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Best Podcasts for College Students

After binge-watching TV shows for hours, in the end, podcasts have been the next best thing. Listen to inspirational stories or facts on the go without being too distracted from your work. The podcasts we’ve chosen on this list were based on their popularity, their content, the number of celebrity hosts they have, their fan following, and more.

Hope you enjoy reading the rest of the article while also gathering some valuable information.

Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know (SYSK) is a podcast and video series hosted by Josh Clark and Charles W. “Chuck” Bryant, both writers at HowStuffWorks. Since its debut, the podcast is consistently ranked in the Top 10 on iTunes and is one of the most popular podcasts in the world, being downloaded millions of times each month.

The podcast informs listeners on a wide range of topics, often using popular culture as a reference giving the podcast comedic value. The podcast is also available for free on the iTunes Store and consistently appears in the platform’s Top 10.

Best Podcasts for College Students

Planet Money

The podcast was created by Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson and was launched to cover the financial crisis of 2007–08 in the wake of the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In early 2020, Planet Money celebrated its 1000th episode, bringing back many former hosts and contributors o mark the occasion. As of 2020, episodes are hosted by Robert Smith, Stacey Vanek Smith, Kenny Malone, Jacob Goldstein, Amanda Aronczyk, Mary Childs, Sarah Gonzalez, Karen Duffin, Cardiff Garcia, and Greg Rosalsky.

Planet Money uses abridged narratives to tackle popular, complex topics like American health care or insider trading. The format aims to make economic journalism approachable to audiences interested in learning more about popular economic issues who do not have an academic background in economics.

Best Podcasts for College Students

Freakonomics Radio

Freakonomics Radio is an American radio program that discusses socio-economic issues for the general audience and listeners. The show is a spin-off from the 2005 book Freakonomics. Journalist Stephen Dubner is the host, along with economist Steven Levitt. The show is also available as a podcast and is among the most popular on iTunes.

The host of Freakonomics Radio is Greg Rippin and Harry Huggins. Selected audience members present their ideas to host Stephen Dubner, and a panel of three celebrity judges and the lucky ones get to bring their idea to life.

Best Podcasts for College Students

Pod Saves America

Pod Save America is an American progressive political podcast produced and distributed by Crooked Media. The podcast debuted in January 2017 and aired twice weekly, with the Monday edition hosted by former Barack Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, and Jon Lovett and the Thursday edition by Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer. It is the flagship podcast and averages more than 1.5 million listeners an episode and has been downloaded more than 120 million times as of November 2017.

Best Podcasts for College Students

My Favourite Murder

My Favorite Murder is a true-crime comedy podcast with hosts American comedians Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. The first episode was released back in January 2016. The podcast debuted as #25 on the iTunes podcast charts and peaked at #3 on April 27, 2018.

Weekly episodes regularly land within the iTunes’ Top 10 Comedy Podcast chart. As of 2020, the podcast gets 35 million downloads per month and is quite popular amongst college students.

Best Podcasts for College Students

Throughline

Throughline is a historical podcast and radio program which aims to contextualize current events by exploring the historical events that contributed to them. Its episodes have covered the history of modern political debates, civil rights issues, and domestic and international policy. The show is NPR’s first history podcast.

Throughline is hosted by host RamtinArablouei and RundAbdelfatah, and both have spoken about the importance of Middle Eastern representation in American media. The podcast focuses on the various relationships between the latest news and historical events. Its sound design incorporates discussion between the two hosts, as well as interviews with historians and audio clips from historical newscasts and recordings, which play a huge role. The show also aims to tell the histories of underrepresented and forgotten people in the United States, often airing stories about racial and religious minorities.

Best Podcasts for College Students

You’re Wrong About

You’re Wrong About is an independent popular American pop culture podcast hosted by Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall. It was launched in May 2018, where the show explores misunderstood media events interrogating why and how the public got things wrong. Show topics have included events like the Challenger Disaster, O.J. Simpson Trial, and the Murder of Kitty Genovese and covered people such as Anna Nicole Smith, Yoko Ono and Lorena Bobbitt. It was one of the ten best podcasts by Time in 2019.

Michael Hobbes is the co-host along with Sarah Marshall, who is an American writer best known for an interest in the mischaracterization of women by the mainstream media, best demonstrated in her 2014 long-form profile of Tonya Harding. The show began after Hobbes reached out to Marshall and proposed that they try to recreate their deep-dive research processes in audio format and have been a great success ever since.

Best Podcasts for College Students

The Joe Rogan Experience

The Joe Rogan Experience is a Spotify original audio and video podcast hosted by comedian and television host Joe Rogan. It was launched back on December 24, 2009, by Rogan and comedian Brian Redban, who is also a producer and co-host. By 2015, it was one of the world’s most widely popular podcasts, regularly receiving millions of views per episode, also including a wide array of guests.

Actors, directors and TV hosts, athletes, authors and journalists, comedians and magicians, musicians and even video game designers for a little one on one time.

Best Podcasts for College Students

Reply All

Reply All is an American podcas founded by P. J. Vogt and Alex Goldman, and hosted by Goldman and Emmanuel Dzotsi. The show features stories and tales of how people shape the internet, and how the internet shapes people.

In early 2021 the podcast began releasing a series of episodes called The Test Kitchen, which detailed the structural racism and toxic work environment at the food magazine Bon Appetit as well.

Best Podcasts for College Students

The Read

The Read is a weekly pop culture podcast and one of the several podcasts affiliated with the Loud Speakers Network, The Read is hosted by American comedians Kid Fury and Crissle West and based in New York City.

The first episode of The Read was released back on March 4, 2013. The Read is distributed through the iTunes Store, iHeartRadio Talk, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Stitcher to name a few. On iTunes, the podcast rose up at number three in the “New and Noteworthy” section charts and at number one in the comedy section charts as well. And as of 2019, the podcast had over 85 million listens around the world, and received over 1.5 million unique listens every month.

Best Podcasts for College Students

Indu Singh

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