I love a good podcast. Despite being a reader and having a YA podcast, though, I tend not to listen to podcasts about books or reading. I prefer something different, and I’ve come to find in the last year or two exactly what it is I love about a show: a well-researched deep dive into social, historical, and/or cultural phenomena. These shows tend to be scripted or rely on significant research for the hosts to share, meaning the show notes for each are a treasure trove of great reading material post-episode.
While I don’t have a commute and don’t do a whole lot of driving, I find plenty of time to listen to podcasts. Like with audiobooks, I listen to them while doing household chores — think showering, folding and putting away laundry, cleaning — as well as more recently, while feeding the baby. I don’t often get to listen in big chunks of time, which mirrors why it is nonfiction tends to work better for me both in audiobooks and for pods. I don’t feel like I miss out popping in and out of the story or show.
Recommending podcasts is like recommending music to me. I don’t feel especially qualified to do it since it’s not my area of expertise, and then when I have shared a podcast or music I love with someone, I tend to believe they already know about it and it’s not new to them. This is often not the case, though. But because it’s not books and therefore, a space I feel super confident in, I don’t tend to share as much. But let’s change that today!
These five podcasts are in my regular rotation and/or were podcasts I listened through when I discovered them. All of them are deep dive podcasts. Grab whatever podcatcher you use (I’m a Spotify podcast listener, if you’re wondering) and be prepared to listen to so much good stuff.
Five Excellent Deep Dive Podcasts on Social, Historical, and Cultural Phenomenon
Maintenance Phase
Hosted by Michael Hobbs — who you’ll see again shortly — and Aubrey Gordon, author of the book What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat (excellent on audio, though be prepared to be bummed Gordon doesn’t perform it!), this biweekly podcast tackles topics on health and wellness. This is a fat positive show, and it seeks to shed light on things that are or once were trendy in weight loss, health, and diet culture.
Both Hobbs and Gordon are in their 30s, so many of the topics they touch on are ones I remember or was familiar with growing up. Their chemistry is fantastic, and it’s clear how much they enjoy each other and the ways they push one another to dig even deeper in their research. My only complaint is when they joke about being able to talk about a topic for three hours, they don’t. Give it to me!
You do not need to listen to this one in any order or begin in any specific spot.
Recommended episodes: “The President’s Physical Fitness Test,” “Snackwell’s Cookies,” “Snake Oil,” and “The Wellness to QAnon Pipeline”
You’re Wrong About
You think you know the story behind a historical moment or a cultural event, but do you really? That’s the premise of this outstanding podcast, hosted by Michael Hobbs (see above!) and writer Sarah Marshall. The show looks at how the media and our collective memory have reshaped significant events or stories. It’s jarring to see where things I believed to be true or people I thought I “knew” were not/did not match the realities, thanks to how their stories were spun.
I discovered You’re Wrong About a year or so before Hobbes started Maintenance Phase, and it’s been neat to hear his perspective on each of the shows. Marshall’s also great at what she does, and I can only hope we see her in-progress book about the Satanic Panic sooner, rather than later.
You don’t need to listen to this one in any order or start in any spot. There are a few shows that take place over multiple episodes, such as the ones on OJ Simpson and Princess Diana. The topics aren’t given short shrift.
The podcast is weekly, but sometimes it is a few weeks between episodes. I can only imagine the piles of research for many of the shows.
Recommended Episodes: “Losing Relatives to Fox News,” “Wayfair and Human Trafficking Statistics,” “D.A.R.E.,” “Disco Demolition Night,” and all of the Diana episodes.
Under the Influence
I don’t even remember how I stumbled upon this podcast, but it hooked me immediately. This is a show you do need to listen to start to finish, but it’s so compelling that stopping can be a challenge. It truly got me through those first few weeks postpartum.
Hosted by writer Jo Piazza, Under The Influence is about the world of mom influences on social media. How do they become famous? What happens to them when they achieve a notoriety? Why do many of them get caught up in the world of MLMs or subscribe to QAnon beliefs?
Piazza found herself spending hours diving into the world of mom influences and realized it made for a compelling podcast series. This is not a show that’s going to demonize these women; instead, it’s a look at how they’ve been cast in popular culture, why and how white influences are given far more opportunities than influencers of color, and what happens when an audience turns on an influencer. There are certainly moments when, as a listener, I rolled my eyes thinking about things I’ve seen. The show unpacks those reactions and instincts in such a savvy way.
Start from the beginning with this podcast. There are 12 episodes.
History of the 90s
Kathy Kenzora, a former Toronto reporter, started a podcast called History of 1995, and the popularity of that show led to an expansion into a deeper dive into the history of the whole decade. This podcast is incredibly researched, and Kenzora develops a narrative that’s hard to stop listening to once you stop. I’ll note that her voice isn’t the most engaging, likely because you can tell she’s reading a script, but her perspective as a Canadian is especially interesting to hear when she digs into US-centric stories (her episode on the Oklahoma City Bombing, for example, defines the various government departments in the building — something US folks would never likely think twice about).
The wide range of topics is what keeps me coming back to this one, as well as the nuggets of insight I’d never considered before. One episode may cover a specific music genre such as Grunge (which made me pause in reconsidering how I’d never classified Pearl Jam as grunge, despite the fact Eddie Vedder was one of the first grunge artists) and then the next might explore the truth behind the Atlantic Olympic Bombing (this episode was composed SO WELL that I didn’t even think about the real bomber until the very end, when Kenzora reminded the listeners we never touched that yet).
You can listen to these biweekly episodes in any order. I think some of the two-parters would have been better as a longer one-parter, but they’re still worth listening to both if the topic is of interest.
Recommended Episodes: “Nickelodeon,” “Woodstock ’99,” “Girl Power,” and “Olympic Bombing and the Wrong Man, Richard Jewell.”
The Dream
The Dream has produced two seasons so far, and I think the second season is much weaker than the first. Perhaps it’s because Maintenance Phase does something similar and better, or perhaps it’s because the “wellness industry” is a topic I know more about than the show has offered. That said, the first season is an incredible deep dive into Multi Level Marketing (MLM) schemes and the dark history behind them, as well as how they lure folks in.
Hosted by Jane Marie and Dann Gallucci, the show really focuses on the capitalist underpinnings of two arenas that aren’t called capitalist machines enough. Rather, MLMs and wellness “sell the dream” of a lifestyle that simply doesn’t exist, using exploitative measures to do so.
I read Amanda Montell’s recent book Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism in March this year, and it was really worthwhile to think about what The Dream explored in comparison with how MLMs and other groups use language to situate themselves as different, as powerful, and as the means to achieving that “ideal” life.
Start from the beginning with this podcast. There are 11 episodes in season one and 10 in season two.
Are there any similar podcasts in your rotation you love? I’m always looking for more, and I’m especially interested in similarly-minded podcasts hosted by and about people of color. Leave your recs for me, and I hope you found something new here to enjoy.