The Best Podcasts Of 2020 For Your Listening Pleasure
It's been a good year for listening to people talk.
Podcasts really had another moment during 2020 — I don’t wanna make a huge call, but I think these bad-boys are here to stay!
During a year where TV and film became insanely hard to produce — podcasts thrived like some kind of bacterial, yeast-based infection, in a warm and wet environment. All you need is a bunch of arcane equipment, two chuckling friends, a semi-famous guest, and a can-do attitude — wallah, you’ve got a podcast! The medium doesn’t even need to be recorded in the same room — so it’s completely COVID safe.
For me, I found the act of listening to smart, funny, interesting people chatting to each other an important balm for COVID loneliness. It’s like having friends who you can pause, rewind, or if they piss you off — unsubscribe from. The dream, imho.
Anyway — unlike many publications, I make no play at objectivity here. These are the best podcasts of 2020, that I listened to. I do have impeccable taste, however.
Dragon Friends
Dragon Friends is a game of Dungeons and Dragons played by a bunch of comedians in front of a live audience. It’s very funny.
When the show began, many years ago now, the conceit was that Dave Harmon, the very experienced Dungeon Master, was guiding the comedians and improvisors who had never played D&D before, through the mechanics of the game, so that hilarity and chaos would ensue.
Now, six seasons later, it still doesn’t seem like anyone knows how to play the game, and the chaos and comedy have, if anything, increased. The core cast of Ben Jenkins (The Feed), Alex Lee (The Feed), Michael Hing (triple j), Simon Greiner, and Edan Lacey, are joined by special guests like comedian Tom Walker and musician Montaigne, and together they all basically act like very naughty kids.
2020’s season 6 took the Dragon Friends back to their roots, with the return of beloved villain Strahd the vampire count (voiced by Ben Jenkins with an upsettingly ocker accent and a propensity for obscenity), and a storyline which I WOULD say is a meta-textual comment on the role of storytelling and narrative, except there’s so many jokes about drinking piss, so I don’t want to give them that sort of credit.
Listen here.
Debutante: Race, Resistance & Girl Power
I could listen to Nakkiah Lui and Miranda Tapsell talk about anything, to be honest. The playwright and actress have paired up before, such as in Get Krack!n’s brilliant final episode.
The two of them together in this podcast are dynamically funny and smart and passionate.
I didn’t expect them to be talking about debutante balls and the intersection of race and colonialism, but after this podcast I’m so glad they did. I suddenly have a lot of feelings about something I’ve maybe never thought about before.
“I think it’s interesting, I think it’s in a big way a big act of rebellion and of protest, to take something that traditionally, you were excluded from,” Nakkiah Lui said in this interview with Junkee.
Coronacast
Did you know there was a global pandemic this year?????
I did.
Nothing kept me calmer than Coronacast — with so much hysteria and misinformation flying around, I relied on this podcast to deliver the information I needed to know. The fact that it was delivered by the calming Tegan Taylor, and a very smart, human-sized swan lent a lovely touch of whimsy to a very grave situation.
Listen to the podcast on ABC Radio.
Finding Desperado
Comedians and film-buffs Alexei Toliopoulos and Cameron James are back, after their critically acclaimed podcast investigation Finding Drago, and this one is a doozy.
I loved Finding Drago — fabulists and con-men are a source of much delight to me. But I think Finding Desperado ENTHRALLED me, because I upsettingly saw a lot of myself — or at least a projection of myself — in the podcast’s mysterious subject, the brilliant, narcissistic, fast-walking, hot-handed Lord Sydney Ling.
Beginning with a strange entry in the Guinness Book of World Records about a film called Lex the Wonder Dog, the investigation truly goes some wild places, untangling the life and work of a truly strange and delightful figure. There are some reveals in this podcast that will leave you gasping. There’s also just some very, very funny moments.
Listen to the podcast on ABC Radio.
U Talkin’ Talking Heads 2 My Talking Head
Scotty Aukerman (Comedy Bang! Bang!) and Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation, Hot Tub Time Machine, Torque) are back to deliver the comprehensive and encyclopaedic compendium of all things Talking Heads. Following along in the same vein of deeply odd podcasts as U Talkin’ U2 2 Me? and U Talkin’ R.E.M Re: Me? — if you love finding out who the band members are, then this podcast is for you.
Listening to this “format” is kind of like the best parts of a manic episode — it’s hard to focus on one thing, and you easily get lost down weird segues. It’s delightful.
U Talkin’ Talking Heads 2 My Talking Head is a particularly excellent example of the podcast, for a few notable reasons: one being that I actually like Talking Heads, so it was nice to be walked through their discography (unlike with U2, where I only grew to dislike their music more). It’s easy to forget that under the endless in-jokes, the hosts genuinely love this music.
This podcast also features maybe one of the most important moments in podcasting history. When they launched it, they were going to do a season on The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and by the second ep, you could tell their hearts weren’t in it. They were tired, they lacked enthusiasm. And then, in a move that almost 90% of podcasts should learn from, they just decided to… stop doing it. Mid-episode, they just stopped, and decided to do Talking Heads instead.
Revolutionary.
Listen here.
The Renner Files
In 2017, Hollywood actor Jeremy Renner rolled out the Jeremy Renner Official app — pitched as a way to foster a more direct connection with his fans. Journalists Caroline Goldfarb and Sarah Ramos decide to deep dive into… why?
It’s a beautiful niche pop-culture investigation that I absolutely go nuts for, that’s presented in a quite enjoyable parody of a true crime podcast format.
Come for the app, stay for the bewildering insight into the monetisation and business that surrounds the job of being a celebrity. Also, stay for the bizarre insights into Jeremy Renner himself, who is just… odd. There’s a whole episode about his music career, and another about his real estate ventures
Also it’s funny.
Listen here.
Las Culturistas
Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang are iconic avatars of culture, both deeply enmeshed in the what’s what and who’s who — yet also, conversely, creating culture themselves. It’s a powerful combination, and dare we say it, extremely necessary. And also gay. Very necessarily gay.
This year provided a challenge, with the coronavirus stealing away a lot of the staples of culture. Nevertheless, she persisted. More — she thrived, creating amongst other episodes, an epic multi-episode EXPERIENCE called The Top 200 Moments in Culture History.
It’s what it says on the tin, but it’s what’s inside the tin that will leap out like one of those scary paper snakes. Culture, as these episodes teach us, are a many varied thing: in this countdown, you’ll have moments of culture like When Britney said “Good Morning America” and the entire concept of Rooney Mara In ‘The Social Network’ flush with things like Jameela Jamil Getting Chased By Bees and The Invention of Paper.
Las Culturistas already changed my idea of what culture is — this list INFORMED me about what the best moments of culture are. Truly important listening. The final episode is iconic. The top moment of culture, super-iconic.
They’re currently doing a festive ’12 days of culture’ series that is ALSO VERY GOOD.
Listen here.
7am Podcast
Hey look, a lot happened in Australia and the world this year — and even though I try to be a professionally dumb bitch, I really needed an in depth, but approachable guide to all these fell events. The 7am podcast, hosted by Ruby Jones, became a daily routine for all of this.
Standouts include Osman Faruqi’s piece on the Christchurch Shooting — a confronting, but necessary report. But also showing that it’s not all doom and gloom and serious politics, there’s also delightful good news stories like this piece about one of the few good things to come out of Melbourne’s COVID-19 lockdowns: the Brunswick North West Primary School’s radio station.
Listen here. It comes out at 7am, I guess.
Stuff The British Stole
I have to tell the truth — I haven’t finished this one yet! But it’s very good so far– this is the way history should be taught in schools, I reckon.
Each episode features Marc Fennell pick one historical artifact that was stolen by British people, and explore the usually fairly insane story of where it came from, and where it ended up. A great way to show the impact and consequences of colonialism, while at the same time giving a great historical yarn.
And that Marc Fennell? I reckon he’s going places, I hope someone gives him another show at some point.
Listen to the podcast here on ABC Radio.
Patrick Lenton is the Editor of Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.