Pacific Content’s Dan Misener counted 22,000 podcast episodes with “coronavirus” in their title or description, as of yesterday. I’m including several of those episodes and some dedicated coronavirus podcasts today. Otherwise, in the future, I hope to include fewer coronavirus podcasts — and many other podcasts to enliven your time social distancing.
Podcasts can’t replace face time with family and friends. But they’re really pretty great at engendering human connection.
Listen widely and hang tough, everyone.
This week’s counts: 46 notable guests, 15 new podcasts, four deep dives and one extremely tall podcaster.
Pod Take of the Week
“You can’t run around through life with a tape measure.”
Listen: The Daily: Learning to Live With the Coronavirus (9:28)
- That’s New York Times science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr., who won’t be carrying around precision tools to facilitate his social-distancing efforts.
- McNeil Jr. does provide a good overview of how to conduct oneself in the world these days.
- He says: “Stay away from people who are coughing. Stay away from people who look feverish. And if you have to communicate with somebody, keep your distance.”
Go Deep
1) COVID-19 and the Coronavirus
Listen: The Coronavirus Podcast, Coronacast, Don’t Touch Your Face, Coronavirus: Fact. vs. Fiction, Epidemic, The Joe Rogan Experience, Call Your Girlfriend, The Rewatchables
- Podcasts from the BBC, ABC (Australia), Foreign Policy, CNN, and Infectious disease specialist Dr. Celine Gounder and former U.S. Ebola czar Ron Klain, respectively, are among some of the higher-podcasts English language podcasts on COVID-19 and the coronavirus.
- In the current No. 1 podcast episode on iTunes, Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, sits with Joe Rogan for almost two hours.
- Call Your Girlfriend focuses on keeping your head — and keeping clean.
- And the Ringer’s Rewatchables series reviews how Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 thriller “Contagion” “belatedly became a disturbing rewatch.”
2) The Foolkiller
Listen: The Constant
- This five-part series investigates a hell of a mystery: “In November of 1915, a submarine was found at the bottom of The Chicago River. It had been there for at least ten years, was 40 feet long, and contained the remains of a man and his dog. To this day, no one knows who built it, where it came from, or who was inside.”
3) Guns N’ Roses
Listen: Disgraceland
- The pod starts a multi-part series chronicling the dysfunction and hard living of Axl, Slash and Co.
4) Prince vs. Michael Jackson
Listen: Rivals
- A deep dive into battle to see who would be the leading “eccentric, androgynous, Midwest-raised genre-bending star with killer dance moves and a propensity for Xanadu-like private compounds.”
Guest Appearances By…
($L) = On Luminary, behind a paywall. (S) = A Spotify exclusive. Abrams, Stacey Words Matter
Abumrad, Jad Longform Podcast
- The Radiolab founder and MacArthur Fellow talks storytelling.
Allende, Isabel Monocle 24: Meet the Writers
Bening, Annette Bullseye
Byer, Nicole Las Culturistas
Cheadle, Don WTF with Marc Maron
Cutts, Matt TED Talks Daily
Dogg, Snoop All the Smoke
Doolittle, Sean Beyond the Pond
- The Washington Nationals’ lefty talks Phish.
Feimster, Fortune The Joe Rogan Experience
Forte, Will Bullseye
Gehry, Frank More with Anna Maria Tremonti
Gibson, William The New Yorker Radio Hour
Gill, Johnny Questlove Supreme
Hale, Tony Talks at Google
Hamm, Jon Hollywood Handbook
Hawk, Tony The Jordan Harbinger Show
Hodgman, John Good Life Project, Blank Check
Jenner, Kris InCharge with DVF
- She’s the first guest on Diane von Furstenberg’s new Spotify pod.
John, Daymond Pardon My Take, expediTIously
- The “Shark Tank” mainstay hit the podcast circuit.
King, Gayle Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations
Klain, Ron Recode Decode
Kloss, Karlie Skimm’d From the Couch
Levin, Rachel Not Too Deep with Grace Helbig
Madison, Stacy How I Built This with Guy Raz
Mantzoukas, Jason Off Book: The Improvised Musical
McElhenney, Rob Armchair Expert
McEnroe, John Kickass News
Morey, Daryl The Lowe Post
Mosseri, Adam Armchair Expert, Byers Market
- The head of Instagram also hit the podcast circuit.
Nanjiani, Kumail Armchair Expert
Ortberg, Daniel Mallory It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders
Packer, ZZ Touré Show
Plouffe, David Stay Tuned with Preet
Pressley, Ayanna Hear to Slay ($L)
Quinto, Zachary Life is Short with Justin Long
Radcliffe, Daniel Full Disclosure
Reubens, Paul Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
Sedaris, David The Three Questions with Andy Richter
Serrano, Shea Airplane Mode
- He’s here to spread luv.
Sonnenfeld, Barry Here’s the Thing
Spalding, Esperanza Broken Record
Starr, Martin Inside of You
Tolentino, Jia Love Letters
Twain, Shania The Big Ticket
Wilson, Casey Anna Faris is Unqualified
Notable New Podcasts
1) Supernatural with Ashley Flowers
- Flowers of Crime Junkie dives into “the strange and surreal to explain some of the world’s most bizarre true crime occurrences.”
- It’s No. 2 on iTunes.
2) Floodlines
- The Atlantic pod about Hurricane Katrina tells the “story of rumors, betrayal, and one of the most misunderstood events in American history.” All eight parts have dropped.
- Vann R. Newkirk II hosts.
- It’s No. 49 on iTunes.
- Olivia Oshry hosts “a real and honest take on how to navigate every phase of life – from personal to professional, pregnancy to parenthood.”
- It’s No. 78 on iTunes.
4) Ghost Echoes
- The music history podcast promises to tell “the story of music — and everything else,” which begins in 1970 and … will proceed up to the present day, discussing one musical recording per episode.”
- I’m intrigued by the longer promo description: The pod goes down “countless historical side streets and blind alleys where it departs from music entirely and passes by Victorian booze palaces, angry Ontarian proletariats, inscrutable paintings about the space race, demolished movie theatres, drunk people, exceedingly large oval rugs, unlikely origin stories of venerable educational institutions, Charlie Brown cartoons, and conspiracy theories about extrajudicial assassinations by MI5.”
- My take: Subscribed!
- The Crooked Media pod focuses on “some of the biggest scandals in sports.”
- Rachel Bonnetta and Rachna Fruchbom host.
6) InCharge with DVF (S)
- Diane von Furstenberg “sits down with some of the women she admires the most to explore their life journeys, including their greatest successes and most challenging lessons.”
7) Personology
- The iHeartRadio pod aims to deliver a “psychological examination of historically significant lives.”
- First episode: Vincent Van Gogh.
8) How the Heck are We Gonna Get Along?
- It’s “an all partisan panel of the sharpest, funniest, and most innovative minds in politics, media, and comedy to see if they’re the ones we should have running things — and what they think about the people who are.”
- Clay Aiken moderates.
- The Osiris pod about “how technology is affecting the evolution of music collaboration” kicks off with a three-episode drop.
10) Birds Eye View
- Made with women incarcerated just outside Darwin, Australia, the podcast “takes you inside Sector Four, where scars and regret overlap with hope, horoscopes and beauty hacks.”
11) Listenable
- Hosts Dylan Alcott and Angus O’Loughlin “[c]hallenge what you think it’s like to live with disability.”
12) Microscope
- Hosts Mat Ewins and John Kearns ”attempt to explain the unexplainable and put some of the world’s biggest mysteries under the Microscope in this improvised comedy podcast.”
- The true crime pod investigates Canada’s “crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.”
14) I Said No Gifts
- From Exactly Right, Bridger Winegar “invites friends, loved ones, and people he’s secretly trying to destroy to join him in conversation.”
- Tacko is 7’5” basketball cult hero Tacko Fall. His show with Boston Celtics teammate Grant Williams about their lives appears within the Athletic’s Anything is Poddable feed.
- I’m taking liberties in including it here, as I should for the presumed tallest podcaster in the world.
And One to Look Forward to: Asian Enough (March 17)
- Jen Yamato and Frank Shyong host a Los Angeles Times podcast “about being Asian American — the joys, the complications and everything else in between.”