Quartz Announced the 2017 Winners of The Casties

The Casties are Quartz’s awards for the best podcasts of 2017. They put together a list of the best shows and individual episodes that aired in 2017 – whether the podcast itself was new or a veteran of the airwaves.

The winners of the 2017 Casties are:

Best business/economics episode:
Podcast: Planet Money
Episode “We’re Going to Space”

Best culture episode:
Podcast: This American Life
Episode: “We Are in the Future”

Best history episode:
Podcast: Hardcore History
Episode: “The Destroyer of Worlds”

Best interview episode:
Podcast: Pod Save America
Episode: “Obama’s Last Interview”

Best law & institutions episode:
Podcast: More Perfect
Episode: “Sex Appeal”

Best politics episode:
Podcast: This American Life
Episode: “White Haze”

Best science podcast:
Podcast: Revisionist History
Episode: “McDonald’s Broke My Heart”

Best sex episode:
Podcast: My Dad Wrote a Porno
Episode: “Vagina 101”

Best roundtable episode:
Podcast: Still Processing
Episode: “We Grieve Charlottesville”

Best sports episode:
Podcast: The Bill Simmons Podcast
Episode: “The Kevin Durant Interviews”

Best technology episode:
Podcast: Reply All
Episode: “Long Distance”

Best episode on the human condition:
Podcast: Radiolab
Episode: “Oliver Sacks: A Journey from Where to Where”

Best business/economics podcast: How I Built This

Best culture podcast: Binge Mode: Game of Thrones

Best history podcast: Mogul: The Life and Times of Chris Lighty

Best Interview podcast: Fresh Air

Best law & institutions podcast: Ear Hustle

Best politics: The Global Politico

Best science podcast: Invisibilia

Best sex podcast: Guys We F****d

Best sports podcast: The Poscast

Best storytelling podcast: S-Town

Best technology podcast: The Butterfly Effect

Best podcast on the human condition: The Hilarious World of Depression

The Casties also included three Grand Prize Winners. Visit Quartz to find out who those winners were, to learn more about each of podcasts / podcast episodes listed above, and to find links to them all.

Actuality Podcast has Ended

actuality-podcast-logoActuality was a podcast that was a collaboration between Quartz and APM’s Marketplace. After creating 27 episodes, Actuality has officially ended. It lasted for two seasons.

Actuality was a podcast that explored the inner workings of the new global economy. It strived to find “the interesting in the important and the important in the interesting”, and to define the issues shaping our daily experience. Actuality was hosted by Sabri Ben-Achour and Tim Fernholz, and new episodes were released every other Thursday.

On September 20, 2016, the Actuality website posted an informative note about the end of the podcast. It was posted by Deborah Clark, who is the vice president and executive producer of the Marketplace Portfolio.

Actuality got our newsrooms working together, allowing us to explore how we would translate our sensibilities to a new format and structure a whole new editorial product. Actuality had many dedicated listeners to whom we’re extremely grateful, but interest wasn’t quite broad enough to keep working on it. We’d rather hit pause now and move on to other experiments.

There are other Marketplace podcasts that you can listen to, including Politics Inside Out, The Uncertain Hour, and Codebreaker (which is a collaboration by Marketplace and Tech Insider).

Historically Black is a new podcast that is a collaboration between APM Reports and The Washington Post. It focuses on objects from the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture and brings the stories connected to them to life through interviews, archival sound, and music. Hosts include Keegan-Michael Key, Roxane Gay, Issa Rae, Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton.

Off On A Tangent – PCN Show 026

PCN iTunes artworkShawn and Jen got into a lively discussion about podcasting that ended up going off on a tangent. They tried to rein things back in after that.

The tangent was actually related to podcasting, so it could have been worse.

Links mentioned in this episode:

* Data confirm that podcasting in the US is a white male thing
By Josh Morgan on Quartz

* The End of the Dark Ages of Podcasting
By Stephen Lacey on New Republic

* We’re Not In The Podcasting Renaissance. We’re In The Age of Discovery
By Stephen Lacey on The Timbre

* How We Got Em Rusciano’s Podcast to the Top of the iTunes Charts and How You Can Do It Too
By Omny Studio on Omny Studio Blog

* 8 Podcasts Prove That Women Dominated The Podcast Game in 2015
By Courtney Lindley on Bustle

* Making Story-Driven Podcasts on a Budget
By Wooden Overcoats on Medium