Almost any genre in podcasting is chock-a-block with podcasts in that genre or sub-genre. Go to Apple Podcasts' genre classifications, and they are all full of examples of podcasts in any genre. It's truly a crime there are so many true-crime podcasts. Sadly, the good true-crime podcasts get swamped by the tsunami of bad ones that are too often copycats, plagiarizers, or headline chasers. Sorry, but podcasting should not be the sonic version of The ID Channel or Court TV.
Information podcasts are no exception. There are thousands of them. Stuff You Should Know is the granddaddy of them all, with 15 years of knowledge dispensing. Stuff You Should Know has a hipster, snarky vibe that mixes with and humor with knowledge accumulation.
By contrast, the Everything Everywhere Daily podcast offers listeners a more earnest, documentary-style tone with a more professorial vibe.
To me, Everything Everywhere Daily is one of the best education podcasts in the industry. And it's not just me that feels that way.
Since its launch on July 1, 2020, it has had over 12,000,000 total downloads and now averages over 1,300,000 downloads per month. It has appeared in the top 25 on both the Spotify and Apple charts.
In about 10 minutes, listeners can learn something new every day on various subjects, including history, science, geography, mathematics, and technology, as well as biographies of some of the world’s most interesting people.
Host Gary Arndt is a polymath who uses his extensive research in multiple fields and his decade of world travel to find interesting and informative topics for each show.
A polymath is defined as an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.
Gary Ardnt is a world traveler with an apparently insatiable quest for knowledge. In fact, he sold his house in 2007 and traveled the world for nine years. To the delight of his listeners, Ardnt uses those experiences to punctuate his episodes with more than Wikipedia acquired facts.
Ardnt shares facts about himself on his website that assure listeners that he's more Neil DeGrasse Tyson than Mike Tyson.
For example, he owns one of the larger collections of National Geographic magazines and books in the world. Ardnt placed in the top 10 at the college national debate tournament in his junior and senior years. He graduated from college with a triple major in Mathematics, Economics, and Political Science, and he's a few credits away from degrees in Geology and Geophysics.
As a host, he encourages listeners to read more about the topic he's covering that day.
Now Ardnt is no Josh Clark or Chuck Bryant. He's more David Attenborough than SNL's Colin Jost. But just like Attenborough, words pour out of his mouth like waves caressing a beach on a meditation app.
While Stuff You Should Know has grown appreciably longer and more verbose over time, Everything Everywhere Daily is successful at being succinct because brevity is a strength of Ardnt and the production staff.
Recent episodes that have shined include:
February 27 called The Most Supermarket Visit In History when Ardnt recalls how Boris Yeltsin visited a Houston supermarket as a lower-level official and discovered to his horror that Communism was a failed system.
February 20 called The History Of President's Day when Ardnt swamps us with the various spelling combinations of this holiday and how this holiday may be the most confusing, messed-up, and chaotic of all the recognized holidays.
February 14 called The Dunning-Kruger Effect when Ardnt looks at why so many people don't know what they don't know.
January 31 called The invention Of The Airplane where Ardnt explains that, like all inventions, incrementalism was a factor, and the Wrights were right about their airplane design and theories.
From episodes on the speed of light to The Battle Of Yorktown, Everything Everywhere Daily has incredible peripheral vision.
Check out Everything Everywhere Daily.
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