The web is a spot filled with darkish corners, deep rabbit holes, countless mazes, and wild threads. However with the chaos comes storytelling gold: These 12 podcasts use communities like Reddit, Yelp, Twitter, and Tumblr to launch into a unique a part of the digital world, with their hosts as your ready tour guides. Buckle up. Issues are going to get bizarre.
Logged On
Dazed’s Logged On is a month-to-month sequence exploring all issues web tradition, from memes, to rising developments, to deep internet conspiracy theories, and past. Host Günseli Yalcinkaya dives into the micro and nano cultures of sigma males, Deleuzian catboys, techno-spirituality, and psyops, and brings on consultants to assist make sense of what these phrases imply and the way they’re altering the world. The primary episode tackled the that means of “mid” and options a fantastic dialog about how the web is flattening our tradition.
There Are No Ladies on the Web
The web could be a darkish and twisted place, particularly when you’re a part of a marginalized neighborhood. Which is ironic, as a result of it’s typically these voices who form web tradition. On There Are No Ladies on the Web, Bridget Todd chronicles our experiences on-line, and considers the methods marginalized voices have formed the web from the very starting. Now that Elon Musk is working Twitter into the bottom, we’re all left questioning, the place can we present up subsequent? What do we have to find out about AI? Is it coming for our jobs? The brand new season of TANGOTI, dubbed “Current Future,” explores how ladies are mapping out a greater, brighter tech future right this moment, and what it’s essential know to be prepared for it.
ICYMI
Rachelle Hampton and Candice Lim are in all places on-line on a regular basis, so that you don’t need to be. On ICYMI, they choose up on the digital threads and developments that everybody is speaking about—those which can be shaping our tradition—and clarify why. Should you’ve ever felt neglected of the discourse, this can be a approach to wrap your mind round it. The hosts are utterly educated about TikTok’s newest style pattern, Twitter Blue, shopping for live performance tickets on-line, West Elm Caleb, and no matter wild factor is occurring within the digital zeitgeist. It drops twice every week. Sustain and also you’ll be all set.
Countless Thread
Most Countless Thread tales start with one thing unusual discovered on Reddit, and evolve from there right into a story about individuals IRL. Utilizing storytelling, interviews, and discussions, hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson discover the individuals concerned within the tales and convey their threads to life. The present is filled with mysteries and private experiences that gives you a glimpse into the lives of individuals all over the world, each on-line and off.
Darknet Diaries
On Darknet Diaries, Jack Rhysider makes use of real-life tales and interviews with consultants, hackers, and cybercriminals to discover the world of cybersecurity, hacking, and on-line privateness. Every episode delves into a selected case, hack, or occasion, offering in-depth insights into the motivations, methods, and penalties concerned. Suppose information breaches, ransomware assaults, social engineering, espionage, and the underground world of hacking communities. The audio manufacturing is implausible, and it’s okay when you don’t have a deep understanding of computer systems. Jack’s storytelling will hold you hooked.
Dashboard Diaries
Bear in mind Tumblr? Longtime Tumblr person Lauren Shippen and longtime user-slash-Tumblr worker Cherokee McAnelly Do. On Dashboard Diaries, they discuss trending matters, new ships, and forecast upcoming fandoms. It’s a humorous, constructive present from two individuals who have discovered goodness on the web. Should you love Tumblr, you’ve discovered a spot to really feel completely seen. However even when it’s a brand new world for you, you’ll have a good time mining one of many web’s richest, most singular cultural veins.
Your podcasts will sound higher with some good wi-fi earbuds.
Digital Folklore
Digital Folklore is a fusion of audio drama and narrative documentary that explores how our on-line expressions and tradition—from scary tales to cat memes—are modern-day folklore. Utilizing a intelligent mixture of immersive sound design, storytelling, voice performing, interviews, and scripted narrative, Digital Folklore analyzes numerous expressions of web tradition by way of the lens of educational folklore. Hosts Perry and Mason play exaggerated variations of themselves as they take listeners on a journey into web tradition, and regularly find yourself in some fairly unusual conditions. The present creates a semi-fictional world and set of eventualities that function a wrapper for the actual interviews they conduct with consultants and the folkloric ideas and information they bring about to the mic.
Seaside Too Sandy, Water Too Moist
Seaside Too Sandy, Water Too Moist is a comedy podcast from siblings Alex and Christine Schiefer, who do dramatic readings of among the funniest destructive on-line opinions you’ve ever heard. The dramatic music performed within the background whereas they’re studying them actually units the tone. Episodes are damaged out into completely different companies or vacationer locations. It’s endlessly entertaining and really an escape.
Blocked Celebration
Behind each web block is a extremely joke. That’s why comedians Stefan Heck and John Cullen created Blocked Celebration, the place they invite their humorous associates to share tales of unusual web misunderstandings and feuds with celebrities, manufacturers, and members of the family. Stefan and John have sharp chemistry and fill their present with enjoyable segments. (And the theme music for the “Blocked Story” section will likely be in your head for days.)
One Click on
Narrated by Elle Fanning, One Click on is the digital true-crime story that explores how a single click on on the web can change your life endlessly—in some circumstances, by serving to you lose a variety of weight. Season one was about DNP, an explosive chemical left over from WWI-era munitions factories that’s now being offered on the web as a eating regimen capsule (with probably deadly negative effects). Along with journalist Jessica Wapnes, Fanning traces the historical past of DNP and asks, why (regardless of the perils) have so many turned to the drug, how the web helped it blow up, and what this all says concerning the well being of our data society. It’s powerful, vital listening.
Rabbit Gap
The New York Occasions’ Rabbit Gap explores how the web shapes individuals’s beliefs, behaviors, and identities, and has the ability to more and more isolate them inside echo chambers of maximum ideologies. By way of interviews, analysis, and storytelling, host Kevin Roose units to show how YouTube algorithms, social media influencers, and on-line communities are contributing to our polarization and radicalization. Kevin introduces us to individuals who have been severely impacted by on-line content material and follows them down their rabbit holes to shed gentle on the web’s profound results on society, elevating consciousness concerning the risks of unchecked on-line consumption.
Search Engine
Should you had been a fan of Reply All, you may need adopted PJ Vogt to his subsequent pursuit, Crypto Island, which explored the world of cryptocurrency and the bizarre human tales behind the blockchain. He’s now utilizing that feed for a brand new present, Search Engine, the place he’ll discover the type of questions you normally can’t discover on-line. (In a sneak peek episode, he talks about why monkeys on the zoo are unhappy.) So it’s type of like an anti-internet podcast, but it surely’s coming to you from the king of web tradition discourse, so I feel you’ll prefer it.
