My Favorite Podcasts of 2024 (Premium)

2024 was a banner year for podcasts, with three major new additions, two of which are now among my favorites of all time.

My listening habits haven’t changed too much year-over-year.

I still use Pocket Casts, which is available everywhere and syncs my listening position in episodes reliably. It’s free on mobile and web, but it looks like you have to pay for a subscription to access the app on desktop or wearables now. I paid for this service across all supported platforms years ago, but I usually just use the mobile app. My wife listens to podcasts with Spotify, which I guess I get though I feel very strongly that podcasts are not music, and I don’t like seeing the two mixed in a single app.

I subscribed to Wondery+ last January because I like their content and have binged-listened to many of their shows over time, including several that don’t make the list this year because I finished them in the past. But I will let it go when the subscription ends this coming month, as I didn’t use it as much as I’d expected.

The collection of podcasts I subscribe to is still a mix of shows I listen to religiously and those that I cherry-pick episodes with specific topics.

?The podcasts I subscribe to

I subscribe to the following podcasts:

• American Story Tellers
• American Scandal
• Behind the Tech with Kevin Scott
• CDMX Expats
• The Earful Tower: Paris
• Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman
• If Books Could Kill ⭐
• Made by Google
• Maintenance Phase
• .NET Rocks! ⭐
• No Such Podcast
• The Rewatchables ⭐
• Rolling Stone Music Now
• RunAsRadio ⭐
• Scott & Mark Learn to… ⭐
• Sync Up by Microsoft 365
• Talks at Google
• That Chapter Podcast

?My top podcasts by listening time

According to Pocket Casts, my top five podcasts of 2024 by listening time are:

1. The Rewatchables
2. If Books Could Kill
3. .NET Rocks!
4. American Scandal
5. That Chapter Podcast

?New podcasts of 2024

As noted up top, I added three podcasts to Pocket Casts this past year, and each is notable because they’re all binge-listens in that I will, in time, listen to every episode they make. They are:

• The Rewatchables
• Scott & Mark Learn to…
• No Such Podcast

But the first two, The Rewatchables and Scott & Mark Learn to…, are even more notable because they have instantly catapulted to the top of my lists of favorite podcasts. They’re both terrific. On that note…

?My favorite bingeable podcasts of 2024

Sometimes you find a podcast that is so good that you go back and listen to every single episode from the past and then listen immediately to new episodes when they appear. One early example of this for me was How Did This Get Made?, though I found myself listening less and less a decade later and then finally unsubscribed this past year. But I still have a few similar go-to’s, including the two noted above, that are new to 2024. That’s amazing to me.

In order, they are:

⭐The Rewatchables. I was so excited to find this podcast that I ended up writing an editorial called Rewatchable (Premium). On one level, it’s easy enough to describe: A group of people that usually includes Boston-area sportswriter legend Bill Simmons discusses the best movies ever made, those that are the most rewatchable. But there’s a more subtle excellence to this show: Simmons brings a Boston-specific vibe to the show I love, and there’s a sports-centric underpinning too that makes no sense but works wonderfully. The other hosts revolve a bit, but include at least one actual movie critic expert, and the interactions are usually hilarious and always interesting. This is my top go-to podcast now and because there are several hundred previous shows to listen to, I may never run out of content. I love this show.

⭐If Books Could Kill. A close second, and only because the incredibly well-informed and hilarious hosts–Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri–don’t make enough new episodes. This podcast skewers and debunks so-called “airport books,” those books, often of the self-help variety, that somehow sell in the millions despite being absolutely terrible and in many cases objectively wrong. Some of the books are obvious–Freakanomics, The 4-Hour Work Week, The Secret, and Rich Dad Poor Dad among them–but some are surprising choices that made it past my scam-o-meter. It’s incredibly intelligent and always hilarious.

⭐Scott & Mark Learn to… The second of my two big additions of 2024 also delighted me so much that I wrote an article about it. Scott Hanselman and Mark Russinovich are two of my favorite people at Microsoft, and they often appear together on stage and industry events. So them coming together to make this podcast was a wonderful surprise. There are only several episodes so far, but they tackle a fascinating range of topics, and each show is quite short, usually just 20 minutes or so. I always look forward to what they do next.

There are a few more shows near apex mountain, as The Rewatchables would say. Maintenance Phase is a little shrill and seems to have slowed down, but I’ll still listen to this health and wellness show when there are new episodes because Michael Hobbes is amazing. And while Made by Google is kind of dry and rote, I always listen to every episode because I’m a Pixel fan and want to hear from the engineers on the product teams that appear on each.

I should mention too that while the That Chapter Podcast made it into my top listens list this year, it won’t next year: The main host, who I like quite a bit–he has a better YouTube channel, actually–picked a buddy of his to be the permanent co-host on the podcast, and I don’t like the two together. So I’ve drifted off.

?My favorite podcasts with cherry-picked episodes of 2024

I don’t binge-listen to most of the podcasts I subscribe to. Instead, I cherry-pick the episodes that matter most to me. My favorites here are:

⭐.NET Rocks!. Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin are friends and they’re terrific together on this developer-focused podcast, which may now be the longest-running podcast in history.

⭐RunAsRadio. Richard Campbell’s podcast for IT pros is also terrific and often features people I know and love, which is fun.

Rolling Stone Music Now. I love music, but not all music, so I’ll keep my eye on new episodes and listen in when it’s about an artist, album, or genre I care about.

Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman. Like Richard, Scott is a tech-focused content maker who makes multiple appearances on my podcasts lists. This one has been around a while, and it’s usually dev-focused or at least dev-adjacent, it can be all over the map in a good way too.

?️Previous year-end podcast overviews

Here are my previous three years of podcast picks: 2023, 2022, and 2021.