Podcasts That’ll Make You Smarter
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While a lot of us are going to school, there are many of us who aren’t taking traditional schooling these days. From work, and other commitments we don’t always have time to go to school. But we’re left with a crucial decision: should we let out minds atrophy or not? Of course we shouldn’t be doing that, especially when we have podcasts like the ones we’ll share in this article.
The first is called Surprisingly Awesome. For this podcast, one of the hosts makes an effort to convince the other host that a boring topic can actually be quite interesting. The series only ran for two years, however over the years the hosts tackled a variety of topics that turned out to be quite interesting. Some of these topics are things like interest rates, broccoli, and even mold. For your first episode, we recommend mold.
For those who are looking to be talking about religion or philosophy one good podcast to consider is On Being With Krista Tippett. It’s still running to this day after starting up in 2001. Each episode that’s been published is always thought-provoking and digs into topics of faith, philosophy, and ethics. Often times episodes intersect all three of them too. We recommend the episode “John Lewis: Love in Action” as the first.
One of the oldest podcasts on our list is This American Life. Starting back in 1995, this show is still running and provides a lot. It’s not out of the ordinary for people to leave those hour-long episodes with a new insight of the world around them. Keep in mind that not every piece of information presented in this podcast is hard fact. In some of the episodes, many people recall specific lived experiences amongst other things. This is great for investigative journalism. The episode we recommend to start off is “Switched at Birth”
When it comes to history, a lot of us only know part of the story. Even then that knowledge can be rather limited as its often filtered in order to satisfy exams or a class curriculum. So if you’ve been wanting to get a fill of history and see the bigger picture, a great podcast to consider is Stuff You Missed In History Class. Since 2008, each episode of this podcast is devoted to uncovering stories that history textbooks skipped out on. On top of that each episode is only about a half-hour long making it pretty light. We recommend “Hedy Lamarr and Wireless Technology” as the first episode of choice.
The final podcast we recommend is a pretty basic one: Stuff You Should Know. Since 2008, there are literally thousands of these episodes. Why so many? Well because there is a lot of things that we should be aware of. The topics are numerous and are all quite practical things. With discussions on exorcisms, global warming, who named the continents, underground housing in Beijing, and how makeup works – this is a convenient place for you to learn a lot. We recommend you start with “Are there undiscovered people?”
The list of great podcasts is extensive but this can provide you with hours of helpful information for you to sharpen and expand yourself. Give them a shot and let us know what you think!