There's "Well there's your problem". In each episode, the hosts break down an engineering disaster. The episodes are one to several hours long each, and they are thorough, entertaining, and you learn a ton.

There's also a video version that contains slides with pictures and graphs.

I would suggest as a starter episode 139, The impossible railroad, which I thought was a fun one. Or 146 on the Mount Everest, that was eye-opening. Those are the recent ones that stand out to me.

Darknet Diaries is always fascinating: it's all about cybercrime. Sometimes the episodes are breakdowns of particular hacker groups or specific notable hacks; other times, they're interviews with people in the industry: both cybersecurity professionals and criminals.

I don't know if it has already been said, but "Darknet diaries" is a podcast i love to listen to, it's basically a history and breakdown of different hacks that happend all around the world, there are also some interviews with pentesters who tell some amazing story's, so if you're into computers thats something I'd recommend listening to

99 percent invisible is a good one. It’s about the stories behind things we take for granted in the world. It can be anything between ambulances, country borders and the lyrics of who let the dogs out.

Behind the Bastards and The Dollop are both a lot of fun as they delve into historical events and figures and do a whole comedic + factual examination in that order

If you want a really good episode for people unfamilar with the series-s, I love

• "The Tank Chase" (Dollop)
• "Stalin After Dark" (Behind the Bastards), the guest on Stalin episodes is very funny to me

I've really enjoyed all of these:

https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/

Blowback - Deep dives into American imperialism. Each season covers a single topic and goes into the background history, through to the conflict, to the aftermath in about 10 hour long episodes each. The first season was on the Iraq War, the second on Cuba, the third on the Korean War and the fourth into Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan. Extremely well produced with some great soundtracks.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb0r5aWGkCI

Stuff You Should Know

• If you're tech and history inclined, "Command Line Heroes" tells stories about people who transformed technology "from the command line up".
• For stories about really nasty people (interspersed with some good people for the Christmas Episodes), "Behind the Bastards" is a good source. A story is usually split in two episodes, but for long ones it can be five or six.
• For news about science but with intelligent discussion behind it, and several nice fun an intelligent sections, you can't beat The Skeptic Guide to the Universe. If anything, their only defect is that sometimes they're a little naive and technophilic.

Oh No Ross and Carrie is a lot of fun! “The show where we don’t just report on spirituality, fringe science and claims of the paranormal, but take part ourselves. We join religions, undergo alternative medical treatments, and hunt for ghost, goblins, demons, and deities. If it has an extraordinary claim attached to it, we’ll check it out.”

They do a large variety of investigations, including things like ear candling, trying ayahuasca, going to UFO conferences, joining Scientology (a particularly long but very interesting series of episodes), meeting a local flat earther group (and even helping them design and run experiments), be trained in performing exorcisms, etc etc!

Blowback. Very, very good podcast on western imperialism.

I like listening to podcasts that casually destroy my worldview, which means a lot of history and politics podcasts while working. I have 2 suggestions and a secret 3rd option!

First is The Deprogram, a podcast about various topics relating to socialism and leftism. The bromance is strong with this one, it's hilarious. The humor can potentially be a turn off though, very rarely they'll take a joke too far. However the educational info they provide is more than worth looking past imo.

Second is UNFTR, or Unfuck the Republic. This is a much smaller podcast, but the audio quality is great. His voice is very soothing, something tells me he worked in radio at one point. The stuff on youtube is on the shorter side, but still very good.

The third option is one you haven't thought of before, but look up archival footage of speeches! Some of my favorite youtube archive channels are Afromarxist and the Micheal Parenti Library

You’re dead to me - history, different expert and comedian guest every week, very good

No Such Thing as a Fish - superb trivia show

Sci-Show Tangents - “lightly competitive science knowledge showcase”

A Podcast of Unnecessary Detail - science and math facts around a random topic from 3 very smart people

The Infinite Monkey Cage - science and comedy with Brian Cox and guests

Journey to the Microcosmos - interesting things in our microscopic world

Black Box Down is interesting. They describe aviation disasters but in a very approachable way, while also not really dumbing it down. No drama, although the stories themselves can sometimes be crazy, they don't play it up.

I like to listed to Darknet Diaries if I am not listenting to WANshow.

Sawbones "A marital tour of Misguided Medicine" from Justin & Sydney McElroy is a great podcast. each episode dives into the history behind some medical quackery. Funny & Informative, I always learn something and have a good time.

General deep dives on random topics:

• secretly incredibly fascinating
• stuff you should know

stuff about the animal world:

• creature feature

linguistics and how we communicate:

• lexicon valley
• lingthusiasm

The Delta Flyers is a podcast by Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill, who played Harry Kim and Tom Paris on Star Trek Voyager, they rewatch the show and interview other crew members, they have completed Voyager, and have started rewatching Deep Space 9, together with Terry Farrell and Armin Shimerman, who played Jadzia and Quark on that show.

Very interesting.

Damn Interesting is a site with long interesting articles about different subjects, they have a podcast under the same name, where they read the articles, it is very well done, but unpdated slowly, but there is quite a few episodes available.

remember when radiolab was THE PREMIERE PODCAST?

Idk if it will fit your vibe, but I'll always take the opportunity to shout out Astonishing Legends.

Heavyweight with Jonathan Goldstein. Jonathan solves human problems, often reconnecting people who lost contact. Jonathan solves serious issues in witty ways. Funny, but serious.

This is a Gimlet Media podcast, bought by Spotify and published for a while exclusively there. As of the latest news, Heavyweight is looking for a new home for next season.

Hardcore history is a very thorough look into different events. Dan Carlin is great

Used to love "reply all," but it sadly concluded last year.

Since then "undermisunderstood" and "search engine" somewhat scratch that same itch.

Both podcasts talk about things not easily explained by an Internet search.

The Constant, by Mark Chrysler.

Headlined as "a history of getting things wrong", the host goes into deep dives about what we thought we knew, how we eventually came to figure out we were wrong, the repercussions of both.

It takes a seriously funny and well researched approach to a number of major events in our history, and I absolutely must recommend "the foolkiller" a five episode exploration of a submarine found at the bottom of the Chicago River then lost to history, with a very juicy footnote delivered several episodes later, that I dare not spoil for you.

I know it's older but recently I've been listening to Ologies by Allie Ward. She explores all the different types of science, she's funny, and she finds people who are really passionate about their field of work.

My unmentioned favourite is Jordan Harbinger Show, he invites various guests and comes well prepared for an interview, about topics like psychology, geopolitics, etc. Kinda like Joe Rogan but less stupid, not conspiracy minded and not right wing.

Tides of History is a very well-produced history podcast that deals with ancient history. It tells history in an engaging way and is founded in recent scholarship.

Podcasting is Praxis, a funny politics podcast made by British communists.

Blowback, all the praise heaped upon it is absolutely justified. Listen to it.

We Are Not So Different, an entertaining podcast about medieval history. It has a leftist outlook on things and treats medieval people like people and avoids romanticising as well as looking down on them.

A People's History of Ideas. An amazingly detailed history of the Chinese revolution with offshoots into international Maoism. If you want to listen to an episode about how CPC safehouses worked in Shanghai in the early 1930's, this is a podcast for you.

A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - This is one of my favorite podcasts, but I'm going to warn you it's not for everybody. The creator of this show, Andrew Hickey, is THOROUGH. A great example is the most reason episode about Hey Jude. Either you will love the concept of a 3.5-hour episode where 80% of the podcast is not about the song but rather the circumstances and lives of The Beatles, Yoko Ono, and the late 1960s music scene leading up to the creation of Hey Jude, or you will be furious that so much of the episode is about stuff that isn't the song.

A Podcast of Unnecessary Detail

Do you like history?

• https://wondery.com/shows/the-fall-of-rome-podcast/

• https://www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com/

• https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/

For deeply nerdy computer/network/IT/programming: On the Metal

Only 2 seasons, but some great interviews.

If you like space exploration and science, The Planetary Podcast has been going for like 20 years. Tons of amazing interviews with scientists, engineers, astronauts, administrators.