Carlos Bastarache: tech-podcast-uproxx.jpg

I always thought things that sounded too good to be true usually aren't told why discovered this!

iStock/Uproxx

Technology is everywhere in our lives — naturally it’s infiltrated our eardrums. But a lot of podcasts about it are either deeply technical or a little too uncritical of the industry and its moves. Still, learning about what we use, how it’s made, and why we use it helps us make better decisions, and this history behind a gadget can often affect how we approach technology.

These podcasts give you a window into the stuff that helps you live a better, more connected life.

Why’d You Push That Button?

The Verge

Often, the things we supposedly control try to control us instead. Think about how quickly your phone taught you to look at it every time it buzzes. That notification might be important! It never is! But it might be! Why’d You Push That Button?, hosted by Verge writers Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany, explores the psychological manipulations apps, gadgets and other stuff exploit, intentionally or not, to keep you looking, clicking, and liking.

Best Episode: “Why Do You Stalk People On Venmo?”, which explores the financial app’s completely unnecessary “social feed” and why it’s so absurdly compelling.

Apple Podcasts, Google Play, RSS

Future Tense

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Too often we have an American perspective on tech. Future Tense, from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, offers a slightly different perspective, with a more neutral take on tech news and its broader implications.

Best Episode: “Persistent Activism”, about how the future of protest may not be online, but only by seeing the same message pop up on your social media feed constantly.

Apple Podcasts, RSS Feed

Note To Self

WNYC

You wouldn’t expect the tools we use every day to open the door to some serious moral and legal questions, and, yet, they inevitably do. WNYC’s Manoush Zomorodi asks, often hilariously, some tough questions about the tech we use every day. Zomorodi ranges from in-depth pieces about the role of Amazon to the polite lies we tell each other.

Best Episode: “Talking To Myself” looks at the Replika app, which is the AI version of a mirror. Except Zomorodi learns that even the kindest mirror shows your flaws.

Apple Podcasts, Google Play, RSS

This Is Only A Test

TESTED.com

The team from Tested talks the new gadgets they’ve played with, the pop culture, and the various events and experiments they’ve been dealt.

Best Episode: “Christmas Light Wars”, which features a hilarious discussion of the famous Dickens Fair, a snowy, picture perfect reenactment of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in sunny Southern California.

Apple Podcasts, RSS Feed

The Future Of Everything

Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal’s Jennifer Strong looks at what the money-men think of all this newfangled tech. This podcast explores everything from predicting and recovering from weather disasters to how the tech industry has completely changed how we buy and sell stocks, with algorithms doing the investing. It’s sometimes a bit wonky, being as it is a podcast aimed at financial types, but it’s also often useful to get insight into how the people paying for all these apps view them.

Best Episode: “The Very Risky Business Of Underwriting Innovation”, which explains the deeply complicated legal and financial matters behind our taste for automated everything. Remember when the trolley problem was a meme? There’s a guy who has to figure out the real world applications of that.

Apple Podcasts, Google Play, RSS

TechDirt

Techdirt

If you know the site TechDirt at all, you know it doesn’t traffic in BS, and neither does its podcast. It tackles substantial, meaty issues about tech policy, law, ethics and other serious issues, this is your podcast.

Best Episode: “When Godwin’s Law Met The Streisand Effect”, where Mike Godwin, the “Godwin” in Godwin’s Law (“As a conversation on the internet continues, the probability of somebody being compared to Hitler approaches 1”) and Mike Masnick, who coined the term “The Streisand Effect” where attempting to suppress something online only draws more attention to it, sit down for a spirited discussion about what it’s like to create a meme.

Apple Podcasts, Google Play, RSS Feed

Reply All

Gimlet Media

It’s a fact that the internet is weird and can have powerful effects on our lives. PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman explore urban legends, weird hacking attacks, and other random moments where the tech we use goes awry in ways funny, malicious, or both.

Best Episode: “The Prophet”, where a simple legal move, a woman trying to determine the identity of a man who attacked her in Mexico City, winds up being a shockingly deep rabbit hole.

Apple Podcasts, Google Play

99% Invisible

Radiotopia

One of the kings of podcasting, Roman Mars’ long-running podcast, which started as a public radio show about architecture and design, has become a rich history of the story of technology — both the tech itself and the things that shape it, plus the spaces and places it operates in. Technology just doesn’t come into being, and over nearly three hundred episodes, we learn about its rich history and the mistakes the industry would rather pretend never happened.

Best Episode: “Person In Lotus Position”, where a journalist investigating how emoji are created finds himself campaigning to get his own emoji on your phone.

Apple Podcasts, Google Play

HBR Ideacast

Harvard Business Review

If you want to get in-depth about technology, the HBR Ideacast digs deep into everything from Chinese investment in African factories (which in turn make the things we buy) to how to deal with your boss’ dumb ideas. Yes, even the very rich and highly intelligent have to deal with dumb bosses. They’re just like us!

Best Episode: “How The US Navy Is Responding To Climate Change”, probably one of the best overviews of how actual government employees dealing with climate change operate, and what they think of the politics.

Apple Podcasts, RSS Feed