The 10 Essential News and Politics Podcasts That Shaped the Genre

Vulture said Fans who remember the days of iPods and frantic “syncing” feel like they know the hosts as well as the hosts know each other, a then novel sensation that’s now familiar to many podcast listeners. And because they make it look (sound) so easy, they’ve inspired countless other political junkies to build their own roundtables and try to capture Gabfest’s timeless magic.

Vulture said By combining intimacy with expertise, and putting out episodes that ranged from a few minutes to an hour, Blumberg and Davidson proved that podcasters could be themselves while experimenting with form and setting hugely ambitious journalistic goals — as long as they never failed to be entertaining.

Vulture said On its best days, The Gist feels like an early aughts blog, hosted by a guy who reads more widely than anyone you’ve ever met and takes pride in constantly making jokes, even when he’s trying to explain why something drives him nuts.

Vulture said NPR continues to adapt to the moment — they just announced that Politics Podcast will go daily in an effort to keep up with the pace of breaking news. It’s only a matter of time until audiences demand that they produce new episodes every 30 minutes.

Vulture said For fans of The Daily — people who, despite all efforts to the contrary, now spend their lives absorbing bad news — the podcast has become a beloved habit clung to in difficult circumstances. For the Times, it has become a way of embracing the internet-born trend toward personality-driven news coverage, and a megaphone for reporting and analysis that might otherwise reach far fewer people.

Vulture said Pod Save America has the kind of fanbase you might expect of a K-pop group or an actual presidential candidate. Launched as the spiritual successor to Keepin’ It 1600 by a group of young Obama alums, Pod Save America found a huge audience of revved-up liberals in the wake of Trump’s election and broke through to the mainstream in a way that no other podcast talk show has ever done.

Vulture said You know the guy at your office who thinks he and his friends should start a podcast where it’s just them, like, riffing? Blame it on Chapo Trap House, the shaggy crew of socialist comics who have inspired a million amateur podcasts that never made it past episode two.

Vulture said 74 Seconds, which won the Peabody Award, is a demonstration of how podcasts create space to slow down the news and examine its texture, without sacrificing relevance or urgency

Vulture said Of all the Trumpcentric podcasts out there, Trump, Inc. from WNYC and ProPublica stands out for its depth and shape. Every episode places some aspect of the Trump family business under scrutiny — one week it’s the inaugural fund, another week it’s Trump Tower Moscow, and so on.

Vulture said Vox* is known for its “explainers,” which can now be consumed in the form of articles, online video, and television. In some ways, The Weeds is just the podcast version of that same sensibility: a twice-weekly roundtable featuring some combination of Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Sarah Kliff, Jane Coaston, Dara Lind, and occasional guests going in-depth on complicated political topics.