Growing up in the early ’90s meant no internet and little access to different kinds of entertainment. And while I wouldn’t have had it any other way, I sometimes wonder if listening to podcasts during my formative years would have helped shape my idea of the world better. Here are four podcasts I would have loved to listen to when I was a teenager.
Rookie
Tavi Gevinson’s award-winning online magazine for teenagers, which she launched in 2011 when she was 15, kickstarted their first podcast earlier this year and we are completely in love with the episodes so far. If you’re feeling alone and are going through a rough patch, chances are the folks at Rookie have an episode that’ll cheer you right up. My favourite section is the Ask a Grown, where listener questions are answered by celebrities such as actor Kumail Nanjiani, singer St Vincent, illustrator and comic artist Jillian Tamaki, actress and producer Alia Shawkat, and Aminatou Sow, co-host of one of our favourite podcasts, Call Your Girlfriend.
Oh Boy by Man Repeller
Featuring one-on-one conversations with women in arts, technology, and beyond, Oh Boy by Man Repeller is the kind of podcast I wish I could have listened to growing up. Hosted by filmmaker Jay Buim, the podcast consists of interviews with women like Miki Agrawal (the CEO of Thinx, the brand that aims to destigmatise periods), feminist activist Gloria Steinem, and political correspondent Kaisie Hunt, among others; and they cover topics like school bullies, growing up with anxiety, how to deal with stalkers, and how far feminism has come and how far we’ve yet to go, all along sharing their career and life journeys. The podcast seems to be on a hiatus right now but there are about 50 episodes for those who are yet to catch up.
Stuff You Missed In History Class
Super nerdy but super fun, this podcast pulls out lesser known events in history and reports on them. Hosts Holly Fry and Tracey V. Wilson are exactly the kind of super warm and delightful people you’d want telling you stories from the past that never made it into your history textbooks — either because they were genuinely overlooked or they were deliberately removed, as is often the case. The podcast contains years of back catalogue on every subject imaginable and notes with extended reading and sources for those who’d like to dig deeper.
The Limit Does Not Exist
Hosts of The Limit Does Not Exist, Christina Wallace and Cate Scott Campbell, believe that creativity and Stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) are better together, and they get a bunch of guests on their podcast who prove that’s true in groundbreaking ways. Examples of guests include Heather Cabot: angel investor, journalist, Forbes contributor, adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and co-author of Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech; Mina Markham, who talks about her career path as a self-taught technologist and senior engineer at Slack; and Danielle Feinberg, who started her journey in tech as one of the few female computer science majors at Harvard, and is now using computer algorithms to communicate visual storytelling at Pixar. The conversations featured on the podcast help break down the stereotypes of women working in the field of technology, and will especially be useful to those who are looking to fuse their interest in science and the arts as part of their careers.