Podcasts to help you make sense of 2024

Welcome to 2024. Unless you are Christian Orthodox and follow the Julian calendar, in which case you have to wait 11 more days. Be that as it may, the year ahead of us is a special year because never in history have so many people around the world been asked to vote in democratic elections. 1.4 billion people in India will elect a new parliament, 450 million people in the European Union will do the same as will 67 million Brits. Meanwhile, 332 million Americans will elect a new House of Representatives, a third of the Senate, and a new President. Technically, the Russian Presidential election is also considered a ‘democratic election’.

With all these elections coming up, there will be a lot of discussion about policy agendas interspersed with partisan spin and misinformation. Indeed, the one thing I am dreading this year is the use of AI to create deep fakes to spread misinformation and disinformation. If you thought the last ten years were bad, just wait.

This is why I think high-quality information and context will be crucial to not get sucked up in a partisan echo chamber. To help you with that, I want to share with you four podcasts that I have been listening to intensely for some time.

None of these podcasts are debate-casts where two or more pundits come together to exchange opinions or simply put a spin on whatever the story of the day is. And – crucially – all of these podcasts are based on facts and expertise, not the conspiracy theories and fabulations that dominate the majority of these types of podcasts (and please stop recommending me these ‘secular gurus’ and ‘sensemakers’, you are wasting your time).

Instead, all four of these podcasts provide content that puts current news into a broader, historical, legal, or political context. They help me make sense of the world. And in my view, all of these podcasts are politically centrist or nonpartisan, so they are helpful wherever you come down on specific issues.

These Times

I confess I am a Helen Thompson groupie. I have been a Talking Politics superfan in the past and got to know her in her thoughtful discussions with David Runciman. There were two Cambridge professors who knew so much that it became a drinking game to have shots whenever Helen or David knew more about a topic than their expert guest. Alas, Talking Politics no longer exists, but Helen has teamed up with journalist Tom McTague to discuss a major news story and put it into a broader historical context. Whether it is the history of the UK in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and how that shapes political decisions today or how the role of the US shifts in global politics under different Presidents. Whether they are talking about China, Africa, or the Middle East, you can be sure to learn a lot more about the issue than you would get in the news or on social media.

Throughline

A similar concept as These Times but coming from the US and with a more US-centric angle. Hosts Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei examine a specific topic and how past events shape the debate and the developments today. From the birth of Turkey in 1923 to the US Supreme Court’s shadow docket (if you don’t know what that is, listen to the episode) or the origins of the climate movement in the US, the range of topics is eclectic, to say the least. And the best thing about it is because Ramtin is a musician, he writes the music for each episode. He manages to create fantastic immersive soundscapes that draw you into the story and keep you hooked from the first minute to the last. A superb example of what difference high production values make.

Serious Trouble

Speaking of the US, the upcoming presidential election will be much more difficult to predict than normal. One important reason for that is that one candidate, Donald Trump, is in so much legal trouble that we have no idea what will happen to him between today and the election on 5 November. If, like me, you are not a criminal lawyer or legal expert and have lost track of all the different lawsuits, what their background is, and why they have been filed to begin with, then listening to Serious Trouble is mandatory. Journalist Josh Barro interviews criminal defence attorney Ken White about all kinds of prominent lawsuits in the US (and there are many, as you might guess). It’s not just about Donald Trump, but also about Hunter Biden’s legal battles and other high-profile cases like Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial. Serious legal explainers about people who are in serious trouble.

The Expert Factor

My final recommendation is one for UK readers. During the Brexit campaign in 2016, Michael Gove famously said that the people had enough of experts, a statement that has aged rather poorly. After the decidedly anti-expert rule of Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, the Conservative Party is trailing the opposition by 20 points and almost guaranteed to lose the upcoming election. But with a new government come new policies. And who better to ask than three experts what these policies mean for the country? Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Hannah White, Director of the Institute for Government, and Anand Menon, Director of UK in a Changing Europe meet once a week to discuss the impact certain domestic and foreign policies are likely to have on the government budget, the labour market, or Britain’s foreign relations. Maybe, readers of these missives do want to hear from experts rather than populists. I for one do.