Podcast ideas for a three day long car trip?

So I'm moving from Southern California to Seattle Washington. Which means that I'm spending three days-ish in the car(kill me). I usually listen to Nightvale, the bomb and beast casts, and I've already downloaded the first season of Serial. Any other ideas?

Dan Carlins history podcast. There really long and he gets really into bits you might not ever have known about various points in history. Seriously that guy is amazing.

http://www.dancarlin.com/

I'm told the audiobook of The Martian is really good.

Also to add to that I didnt know he added prices to some of his whole series now but he does still have a bunch up that is free including the really good "Blueprint for Armageddon" series.

"Hello from the Magic Tavern" is high up on my list of favorites at the moment. An average guy gets sucked through a portal into the magical land of Foon and documents all the fantastical things he sees there in a weekly podcast co-hosted by a wizard and a talking badger... err.... shapeshiter. It's created by a couple of the writers from Jack Box Games along with a bunch of Chicago improv-types. http://hellofromthemagictavern.com/

If you like retro games and extremely in-depth discussions about said games you should cherry pick some of your favorite games from the "Watch Out for Fireballs" playlist. They've been at it for years and with most episodes pushing two hours you can fill up a drive pretty easily. http://duckfeed.tv/watchoutforfireballs

Rapid Fire

• The Art of Wrestling w/ Colt Cabana (Wrestling): http://coltcabana.com/
• 99% Invisible (Modern Design): http://99percentinvisible.org/
• Dan Carlin's Hardcore History (Seconding the previous guy): http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/
• BigSushi.fm (Indie game dev interviews): http://www.bigsushi.fm/podcasts/main/
• Bonfireside Chat (Dark Souls and related games): http://duckfeed.tv/bonfiresidechat
• Jumpcast (Manga): http://www.nitrobeard.com/jumpcast/

The History of Rome is fantastic. Also The Dollop would probably be an excellent choice.

Stuff You Missed In History Class, Stuff They Don't Want You To Know, Tech Stuff, Stuff To Blow Your Mind, Rebel FM, The Comedy Button, Tell Em Steve Dave, Smodcast, Rooster Teeth, The Patch, Hunt The Truth, This American Life, Android Central Podcast/iMore Show, The Nerdist, Judge John Hodgman, My Brother My Brother And Me, FEaB, The Cracked Podcast, Polygon Longform

Oh well, it's long. That Magic Tavern podcast is good.

If you want something kind of familiar Dave Lang's podcast Team GFB Radio is pretty good.

The Adventure Zone has the brothers McElroy and their papa playing DnD and it's pretty entertaining. I enjoy it more than their OG family fun hour My Brother, My Brother, and Me personally.

Speaking of rpg podcasts, you could also check out Austin's Friends at the Table. I just recently got started on it, but the improv is pretty dope.

Uhh Yeah Dude and The Flop House are two classics that I always turn to when I run out of my main shows, so they might be good too?

Grab some audiobooks. I'm listening to Nemesis: The Battle For Japan during my commutes at the moment, it's very well narrated. Also, educational, if that's your thing.

NPR's Ask Me Another is a fun quiz show type podcast.

The Mike Duncan one? I highly recommend this

All the stuff is very well researched and accurate. Not as melodramatic as Dan Carlin and can be a bit dry at times but it's really fantastic

Anything with the Mcelroy brothers. Mbmbam or Adventure Zone.

Try. The Dollop, as hilarious as it is interesting.

Sound of Play and Cane and Rinse, both from Cane and Rinse.

Sound of Play is like a radio show but with video game music, the guys pick songs from their favourite games, explain why they like them and then play them.

Cane and Rinse takes a look at a different video game each week, breaks down it's history and the guys discuss it first objectively before getting into their personal feelings about it.

The Brett Easton Ellis podcast has a ton of good episodes with interviews with plenty of good musicians and film/TV writers.

The Crabfeast is my favorite comedy podcast with comedians Ryan Sickler and Jay Larson. They tell stories with their guest and is usually pretty damn entertaining and funny.

@voodootatum: sorry off-topic but man Voodoo is such a dick in Friday Night Lights. He's no J.D McCoy level of douche but still.

Doug Loves Movies - just plain hilarious. Each episode goes for around 1 1/2 hours, and I'd highly recommend any that feature Chris Evans, Leonard Maltin, T.J. Miller, "Werner Herzog", "Mark Wahlberg" or Graham Elwood...

if you liked Nightvale you should try Limetown and The Black Tapes Podcast. they're not trying to be funny at all, but they're odd and supernatural

also Hollywood Handbook. everyone should listen to hollywood handbook

I don't think 'melodramatic' is a valid opinion of the hardcore history podcast by any measure.

If you do Dan Carlin's hardcore history, I implore you listen to the series "The Wrath of the Khans." People say exciting books are a fast read, well this is a fast podcast! It's like 5 episodes, each being about 4 hours long.

I played Civ 5 for the first time after listening to this series and I had an irrational fear and real sense of dread just hit me when I met Genghis Khan in my first campaign. It was one of the most surreal irrational emotional responses I've experienced from a video game.

Idle thumbs.

@boxxybae: Not the OP, just jumping in since I listen to podcasts at work a bunch. This seems really interesting. Not against paying if the content's good, so i'll go through the free ones first.

@geared: If you are interested in old Hollywood you could check out You Must Remember This Podcast, it was recommended to me by Katie Klepek. I would highly recommend the Charles Manson's Hollywood episodes, they are fascinating\horrifying.

How on earth else do you describe Hardcore History? Don't get me wrong, it's enjoyable & interesting, but Carlin's delivery definitely screams melodrama. To get all dictionary definition on you: "A melodrama is a dramatic or literary work in which the plot, which is typically sensational and designed to appeal strongly to the emotions, takes precedence over detailed characterization."

If what Dan Carlin does isn't appealing to emotions over detail I'm not sure what it is. It's honestly his strength, in getting past the dry fact to the human, emotional stories. And I say that as someone who really likes dry history, sometimes it's good to hear someone tell a good yarn for a change.

That said, the series is still well worth a listen: I'd recommend Ghosts of the Ostfront, because the Eastern Front of WW2 is god damn harrowing & oft-forgotten about in the west compared to stuff like the D-Day landings, the North African campaign & the war in the Pacific. The intro was a little hackneyed I thought, but that's a complaint I have about a lot of his multi-episode series, takes him a while to actually get to the start, there's usually 30 minutes or so of waffle first only tangentially related to the subject. So Ghosts of the Ostfront, Wrath of the Khans, Deaththroes of the Republic are all well worth a listen. Only half way through Blueprint to Armageddon, the WW1 series but so far so interesting. But you would have to pay for Ghosts of the Ost Front & Death Throes, he sells Ghosts for $5.99 (4 podcasts, about 5.5 hours long) & Death Throes is $9.99 (6 podcasts, 1st 5 are each about 90 minutes long & the last is an utterly insane 5 hours 25 mins. So that's some 13 hours of podcasting to be listening to!)

History of Rome is really good but bewarned that it takes Mike Duncan about 20 episodes to really find his feet, get good recording equipment & get a formula that he feels comfortable with. So it could be a little rough going early on. If you don't absolutely need to hear the mythological stories on the founding of Rome, & then the founding of the Republic you would probably find Episode 19 a good jumping in place, Prelude to the First Punic War.

I agree with you about Dan Carlin being melodramatic. One of his Hardcore History shows was entirely composed of him comparing the successors of Alexander to a mafia soap opera. He spends about half an hour talking about Gavrilo Princip's lucky sandwich. He compares Pancho Villa to Osama bin Laden. He compares radical Anabaptists to a character from Mork and Mindy. I appreciate it, but he never really dives deep on the subjects he talks about (and when he does, he goes overboard and doesn't know when to stop).

Mike Duncan is pretty much the opposite of Dan Carlin. He's focussed far more on the tiny details. Each episode of his podcast is 20-30 minutes long, and there are about 200 episodes, so that's thousands of hours of content. It's less exciting and more educational. That being said, the dry nature of his podcast makes the funny moments really stand out, and after a few hours of listening to him I really started to find him to be an endearing guy. I used his podcast to fall asleep for basically an entire year. I never did check out his new podcast.

So, for a car trip, I'd definitely recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. The History of Rome podcast is more for legitimate enthusiasts about the time period who want to learn more, and not really for people who want to hear an exciting and moving story.

This.

And don't feel like you need to listen to the long series shows if you haven't listened to it before. Try the one off episodes. Most of my favorite episodes are one offs. I like Steppe Stories, History Under the Influence, and Prophets of Doom a lot. Although by this point you have to buy those, but well worth it I think.

I would have comedy podcasts to recommend but I don't know if you like them.

Did a two and a half day road trip back in the spring - The Adventure Zone got us through most of that trip.

My Brother, My Brother and Me is hilarious, that's Justin McElroy and his brothers.

@forkboy: Well it's not a dramatic or dramatized literary work, so there's the strict definition out of the window. The more loose or modern meaning of the word is almost exclusively pejoratively used to describe people treating (historically, anyway) minor hardships as the end of the world. Saying you're gonna kill yourself because your girlfriend broke up with you is melodramatic. Dressing like a panda because your rich daddy doesnt spend enough time with you is melodramatic. Recounting first hand accounts of people who lived through the Leningrad Blockade and beginning to even imagine what it must've been like most certainly is not.

Kind of an obvious one since, you know, we're on this site already, but have you listened to the Game of the Year deliberations? They are all truly great podcasts. There are plenty of stupid and funny moments like when they used to pass out The Northies, but it also has some of the best individual discussions on games on the site. An added plus for you is they are super long (at least the later ones are, where they focus on all of the categories)

You could also try audio books. You can sign up for Audible, get a free month, and get a free book for your trip. (You can always cancel if you don't want it anymore) Grabbing a good 10-20 hour book will certainly fill up some time.

I've done many car rallies that are 7 days long. And keeping yourself occupied is key, or you start to find things to complain about. I recommend these things:

1. Keep an El Camino count. Every time you see an El Camino, cheer as loud as you can, chug a mountain dew, or something, and add a notch to the count.
2. If you have a GPS and a passenger, get on a straight stretch and guess how far you are from major cities. The drive up the coast is fun to see how far you are from Miami, New York, etc.
3. Play the license plate game. Get all 50? Probably not, but make bets on which ones you won't see (New Hampshire is a sure bet, they never travel).
4. if you get tired or feel bored, open the window. Trust me it helps. The fresh air rejuvenates you.
5. make sure to stop every 2 hours for 5 minutes. Stop, take a selfie at a weird spot, or if you find a weird store go inside it. It'll help.

I have many more, but safe travels!

Just found out about The Bugle with John Oliver and Andy Zaltsman the other week. If you're a fan of satirical news, it's pretty fucking great.

Reply all, mystery show, Start up (the Gimlet media shows)!

Hollywood Handbook is the funniest podcast on earth. Also basically no one listens to it so you'll get to lord it over everyone.

Also, shut up @tajasaurus, you don't appreciate it appropriately. Also your name is too scary.

Last trip i was on I listened to the audiobook of "The Satanic Verses" and the actor was extremely good.

Agree with everyone recommending Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. Also, there are the "This Year" recaps of the Bombcast http://www.thisyearcollection.org/

Thanks guys, about to start my drive and I'm feeling a little better about the whole thing. Wish me luck!

That... doesn't add up.

The Biggest Problem in the Universe. Each week the hosts bring in problems and have to make their case as to why it is a problem, then the listeners can vote on the problems to create this list. It's a really funny show as well as being informative. A lot of the problems are serious issues and everything is backed up with research and stats, but some of the funniest moments come from when a complete non-problem is brought in. I've learnt a lot from it and it's changed the way I think about things even though it's presented as a non-serious podcast and the hosts are kind of assholes. There are also a ton of running jokes at this point and every episode people send in voicemails and dumb songs and stuff. It's really entertaining. I honestly look forward to listening to it more than the Bombcast now.

Good Job, Brain. There are over 100 episodes, each entertaining and replete with curious history. As a trivia podcast, I enjoy playing along as well.

The Adventure Zone

Entertaining D&D podcast even if you don't play the game

Thrilling Adventure Hour might be over, but it's got around 250 episodes with hilarious ongoing storylines.

ANY audiobooks of Neil Gaiman's work, they always get a GREAT voice actor.

FIRST thing that popped into my head. Dude does 2-4 hour long episodes and, even though it's just him, he's SUPER compelling.

You're right. I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote that. Maybe I thought it was thousands of minutes instead of hours.

Sick and Wrong is may favourite podcast ever. You do require a dark sense of humour, though.