Podcasts, Wrapped

Pocket Casts, the application I use to listen to podcasts, released a Pocket Casts Wrapped feature. This feature creates a Spotify Wrapped-esque slideshow featuring the highlights of one's year in listening to podcasts. According to my Pocket Casts Wrapped, I listened to 24 different shows and 364 podcast episodes in total. If I were to listen to all those podcasts back-to-back, I would spend seven days and three hours listening.

The five podcasts to which I listened the most were:

• Stuff You Should Know
• The Journal (hosted by the Wall Street Journal and Spotify)
• Planet Money
• Oxide and Friends
• Today in Focus

When I read this list, I started to think about the memories associated with each podcast. For example, I started listening to Stuff You Should Know later this year when searching for podcasts to which I could listen on plane rides. I downloaded several episodes, covering everything from tea to the Compton Cafeteria riot. Each episode features a well-researched description and analysis of the topic at hand, interspersed with a bit of humor from the hosts. I cannot recommend the show enough. Oxide and Friends caught my attention with the references to the '90s and '00s in technology, an era about which I know less.

A notable omission above is This Week in Google, a podcast produced by the This Week in Tech (TWiT) audio network. Lasting between two and three and a half hours each episode, This Week in Google is a go-to listen.

The show, despite the title, does not feature too much about Google, although the panelists all have interesting, thought-provoking insights into Google. One panelist, Jeff Jarvis, even wrote a book on the company: What Would Google Do? The most appealing part of the show is all of the technology news commentary. The panel is terrific. Jarvis, who has a background in journalism, lends many interesting insights about the intersection of AI and news. Ant shares interesting information about technology. Paris Martineau, a technology journalist for The Information, is incredibly insightful.

Finally, there is Leo, who hosts the show and whose personality gives me a sense of loss for something I never had the chance to experience with radio: a personality. He is a host on whom you can depend to keep a show interesting and exciting.

There are common themes across This Week in Google, some of which feel repetitive over time, but there is always a novel insight in an episode that makes me think differently about something. This is especially the areas of technology about which I know less, such as regulation, technology and journalism, and more.

If you enjoy technology, This Week in Google is worth a listen. I have listened to almost, if not every, episode this year. Assuming two hours an episode -- conservative -- that could be another ~80 hours of listened material (according to my back-of-the-napkin mathematics!).

What podcasts did you listen to this year? Which ones did you enjoy most?