I like Writing Excuses.
@deb922 Thanks so much!
For history buffs, my son swears by Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, and there’s a ton of them.
Ideas by Paul Kennedy from the CBC. Love!
Simon Mayo’s Confessions -BBC
Mark Kermode Film Reviews -BBC
Wait Wait don’t tell Me -NPR
You Must Remember This (Stories of Old Hollywood)
Slate Culture Gabfest
The Moth
I listen through the Stitcher app, so that I don’t have to download anything – it’s all streaming.
My favorites list, in order:
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History
Men in Blazers (soccer)
99% Invisible
This American Life
The Moth
Radiolab
Criminal
Everything Is Stories
Welcome to Night Vale
Lexicon Valley
Longform
You Must Remember This
At an average length of about four hours each episode, these are best suited for long trips or long daily commutes. The WWI series was six episodes totaling about 23 hours. All of it brilliant stuff.
I’ll second (or third) Freakonomics Radio, it’s pretty good. I’m somewhat enchanted by Wil Wheaton’s storytelling ability and I have some of his podcasts queued up on my phone (but I can’t remember the name of said podcasts right now).
My 17 yo daughter is a huge fan of Welcome to Night Vale. I’ve listened along with her and I confess to not understanding why the cat is floating three feet above the floor all the time, but she loves that podcast.
It’s not one to binge; better in small doses. And ideally started from the beginning. But also the earlier episodes were fresher and didn’t suffer too much from trying too hard. I have to be in the mood for it.
The heritage network has lots of food podcasts http://heritageradionetwork.org/
Someone mentioned Five Thirty Eight’s podcast above. It is pretty new, and I was excited when they started it because I am a politics junkie and love their website. But I have found listening to it a slog… keep hoping it will get better, but it doesn’t. Maybe they need a host who wasn’t a stats major alongside them or something.
I tried the Night Vale. After about 5 episodes I realized that there is no plot. Related odd snippets that made me laugh occasionally, but no actual story line. Gave up.
Don’t miss the new Only Human podcast! Great stories about health and medicine.
On the Media.
^^I can’t do the health and medicine ones because I’m a hypochondriac, and the food ones make me hungry 
I do like the science and economics podcasts the most. I keep trying to like the humor podcasts (like the Penn Jillette one), but they don’t seem to keep my attention as well. They inevitably go off on some polemic.
The dinner for two thread reminded me that dh and I frequently listen to “The Dinner Party Download”. It’s a nice variety. Starts with the icebreaker (bad joke), then the history lesson with booze, then a musician suggests a playlist, then there’s an interview, ettiquette lessons (generally pretty tongue in cheek) and often an excerpt from a novel.
thank you for all the suggestions, keep them coming. past couple of days been really enjoying
HERE’S THE THING WITH ALEC BALDWIN http://www.podcastone.com/Heres-the-Thing-with-Alec-Baldwin?showAllEpisodes=true
If you like Here’s the Thing be sure to dig out the one he did with Billy Joel. Joel is not even my favorite singer by a long shot, but it’s a fabulous interview.
Josh Malina and a friend have a new podcast called The West Wing Weekly for those of us who can never get enough of TWW. They are planning an episode a week, so with 150+ episodes of the tv show, it will give us 3 years of delight.
I have been enjoying Israel Story, an Israeli version of This American Life.