Hello. 

A colleague recently asked me for some podcast recommendations. I knew he liked Revisionist History and I was surprised he’d never heard of 99% Invisible. It was that sort of conversation. That evening, I had a look at my (many) podcast subscriptions and put together a subset of the the ones I thought he’d enjoy. You might like some of them too. As a result, this week's Roo's Letter has 28ish links instead of the usual 5ish.


Factual / culture (non-newsy)

99% invisible (what you didn’t notice about design and architecture)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/99-invisible/id394775318

The Allusionist (words, dissected)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-allusionist/id957430475

Hardcore History (incredibly infrequent incredibly long episodes unpicking historical events)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/dan-carlins-hardcore-history/id173001861

Guardian Long Reads (in-depth reporting - usually not timely stuff, just interesting)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-guardians-audio-long-reads/id587347784

Radiolab (science stories)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/radiolab/id152249110

- This American Life (stories on a theme - I suspect of everything in this list this is the one most people have heard / heard of)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/this-american-life/id201671138

Song Exploder (detailed dissections of songs)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/song-exploder/id788236947

Friendly Fire (reviews of war movies)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/friendly-fire/id1327966839

West Wing Weekly (reviews of every episode of The West Wing)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-west-wing-weekly/id1093364587

Art and Everything Else (art and everything else)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/art-everything-else/id1482766995

Omnibus (one cultural/historical artefact described in a time capsule for the future)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/omnibus-with-ken-jennings-and-john-roderick/id1318335827

Reply All (internet culture)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reply-all/id941907967


Comedy / silly / whimsical 

My Brother My Brother and Me (an advice show for the modern era)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/my-brother-my-brother-and-me/id367330921

The Adventure Zone (my favourite D&D podcast. Start right at the very beginning)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-adventure-zone/id947899573

Beef And Dairy Network (what if the beef and dairy industry had a podcast?)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/beef-and-dairy-network/id1022024768

Everything Is Alive (what if everything was alive?)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/everything-is-alive/id1388419519

Whatever Happened To Pizza At Macdonalds (surreal investigative reporting)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/whatever-happened-to-pizza-at-mcdonalds/id1152856686

The Blindboy Podcast (Irish musician/writer/presenter talks about mental health, otters, hot takes and more)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-blindboy-podcast/id1300577518


News

The Economist ‘The Intelligence’ (global daily news briefing)
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-economist-the-week-ahead/id291942390

Guardian ‘Today In Focus’ UK/global daily news briefing
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/today-in-focus/id1440133626

NYT ‘The Daily’ (US/global daily news briefing)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736

Today in Parliament - (classic Radio 4, usually published at midnight with that day’s Commons+Lords+Committees news)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/today-in-parliament/id162722276

Talking Politics (quite academic, usually very interesting)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/talking-politics/id974670140

Guardian ‘Politics Weekly’ (what it sounds like)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-guardian-uk-politics-weekly/id136697472

On The House (two ex-Conservative Liberal Democrat MPs meet up for a pint every week)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/on-the-house/id1474010876

Pod Save America (left/liberal perspective on US news with some of the staff from Obama’s administration)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/pod-save-america/id1192761536


Podcasts Roo Helped Make

Shift Run Stop (interviews / games / comedy / snacks )
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/shift-run-stop/id338127646

Beardy Dads (one episode per week for the first year of the lives of two dad’s new babies. What we learnt and what we wished people had told us)
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/beardy-dads/id798785734


I will definitely have missed some of your / your favourite podcasts, so feel free to reply with links to other things I should be listening to. 

I used Apple links. Sorry. It was easiest for me. 

I hope there’s at least one interesting thing for you in there. Good luck!


Yours sincerely  
Roo

Roo Reynolds  
@rooreynolds  
tinyletter.com/rooreynolds
Around 5-10 interesting links once per week. [Usually]
Probably on a Friday.