Commuting is a total drag, especially when you’re trapped alone with your own thoughts while trapped underground. Why not liven up your train ride with something interesting while also drowning out all the horrible, depressing ideas you mull over constantly? These five podcasts will bring you fascinating people and stories all while removing you from the intellectual prison of your mind.
Radiolab
Over the course of one short Radiolab episode, you can embark on a historical adventure, learn the intricate mechanisms of an arcane phenomenon, and be relieved of the incessant, intolerable noise of your inner monologue. Listen to the soothing voices of hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, who won’t berate you like the voices inside your head.
Serial
By now you’ve certainly heard of this genre-defining investigation of a Baltimore murder that took place over one decade ago. The contradictory accounts and mounting ambiguity are a refreshing reprieve from the repetitive bleakness of your own quiet mind.
This American Life
From unique, incisive interviews to raw, honest tales of humanity, This American Life provides an excellent distraction from the ongoing cognitive deluge that haunts you on a day-to-day basis, like when you ponder whether you’re a good person for an entire car ride. Listen to this, or literally anything besides your own thoughts.
Invisibilia
This scientific inquiry of the unseen forces that govern our lives poses ponderous questions about the very nature of our being—an invigorating escape from the stagnant rumination to which you have learned to listlessly succumb. You need to hear this. You need to hear something. Just get out of your broken self for one second.
The Moth
This storytelling podcast is capable of evoking all sorts of diverse emotions and serves as an excellent alternative to your unstimulated consciousness which, left to its own devices, tends to spiral downward into an endless pit of despair.
Well those are them, folks! Five awesome podcasts to make your day a bit more educational. They sure are better than rehashing every move you’ve ever made, playing out how each one went terribly wrong, that’s for sure!
