These Standalone Podcast Episodes Will Make Holiday Travel A Breeze

There are hundreds-of-thousands of podcasts streaming right now. And while you can count on us for helping you find the best in comedy pods, music pods, history pods, food pods, travel pods, weed pods, art pods, true crime pods, and — of course — our own pods, we get that committing to a whole series is tough. Even the best podcasts are going to have lackluster episodes every now and again. Why commit when you can dabble

The rub is that choosing one single episode amongst dozens or even hundreds of options from a single podcast is like throwing a dart in a dark room. You’ll rarely hit a bull’s eye. Hell, you probably won’t even hit the board. We don’t want that for you, so we took the legwork upon ourselves. We threw all the darts and found all the bullseyes.

The 15 podcast episodes below represent the best in conversational audio files created this year, bar none. These are stand-alone episodes that’ll make you laugh, offer an education, and challenge even your most firmly held ideas. The best part is that after listening you can move on. Or, if you dig the vibe and the hosts, you can smash that subscribe button then dive in for the long haul.

At the very least, use these gems to get you through the drudgery of holiday travel.

The Show:

Film critic Amy Nicholson and actor-comedian-writer Paul Scheer are leading the podcast-listening world through a very deep dive into the AFI’s 2007 Top 100. Nicholson and Scheer parse each of the AFI’s choices for the supposed 100 best American films of all time with bonus episodes and fantastic guests.

The beauty of this show is Nicholson and Scheer’s shared ability to take the cinema they love deadly seriously but not take themselves too seriously. They listen to each other. They argue. They commiserate. There’s nary another film podcast out there as fun, in-depth, and listenable as Unspooled.

The Episode:

The beauty of this episode is how Amy Nicholson and Paul Scheer bring wholly different experiences to The Godfather — hitting on nostalgia, the patriarchy, and the very foundations of America. The episode is a shining example of how the cinephile duo can disagree but still find a common love for the images flickering on the screen in front of their eyes.

Listen Here: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox

— Gamefully Unemployed (@GamefullyUn) November 10, 2019

The Show:

Tom Reimann and David Bell are the hosts of one of our favorite shows of the year. Fox Mulder Is A Maniac, part of the Gamefully Unemployed network, is a chronological episode-by-episode rewatching of the iconic ’90s FOX show The X-Files through the filter of asking whether Fox Mulder is, indeed, a maniac.

The well-structured and hilarious podcast is a delight to listen to. It also offers just the right dose of nostalgia without wallowing in it, while also providing a gateway for new generations to get into the show.

The Episode:

This podcast episode covers one of the more iconic episodes of the TV series, “Colony” from season two. It has an alien bounty hunter, Soviet Clones, Arctic ice stations, and Agent Fox Mulder acting like a motherf*cking maniac. It’s a great way to enjoy Reimann and Bell in their element while really enjoying a show they truly love. It’ll make you want to go out and start watching The X-Files again and listen to every other episode of this podcast.

Listen Here: Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Castbox, Soundcloud