NPR; NHPR; Texas Public Radio; Ideastream Public Media; Montana Public Radio; KQED
Spring is officially here and with it new podcasts have bloomed.
The NPR One team has podcast recommendations from across public media to freshen up your playlist.
The podcast episode descriptions below are from podcast webpages and have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Zach Mack and his dad are living in separate realities, and it’s tearing their family apart. Like so many Americans, Zach’s dad has gotten swept up in conspiracy theories. After years of circular arguments, the father challenged his son to a bet: $10,000 on ten politically apocalyptic predictions that would all happen in 2024.
In this three-part series, we follow Zach on an intimate journey to bring his father back from the rabbit hole.
Start listening to part one, “Alternate Realities: A Strange Bet.”
Ever wonder where the internet stops and IRL begins? Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor. From internet trends to AI slop to the politics of memes, Close All Tabs covers it all. How will AI change our jobs and lives? Is the government watching what I post? Is there life beyond TikTok? Host Morgan Sung pulls from experts, the audience, and history to add context to the trends and depth to the memes. And she’ll wrestle with as many browser tabs as it takes to explain the cultural moment we’re all collectively living.
The Final Days of Sgt. Tibbs – NHPR
Sgt. Tibbs, a beloved indoor/outdoor cat, goes missing on the streets of Manchester, New Hampshire. His owner fears the worst. But when she finds out her cat was never missing at all, the truth turns out to be worse than she feared. From the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio, a four-part series about what we owe our pets – and what we owe our neighbors.
The way football is played and who plays it — from the pee-wees to the pros — tells us so much about race, labor and power in the United States. Code Switch breaks all this down in their latest three-part series about America’s most popular sport.
In this conversation with cultural anthropologist Tracie Canada, they explore how starting from young ages, Black players are nudged towards more physically taxing positions that require more strength, athleticism, speed. That affects who gets injured, how they’re cared for and how they get paid.
Start listening to part one, “What football tells us about race, labor and power.”
Swing State of the Union – WUWM
Living for We – Ideastream Public Media
What can be done to reverse cycles of violence and retaliation when shooters value their reputation over their own lives. We know where this violence occurs, we know what drives it. How can we start Living For We and decrease the violence? We’ll talk with people who are navigating streets where gun violence is normalized – seen as no big deal, while at the same time ruining lives. We’ll listen to those fighting for their children and their communities, putting in work to uplift their neighborhoods and create meaningful change.
Threshold – Montana Public Radio
For most of our planet’s existence, the Earth was quiet. The boisterous sounds of life we know today are a recent development, one that the growing field of bioacoustics is helping us understand and interpret. In this episode, we travel to Australia to listen to dolphins and meet the microbes that helped usher in life on the planet.
Fumed is an investigative podcast about two stubborn Texans trying to salvage what’s left of their working-class community. That’s a problem, though, because they live in East Harris County, where the petrochemical industry calls the shots — and where pushing back can be dangerous. A four-part series from Public Health Watch.
NPR’s Jessica Green and Jack Mitchell curated and produced this piece.
