Left of Dial Media, the audio producer and distributor founded by Canadaland and Hot Docs alum Alan Black, has released its inaugural Essential Listening Poll, unveiling the 100 Greatest Podcasts of all time.
Announced at Podcast Movement in Dallas on Tuesday, with support from Amazon Music, the list was voted on by a wide-ranging group of podcasters, hosts, journalists, and academics, who shared their top five shows, reflecting the work that has most inspired, engaged and influenced them. Voters included Alex Blumberg (StartUp), Brendan McDonald (WTF with Marc Maron), Hrishikesh Hirway (Song Exploder), Latif Nasser and Lulu Miller (Radiolab), Alex Sujong Laughlin (Normal Gossip), and Leon Neyhfak (Slow Burn), among other prominent audio makers.
The Top 3 podcasts on the list are no surprise, with This American Life taking the #1 spot, followed by Serial and New York Times podcast, The Daily. Rounding out the Top 10 are WNYC’s Radiolab, S-Town, Heavyweight, Reply All, WTF with Marc Maron, Gimlet’s StartUp Podcast, and Love and Radio.
Several Canadian podcasts also made the list, with CBC Podcasts well-represented, including Hunting Warhead, which came in at #32, Missing & Murdered: Finding Cleo (#33), WireTap (#38), Stolen (#52), Sea of Lies (#97), and Terry O’Reilly’s IDEAS, which squeaked onto the list via an eight-way tie in 100th position, alongside the likes of The Joe Rogan Experience, Wiser Than me with Julia-Louis Dreyfuss, and The Diary of a CEO, among other titles.
Somewhat inspired by the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound poll, which has ranked the Top 100 “greatest films of all time” once a decade since 1952, Black believes the lack of a podcasting “canon” means a lot of shows that have been off the charts for five to seven years, get lost in the annals of podcasting’s discoverability problem.
“Podcasting has nothing like that,” Black told Broadcast Dialogue – The Podcast. “You can go Google ‘best podcasts of all time’ and you’ll find kind of annual lists, people saying the best of the year or the best of the first six months of the year, but there was really nothing that gave you a definitive list of the really important, monumental shows that inspired the shows to come.”
He’s optimistic the poll will be “a jumping off point” for new listeners to explore the history of podcasts and find those shows that broke new ground. While the Top 10 to 20 are shows the public is familiar with, Black says the rest of the list is littered with podcasts most people have probably never heard of.
“It is quite fascinating. Shows like Call Her Daddy or Theo Von…a lot of the chat cast shows, those did not make the list,” said Black. “They are insanely popular, but I think probably…those are shows people enjoy, but when you think of the things that made you, those are less significant.”
“The list is dominated by shows that stick with you. Shows that aren’t simple – like press record, don’t do much editing, do a little sound mix and publish. The shows on the list – the Radiolabs and the S-Towns and the Love and Radios – these are shows that are about mood and tone and they tell stories that are fascinating, human stories that stick with you. And I think the list tells you a lot about the things that people think about 10 years after they’ve listened to them,” he continued.
Explore the full list, along with ballots from featured voters here. You can also listen to the top 100 Greatest Podcasts of all time in a special Amazon Music collection.
Alan Black joined Broadcast Dialogue – The Podcast to talk about the Essential Listening Poll, discoverability, the broken economics of podcasting and more. Listen on your favourite podcasting app or here:
