, after the first book left me kinda cold. I’ve enjoyed everything else on the show well enough and Book of the New Sun went straight to the top of my all-time books.

Besides that, I’ve been really enjoying STORES: The Podcast, a fairly new show where hosts Luke and DBJ get guests on to talk about the joy of going to the store.

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I’ve been loving SFULTRA recently. The Burroughs stuff was just incredible, and I’ve been slowly reading Viriconium to listen to those eps too. I really should get on the patreon one of these days.

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i don’t have a job that lets me listen to things while working, nor do i even own headphones that work with my cell phone, so i don’t have much opportunity to listen to podcasts these days. thus, aside from some feminist & psychoanalytic stuff i don’t want to get into on a gaming forum, the only one i’m left listening to is abnormal mapping (the flagship show, not any of the spinoffs).

AM is a monthly games review show, mostly disconnected from Release Schedules or current events. you might recognize one of the two hosts (jackson) from their posting under the name “headfallsoff.” i think it’s normal to have a “two people talking about an old [game/movie/record]” podcast you like; this one is mine. it’s just kind of nice to listen to people talk about soul blazer or lament of innocence in 2025.

game studies study buddies is another good one. it’s a monthly discussion of a different work of academic game studies, with occasional dips into cultural studies at large (and then, necessarily, marx). only an occasional listen for me though

i really should get back into deathcorner!!

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Just for the record, this is the kind of gaming forum where, if you wanted to, you totally could get into feminist and psychoanalytic stuff.

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understood! but i still wouldn’t be the best person to sell them lol

shout out to in bed with the right though