Favorite Podcasts of 2025
Empire—World History
In 2022, Anita Anand collaborated with historian William Dalrymple to create the podcast Empire, which examines the British East India Company, British Empire, and British involvement and influence on India. The pair had previously worked together on the book Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond.
Later seasons of Empire dealt with the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire.
Note that if you subscribe via the Apple store, you receive fewer benefits than subscribing via:
https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm
Entitled Opinions with Robert Harrison
Scholarly interviews with writers from all walks of academia. Or as it’s pitched on its website: “The narcotic of intelligent conversation”.
With its high-powered, long-form conversations, Entitled Opinions has fans around the globe, from Australia to China, Mexico to Russia. Its host, Robert Pogue Harrison, has interviewed some of our era’s leading figures in literature, philosophy, science, and cultural history for over a decade. One blogger called these intellectually expansive exchanges “the most fascinating, engaging podcasts in any possible universe.”
Join using the Apple podcast app (or any other).
Sample episodes:
Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse with Miles Osgood.
Dante’s Characters, Part I, Francesca da Rimini in The Divine Comedy.
On with Kara Swisher
It’s on. Twice a week, award-winning journalist Kara Swisher gets to the heart of the story through no-holds-barred interviews with power players across business, tech, media, politics and beyond. So why do her guests show up? “Smart people,” says Kara, “like difficult questions.”
Podcasts that ended in 2025
Chinwag with Paul Giamatti and Stephen Asma
Chin-wag: to have a chat, a friendly conversation. Actor Paul Giamatti and Stephen Asma, author and philosopher, join forces for a freewheeling series of conversations that dive deep (like, really, really deep) into the wilderness of the mind. Featuring prominent guests from diverse fields, Chinwag is esoteric in the best way possible, as Paul and Stephen delve into anything and everything: Are we living in a simulation? What’s the most perfect sentence in literature? Is Bigfoot interdimensional? Science, the occult, philosophy, magic mushrooms… it’s all fair game! Unexpected, hilarious, and maybe even profound — Chinwag is all about having a really, really good chat.
This was a fun, often silly podcast and I was sorry to see it end just two years in, but I imagine P. Giamatti is quite busy with his primary gig.
In two episodes, Prof of Philosophy Stephen Asma gives two of the finest online Philosophy 101 introductions that deserve their own links:
WTF with Marc Maron
The ur-podcast. The one that set the poduniverse ablaze with his ascerbic wit and empathic listening. One of the few to have Obama not once, but twice on his show. He takes some getting used to, and often does more talking than his guests, but it was a good listen now and then.