Podcast Recommendations for the week of May 5, 2025
Try a little randomness
Podcasts are an odd duck in the media world: On most listening apps, you are *not* at the mercy of an algorithm. You choose exactly which shows you want to subscribe to, and which episodes you want to hear.
I love this, because I am a deranged hermit living in the digital desert, clinging to a carefully curated collection of RSS feeds, email newsletters, and Blu-ray Discs.
However… even I am not immune to the slot machine-esque thrill of TikTok. Every swipe is another chance to find something amazing. And sometimes, I do!
Recently, I’ve found a happy medium between these two extremes on Pocket Casts: First, I manually curate all the feeds I subscribe to. Then, I choose to download individual episodes based on their title/description. Everything else gets archived.
Once an episode is in my “Up Next” queue, though, I turn on the shuffle mode and let it ride! I’ve already lost count of how many times shuffling brought me to an episode I wasn’t expecting to love. Three of those are in this week’s recommendations.
The sheer amount of entertainment we have access to is overwhelming, and actually ~looking~ at everything one could listen to is paralyzing. I’ve come to realize it’s nice to surrender *some* control, *some* of the time. Maybe I should do this with my Blu-Rays …
Here’s what I’ve been shuffling through this week …
🐷 Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - “Spam!” (hosted by Alex Schmidt & Katie Goldin)
🤖 Lock and Code - “The AI chatbot cop squad is here” ft. Emanuel Maiberg & Jason Koebler (hosted by David Ruiz)
🏆 The Extraordinarians - “Pun Champion Janani K. Jha” (hosted by Kristen Schaal, Tony Hale, & Matt Oberg)
📕 If Books Could Kill - “The Let Them Theory” (hosted by Michael Hobbes & Peter Shamshiri)
🎸 Dead Meat - “The Sexy Symbolism of Sinners” (hosted by Chelsea Rebecca & James A. Janisse)
🎺 Fresh Air - “Terry Gross Remembers Her Late Husband, Francis Davis” ft. George Clooney (hosted by Terry Gross)
👨🏻 Good Hang - “Paul Rudd” (hosted by Amy Poehler)
‼️ And ICYMI, you can get my podcast recs delivered to your app of choice. Here’s how.