A List of 100 Podcast Episodes I Recommend

2020 was the 14th anniversary of the Food for Thought podcast, and while I’m a podcast creator, I’m also a podcast listener. And this year, I listened to 100 podcast episodes! You may (or may not) be surprised to know that the ones I listen to most frequently are those focused on history and language. Aside from relishing the variety of topics within these categories, it’s also how I discover facts that relate to my own work related to animal protection, food, and language.

You can see (below) a list of the podcasts and their many episodes I listened to this past year, and you might be asking how I find the time. I usually listen to an episode each morning while I’m getting dressed — doing my hair, doing my makeup — and getting my morning tea before I sit down to write. 

Also, when I’m not reading or writing, I’m usually walking, hiking, cooking, or gardening, and I usually play podcasts instead of listening to music. What about you?

List of Podcasts and their Episodes

Here are the lists of my favorite podcasts and the episodes I listened to. (I’ve listened to fewer of the language podcasts this year, so I didn’t parse out those episodes.)

History Extra
Episodes, released every week, feature interviews with notable historians on topics spanning ancient history through to recent British to American events. Episodes feature history stories and perspectives on everything from crusading knights to Tudor monarchs and the D-Day landings.

In Our Time
In Our Time Podcast. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas. Updated: weekly. 

The History of English
A chronological history of the English language examined through the lens of historical events that shaped the development and spread of the language from the Eurasian steppe to the entire world.

Lexicon Valley
A show about language, from pet peeves, syntax, and etymology to neurolinguistics and the death of languages. Hosted by linguist John McWhorter.

A Way With Words
Public radio’s program about words, language, and how we use them. Hosts answer callers questions about grammar, slang, usage, old family sayings, new words, language-learning, idioms, riddles, word games, or anything else related to language.

Practicing Human
A daily podcast hosted by Cory Muscara, offering insights and practices into how to live a fulfilling life. Cory pulls on his time living as a Buddhist monk in Burma, his many years as a mindfulness and meditation teacher, and his work in Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

IN OUR TIME EPISODES

• Cave Art
• Pericles
• The Great Irish Famine
• Macbeth
• Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
• Coffee
• The Highland Clearances
• The Mexican-American War
• William Morris
• The Iliad
• Thucydides
• The Mytilenaean Debate
• Crime and Punishment
• Is Shakespeare History? The Romans
• Nero
• President Ulysses S. Grant
• Alexander the Great
• Frankenstein
• The Battle of Salamis
• The Evolution of Horses
• Albrecht Dürer
• Catullus
• Mary Astell

HISTORY EXTRA PODCAST EPISODES

• The Wars of the Roses: Everything you wanted to know
• A WW2 story of survival
• Editor’s Pick: Ron Chernow on Alexander Hamilton
• Christmas ghost stories
• Christmas: Everything you wanted to know
• Ten Things to do with a medieval donkey – history extra
• Japan and the west
• Magna Carta: everything you wanted to know
• The Glorious Revolution: everything you wanted to know
• Tudor queens on screen
• Unexpected Irish Tales
• Ancient Babylon: everything you wanted to know
• Women in Greek myths
• 2020: The historians’ verdict
• Germans who resisted the Nazis
• Shakespeare: everything you wanted to know
• Everything you wanted to know about the East India Company 
• Oswald, the many-headed medieval saint
• The White Ship: a medieval tragedy
• Medical history: everything you wanted to know
• The Wild West: everything you wanted to know
• Viking warrior women and the ethics of excavating the dead
• War and society: a tangled relationship
• Ingenious medieval science
• Women in black: the surprising history of widows
• Personal stories of the Second World War
• Inside the Viking mind
• The Russian revolution: everything you wanted to know
• The ‘ordinary’ Nazi
• The Regency era: everything you wanted to know
• An Atlantic slave war
• Enslaved women and resistance
• At sea with the Vikings
• Moving, medieval style
• The French Revolution: everything you wanted to know
• The dispossession of Native Americans
• Ghosts of Viking London
• An Anglo-Saxon warlord
• Ancient wisdom with Neil Oliver
• Everything you wanted to know about medieval daily life
• Sparta
• Should I stay or should I go: the problem with historical monuments in 2020
• Everything you wanted to know about the history of Japan
• The Spanish Flu epidemic
• Everything you wanted to know about Roman Britain but were afraid to ask
• Medieval rebellions
• Viking genes unravelled
• JFK: the path to power
• The Mayflower
• Scythians: Warrior Nomads of the Steppe
• The problems with the Anglo Saxons
• Isabel Wilkerson on caste in America
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the legends of King Arthur
• Crusaders: An Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the Hundred Years’ War
• Edward the Confessor
• Revisiting the Kindertransport
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the Aztecs
• The story of the Freemasons
• Africa’s cultural liberation
• The history of seduction
• Could D-Day have failed
• The women killed by Jack the Ripper
• Rethinking the crusades
• What’s in a medieval name?
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the American Civil War
• Peter Frankopan on global history in 2020
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the Ancient Greece
• Stonehenge: History’s Greatest Mysteries
• The fate of Jesus’ body: History’s Greatest Mysteries
• Unburied treasures
• African American abolitionists in Britain
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the Cuban Missile Crisis
• A history of magic
• Everything you ever wanted to know about medieval queens
• At home with the medieval aristocracy
• Lionheart of stone: the medieval statue debate
• The Abdication crisis
• Nero: Rome’s Antichrist?
• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
• Museums and colonialism
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the Georgians
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the Scottish Wars of Independence
• California’s century of change
• Women and the Crusades
• William and Cnut: a tale of two conquerors
• World War Two: the challenge of commemoration
• A history of pandemics: from Spanish Flu to Covid-19
• From Allies to enemies
• The Auschwitz volunteer
• Why black hair matters
• Working mothers
• Henry III: inside the mind of a medieval king
• Indian soldiers at Dunkirk
• Medieval prisoners of war
• Living on the edge in Victorian Britain
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the English Reformation
• The Corn Laws crisis
• A new view of Africa’s past
• Everything you ever wanted to know about D-Day but were afraid to ask
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the Tudors
• A history of celebrity
• Blitz spirit
• News in the Middle Ages
• Resistance in the British empire
• Food and war
• Burglary: a modern history
• The bombing of Dresden

What are the best podcast episodes you listened to this year?