9 Responses

1. ‘This American Life’ (though not heavy on the international topics) and ‘To the Best of Our Knowledge’, sounds like BBC ‘In Our Time’ which I definitely have to check out now.

2. I enjoy many of the same podcasts.
   I would also suggest The Economist podcasts, NPR All Songs Considered for music, the New Yorker Comment Podcast, and The New York Times Front Page (5 min. summary of the day’s news, Monday-Saturday).

3. This American Life is definitely one of my favourites.

   You could add Forum – A World of Ideas and Analysis, both from the BBC Worldservice, and Thinking Allowed, from BBC Radio 4. NPR’s Planet Money is also very nice.

4. BBC Radio 4 has two fantastic podcasts: In Our Time, which is about the history of ideas (everything from Social Contract theory to Absynnian libraries) and Thinking Allowed, which is about social science research. Perfect for those long commutes when you don’t want to work.

5. Africa Past and Present
   Ted Talks
   Great Speeches in History – occasionally updated but worth it
   And the Radio Freetown series was fantastic but appears to have stopped.

   1. Yes, the loss of Radio Freetown was tragic. I wish I knew what happened.

6. I would definitely second From Our Own Correspondent, and add the BBC’s Analysis and Crossing Continents:

   Analysis: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/analysis/
   Crossing Continents: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/cc/

   And always a favorite: Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me from NPR. Simply hilarious!

   http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=5183214

7. The New York Review of Books podcast is really good. They cover international development and conflict pretty regularly, but almost all of the authors featured are interesting. Slate’s podcasts are also usually entertaining, especially the Cultural Gabfest and Political Gabfest

   http://www.nybooks.com/podcasts/
   http://media.slate.com/media/slate/Podcasts/Culturefest/culturefest1.xml
   http://media.slate.com/media/slate/Podcasts/Gabfest/gabfest1.xml

8. You should definitely add th BBC’s ‘From Our Own Correspondent,’ on of the best roundups of world news, nearly always with interesting subjects and angles. You can find it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/fooc/.

   The BBC’s ‘In Our Time,’ takes a subject once a week (it could be history, religion, literature, anything really), gets a group of academic specialists in, and then gets them to talk about it for 45 minutes. It’s presented by the famous (in the UK at least) journalist, Melvyn Bragg. Unfortunately it’s off air, nut returns in Spetember. You can find it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot/.