12 podcasts to help make sense of this batshit world right now

It’s a lot.

It’s a *lot*.

We’re this close to implementing a one-print-newspaper-a-day and ten o’clock news policy.

Alternatively, put yourself in the safe hands of the podcasters who know what they’re talking about, the ones who know instinctively when nihilist humour is needed and the ones who have the kind of voices you could quite happily have in your ears all day.

Because listen: if you meet those criteria, get good guests and bring the pod in at under 50 minutes, it’s all happening. Even better if the regular hosts have chemistry and do some quick-fire recommendations after the main chat.

Here are Shortlist’s podcast picks to help make sense of / take the edge off... all of that out there.

1. Macro Dose

If we could make one podcast mandatory listening right now, it’d probably be Macro Dose. It’s the weekly sub-20 minute show from James Meadway, an economist and former adviser to John McDonnell, who excels at joining the dots between “Treasury brain”, food prices, inflation and resource security, wars, extractive capitalism and climate change.

With two or three topical stories covered each episode, this might not always be the cheeriest listening but Macro Dose is supremely clear-eyed about where we’re heading and how we got here. Plus Meadway is not short on possible solutions. Deeper dives, some of which are for Patreon supporters only, include interviews and discussions on series like The Curve, The Breakdown and After Order.

• If you like this, try: How We Survive, Politics Theory Other, The Guardian's Science Weekly

2. Past Present Future

If you’re in need of intellectual underpinnings to help to make sense of the current state of politics and geopolitics, David Runciman’s your man.

Runciman taught politics and history at Cambridge until 2024 when he left to podcast full-time. He’s written eight books including The History of Ideas and How Democracy Ends, which gives you a flavour of the ambition and scope of the bi-weekly Past Present Future pod. And come on, he has an excellent podcasting voice.

These are considered hour-long conversations with academics, specialists and authors on endlessly imaginative themed episodes and mini-seasons covering political trials, counter-factuals, nuclear war, ‘films of ideas’ and how to fix democracy. Real ones from the Talking Politics era will be glad to know that Runciman’s one-time cohost Helen Thompson makes an appearance now and again.

• If you like this, try: Revolutions, Working Class History, The LRB Podcast

3. The Rest Is Politics

OK, of course Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart each have their own huge blind spots in the form of the Iraq War (Alastair) and austerity in the UK (Rory) which might mean this one is a no-go. But when it comes to Britain’s place in the world, the minutiae of the politics of European countries, the fate of the Baltics, the potential dangers of Reform and the historical frames for fascism in the US and beyond, The Rest Is Politics has a lot to offer.

The pull isn’t so much that one’s Labour and one’s Tory - they’re both ultimately neoliberal ‘radical’ centrists - it’s more the depth and breadth of their experience, particularly where political figures below the most famous world leaders, in terms of mainstream recognition, are concerned.

• If you like this, try: The News Agents, Jacobin Radio, Pod Save America, Pod Save The World

4. Up First (NPR)

Our fave short, sharp news podcast for keeping up with all the chaos over the pond. Up First is a daily US news pod, it comes in at a tight 11/12 minutes (including ads for non-members of NPR Plus), and features three main headlines across domestic American stories and the rest of the world, read by crisp-accented anchors.

Here’s the real sell: in the UK, Up First doesn’t drop until around lunchtime. One for anyone who agrees with Fran Lebowitz that the distance in time between waking up and when you have to think about Donald Trump each day is a new and rarified luxury.

• If you like this, try: The Guardian’s Today In Focus: The Latest, The New York Times’ The Daily

5. The Economics Show (Financial Times)

Soumaya Keynes is an economics columnist for the FT and author of the book How To Win A Trade War. On her weekly pod, she does this genius thing with her high-calibre guests: her FT colleagues, economics professors and historians, ministers, trade advisers, expert authors. She gets them to start out by putting the news/issue/trend - whether that’s the impact of the Iran War energy shock or China’s industrial dominance - on a scale of one to ten.

Keynes admits it's a little silly but this long-running bit also cuts right through the noise before they dig into all the fascinating details in each episode with straight-talking questions throughout. Some good history rabbit holes and non-fiction reading prompts here too.

• If you like this, try: Slate Money, The Economist’s The Intelligence, Planet Money

6. If I Speak (Novara Media)

This high-low pod from leftie media org Novara Media will make you genlol out loud on the bus. Hosts Ash Sarkar and Moya Lothian-McLean are the kind of cool girls you’d actually like to go have a dance with. They get into all sorts of knotty topics, ‘Big Theories’ and listener dilemmas around culture and society - think dating, the manosphere, careers and ambitions, flatshares, tricky families and friendship, social media, the ethics of internet slop...

In amongst the overshares, Sarkar and Lothian-McLean dissect these au courant cultural trends and help to situate them with nods to theory, politics and the work of writers and artists active today. The highest praise we can give If I Speak: it’s thought-provoking *and* fun.

• If you like this, try: The Polyester Podcast, NPR’s It’s Been A Minute, Slate’s ICYMI

7. Arts & Ideas (BBC Radio 4)

Other than shoring up British democracy, this is what we choose to believe our license fee is funding. Arts & Ideas is Radio 4’s mind-expanding, academic-made-accessible show which takes as a starting point a theme - humility, say, or taste or working-class creativity or Scottish Kingship - and brings in thinkers, writers and researchers with something new to say.

Matthew Sweet, Anne McElvoy and Shahidha Bari keep things humming with an often wide-ranging panel of experts but the mode here is curious rather than combative and, while it’s not a news-led show, certain topics can end up being weirdly relevant when you zoom out. Lots of surprise and delight to get the synapses fizzing.

• If you like this, try: The New Yorker’s Critics At Large, New Statesman’s The New Society, BBC Radio 4 Front Row, Novara Media’s ACFM

8. Uncanny Valley (WIRED)

WIRED’s latest iteration of its flagship tech podcast is a neat mix of insider-y scene stories from Silicon Valley, DC and beyond, ‘Big Interviews’ with founders, CEOs and high-profile names plus a weekly round-up of news and scoops around what OpenAI, Elon Musk, Polymarket, Palantir and the rest are up to now. (Sigh).

WIRED’s posture these days is to get all up in tech evangelists’ grills rather than take the data-coated-utopia visions at face value. Hey, we’re not in the 90s anymore kids. Required listening given where the power currently lies.

• If you like this, try: Slate’s What Next: TBD, The Vergecast, Trashfuture, NPR’s Short Wave

9. The New Statesman’s Daily Politics

If you just want one 30-minute round-up of UK politics news and a few lighthearted curios, you could do much worse than Will and Anoosh’s weekly roundup on the New Statesman’s Daily Politics feed.

That’s Britain editor Anoosh Chakelian, who always does superb reporting on life outside Westminster, and Will Dunn, the NS’ business editor, who skips back and forth between digging into the very unfunny facts around wealth taxes or water company vandalism and doing these dry, very funny bits on politicians, speeches and yeah, supermarkets. One of those takes-the-edge-off options.

• If you like this, try: The Guardian’s Politics Weekly, Novara Live, If Books Could Kill

10. The Big Picture

The beloved Big Picture achieves many things. It’s a movie news and review show for the Letterboxd crowd with Top Fives, Hall of Fames, Movie Drafts and filmmaker interviews. It’s a fun hang between LA-based hosts Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins and their buds - shout out to Chris Ryan - where regular listeners get to know everyone’s very particular tastes and bugbears.

It’s also a podcast with big, well thought-through ideas about what the future of cinema and pop culture could be: what’s happening with AI and Hollywood; the importance of minting new movie stars and celebrating auteurs; physical media vs streaming; what Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros means and yep, why theatrical windows matter. Because the enterprise of making and sharing art is very much tangled up in everything else right now. A delight - you’ll get addicted.

• If you like this, try: Little White Lies’ Truth & Movies, The London Theatre Review, Slate’s Culture Gabfest, Cannonball, Prestige Junkie

11. Death, Sex and Money (Slate)

Staying on top of the personalities, policymakers and even the systems that govern us is well and good but what about the goddamn people all around us?

Death, Sex and Money is one of those wonderfully unique podcasts that manages to have deep and meaningfuls with celebrities and regular people alike on all manner of touchy subjects including everything from student loan debt, IVF, chronic pain and divorce to chatbot relationships, evictions and moving house and the despair of Gen Z job hunting.

Host Anna Sale is a truly singular interviewer with the power to open up conversations about everything that mysteriously doesn’t quite make it onto the gram.

• If you like this, try: BBC World Service’s The Documentary, Modern Love, This Is Uncomfortable, American Life

12. Poetry Unbound

There is a category of podcasts that we hold in our heads, in which we know there is going to be little to no mention of current affairs and world events.

These podcasts are precious. We must protect them. Maybe they’re running down the chart history of an 80s pop band or interrogating saucy medieval literature. Whatever it is, it’s the opposite of the doomscrolling diet.

One such pod is On Being’s Poetry Unbound. Each 10-20 minute episode features host Pádraig Ó Tuama, a poet, theologian and conflict mediator, reading out a poem, exploring its meaning and resonance with empathy and heart and on cosmic timescales that put everything in perspective, and then reading it out again to close. Magic.

• If you like this, try: The LRB’s Close Readings, Slate’s Hit Parade, DGA The Director’s Cut, Pilot TV, Hear Me Out, Broken Record

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