Tom Rosenthal wanders London's parks with a simple mission: find someone sitting alone on a bench and ask if they'll chat for his podcast, his podcast "Strangers on a Bench." He keeps his guests anonymous - no names, no workplaces. Listening to a few episodes hammered home the realization that there's no such thing as an ordinary life. — MF

I am enjoying another new podcast doing very long interviews on fairly technical topics. Dwarkesh Patel’s superpower is asking unusual questions that no one has asked the guest before. His Dwarkesh Podcast (also on YouTube) goes deep – and long – on AI, history, and frontier sciences. It’s the ultimate nerd enjoyment. — KK

Writer Sam Anderson travels to distant places in order to encounter his favorite animals eye to eye. He made a highly entertaining podcast series, called Animal, about these encounters for the New York Times. The podcasts are super great, creatively edited.  A large part of their appeal is their unusual style of reporting. Sam is warmly idiosyncratic and the animals are mirrors to his own internal life. I’ve not heard any other podcasts like it. My favorite in the series is Puffins. — KK

I find business boring. But I am totally engrossed by the long-form stories on the podcast Acquired. They present a book-deep report on a current world-class company, spending several hours on the story. The histories are never boring, and they are invariably unconventional and improbable. The Acquired guys, two VCs, accompany this rich history with insightful and accessible financial analysis along the way. Each episode is a master class in business. Some of the outfits they have covered include Nintendo, Nike, Nvidia, and the NFL. Their most recent episode (2 hours) on Nova Nordisk, the pharma originators of insulin therapy and now weight-loss drugs like Ozempic was phenomenal and eye-opening. (And that is just the companies beginning with N!) — KK

America finds it nearly impossible to build big projects now. The Big Dig is a brilliant 9-part podcast that uses the US’s most expensive infrastructure project to explain, blow-by-blow, how it overcame all the forces trying to prevent it from being completed over 30 years. This podcast is classic, dramatic, thrilling – one of the best podcast series I’ve ever heard – and perfect for anyone trying to make something big happen. — KK

"The Cows Are Mad" is a podcast series from BBC Radio 4 that explores the unsettling Mad Cow Disease epidemic of the 1990s. This strange and fatal neurological disease not only wreaked havoc on Britain's bovine population, it also claimed the lives of 178 humans. If you like zombie fiction, you’ll probably like this zombie nonfiction about cannibal cows. — MF

PEPTOC HOTLINE is probably the cutest hotline to ever exist. It offers prerecorded life advice and pep talks from K-6th elementary school students from Healdsburg, California. The phone number is a local US number 707-8PEPTOC. Press number: 1 if you're frustrated, 2 for life advice, 4 for children laughing with delight and 6 for how awesome you look. My favorite advice I heard from a young student was: “If you’re feeling hurt just take a sip of water. If you’re feeling bad and deflated just go somewhere and do what you like best — it reinflates you.” I heard about this in the the Creative Mornings newsletter and am just passing on the cheer. — CD 

I am on a virtual book tour, where I’ve done almost 100 podcast appearances. It is hard to avoid answering the same questions, and I always look forward to answering new prompts.  The interviewer famous for his unique questions is Tyler Cowen. Tyler did not disappoint when I appeared on his podcast. In Conversations With Tyler he asked me a string of exhilarating, unique, off-beat, made-me-think, and insightful questions no one ever asked me before, which was a total joy for me, and for listeners. We covered travel, tech, and advice. And it is not just me. Listen to any of these other interviews with a diverse range of curiously interesting people. — KK

I usually listen to binaural beats as focus music, but lately I've preferred listening to the Slow Radio BBC podcast while I work. Each episode is an immersive soundscape of nature, animals and people. You can be transported to a fishing port in a foreign land or hear a choir singing in Harlem on a Sunday or listen to elephants wallowing in the mud in Zimbabwe. It is the sounds of life slowed down and it's incredibly soothing. — CD

I use a simple and free app called Soundly Sleeping to play brown noise while sleeping. It muffles the wheeze of my CPAP machine and other unwelcome nighttime noises. (Brown noise is mellower than white noise). — MF

If you’re tired of your music algorithms try out campus-fm.com. You can click through stations quickly, add your favorites and play them at random. College stations always seem to play the coolest, chillest indie music and it’s a nice change for my ears. Right now my favorite stations to drop into are Chapel Hill’s WXYC 89.3 and New Mexico’s KUNM 89.9.— CD

Use this website to describe the kind of music you want and it will generate a Spotify playlist for you. I entered “1966 psychedelic garage rock for AM radio” and loved the 100 songs it found for me. I also entered “melancholy yet strangely optimist music for the last person alive on a dying earth” and got another 100 amazing songs, most of which were new to me. This is a great way to discover music you might otherwise miss. — MF

Tree.fm plays the sounds of forests, recorded by people who’ve visited them. The website also displays a beautiful full screen photo for each forest soundtrack you play. — MF

I just finished listening to a 5-hour podcast interview by Lex Fridman. Lex is an AI researcher who started interviewing colleagues in his field, and then kept expanding his reach and interests. He now interviews intellectuals and thinkers in many technical fields, from biology to cosmology to philosophy, usually at great length (many hours). Lex’s questions are often clumsy and awkward, but going long allows him to get deep, and often intimate. He seeks answers to hard questions. While he sometimes interviews famous pundits, he usually speaks with really interesting people you’ve never heard of. The payoff is that his Lex Fridman Podcast keeps me informed about “big questions” stuff. — KK

This fantastic podcast, A History of Rock in 500 Songs, does what it says: it traces the history of rock music in 500 songs. Start with the first episode, which looks at 1939’s “Flying Home” by the Benny Goodman Sextet. The most recent episode, numbered 152, is about 1967’s “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield. New episodes come out about once every two weeks. – MF

A podcast about financial management would have never sounded interesting to me, but I’m thoroughly enjoying the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Podcast with Ramit Sethi. In each episode he sits with a couple at odds in their relationship with money. His humor and no B.S. approach quickly helps to uncover the underlying emotions entangled. My husband and I listen to this podcast together, which prompts us to discuss money — always in a new way. — CD

In 1983, Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery worked at the Video Archives movie rental store in Manhattan Beach, California. Nearly 40 years later, Tarantino and Avery have teamed up to host The Video Archives Podcast, where they talk about their favorite cult movies of the era. It’s a blast listening to these hardcore film fans reminisce about the films they loved growing up, and they have some great stories to share. — MF

A few years ago I took an unforgettable night time tour in a Costa Rican jungle to listen to frog calls, and discovered that humans aren’t the only musicians on Earth. This playlist titled Amphibian Love Songs and Soundscapes took me back to that magical evening. (I learned about this from Jay Babcock’s Landline newsletter) — MF

This Spotify playlist comprises of 715 songs, handpicked by neuroscientists, and meant to elicit “frisson,“ which means a sudden feeling or sensation of excitement, emotion or thrill in French. Music that increases in loudness or has an abrupt entrance of a new voice or deviations from harmony can often induce "frisson.” Human screams also incite the same response. Which makes sense because one of the songs on the playlist made me increasingly uncomfortable. This article on Big Think will give more background on the ways we experience this profound emotional state. — CD

I have only listened to the first episode of Exit Scam, an eight-episode podcast about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the founder of Canada’s biggest Bitcoin exchange. When Gerald Cotten died, the password to $215 million of cryptpcurrency was lost, and some people think he faked his own death. This is my favorite podcast since Serial. — MF