The 10 Best Family Road Trips With Teens Podcasts (2026)

SmartLess runs on a simple gimmick that somehow never gets old: each week, one of the three hosts surprises the other two with a mystery guest. Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett have been friends for years, and you can hear it in the way they interrupt each other, talk over the guest, and generally act like overgrown teenagers at a sleepover. It sounds chaotic, and honestly it kind of is, but the chemistry makes it work.

The guest list reads like a Hollywood awards ceremony seating chart. Former presidents, A-list actors, tech billionaires, musicians, athletes -- the range is absurd. But what keeps people coming back isn't the celebrity factor alone. It's watching Bateman try to steer toward something thoughtful while Arnett cracks jokes and Hayes commits to some bit that derails the whole conversation. The surprise element means the hosts are genuinely reacting in real time, which strips away that rehearsed feeling you get from so many interview shows.

With over 330 episodes and a 4.6-star rating from more than 53,000 reviewers, SmartLess has clearly found its audience. Episodes run about an hour and drop weekly. The show moved to SiriusXM for exclusive early access, but free episodes still come out on all the usual platforms. If you want polished, tightly edited interviews, this probably isn't your thing. But if you like hearing famous people get genuinely caught off guard and then watching three comedians try to one-up each other with follow-up questions, it's hard to beat.

This American Life is the show that essentially invented the modern podcast format, even though it started as a radio program on WBEZ Chicago back in 1995. Hosted by Ira Glass, whose distinctive voice and narrative cadence have become synonymous with American storytelling, each weekly episode runs about an hour and explores a single theme through multiple acts.

The structure is what sets it apart. Each episode picks a theme -- sometimes obvious, sometimes oblique -- and then tells two to four stories that approach it from completely different angles. One act might be a deeply reported investigative piece, the next a personal essay, and the third a comedic monologue. The range is enormous. You might hear from a factory worker in Ohio, a scientist studying octopus consciousness, and a kid dealing with a bully, all in the same episode.

Glass has a particular talent for finding the emotional core of a story without being manipulative about it. The production values are meticulous. Sound design, pacing, music cues -- everything is carefully calibrated. It won the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a radio show or podcast, which tells you something about the caliber of journalism here.

For driving, it's nearly perfect. The hour-long format fills a round-trip commute, and the storytelling is absorbing enough to make traffic jams tolerable. Fair warning: some episodes will make you feel things you weren't expecting to feel while sitting in your car. The show has been running for over 30 years now, and the back catalog alone could keep you company for months of commutes.

Radiolab is the podcast that made sound design an art form. Hosts Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser carry forward the legacy that Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich built, and the show remains one of the most sonically inventive programs in audio. Episodes layer interviews, music, and ambient sound in ways that genuinely make your ears perk up.

The topics range across science, philosophy, law, and culture. One week you might hear about the ethics of CRISPR gene editing. The next, a courtroom drama about a forgotten civil rights case. The common thread is curiosity taken to its logical extreme: the team follows a question until they hit something surprising, then they follow that surprise even further.

Episodes land weekly and typically run 30 to 60 minutes, though some stretch past an hour when the story demands it. The show has over 800 episodes since launching in 2006, and it holds a 4.6-star rating from more than 42,000 reviews. There is a reason it keeps winning Peabody Awards.

Radiolab does not just explain things. It makes you feel the weight of a scientific discovery or the strangeness of a legal precedent. The production quality is a notch above almost everything else in podcasting, and the storytelling has a patience to it that rewards close listening. If you only subscribe to one knowledge podcast, you could do a lot worse than this one.

Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant have been explaining how the world works since 2008, and somehow they keep finding new things to talk about. With over 2,000 episodes under their belt, SYSK covers everything from the history of champagne to chaos theory to the Stonewall Uprising. The format is beautifully simple: two curious guys sit down, research a topic, and walk you through it like they're catching up over coffee.

What makes the show stick is the genuine friendship between Josh and Chuck. They interrupt each other, go on tangents about their weekends, and occasionally get things hilariously wrong before correcting themselves. Episodes run about 40 to 55 minutes for the main show, with shorter "Short Stuff" episodes around 10 minutes when you just need a quick knowledge fix.

The research is solid without being academic. They pull from books, interviews, and historical records, but deliver it all in plain language. You will never feel talked down to. One episode might cover satanism, the next Rosa Parks, and then suddenly you are learning about LSD. That unpredictability is part of the charm. The show drops twice a week and has earned a 4.5-star rating from over 76,000 reviews, which tells you it has staying power. If you want a podcast that makes you smarter without making you feel like you are back in school, this is the gold standard.

Aaron Mahnke has been telling dark stories since 2015, and somehow each one still lands with the same punch. Lore takes real historical events, folklore, and legends and traces the line between what actually happened and the terrifying myths that grew out of it. Think witch trials, haunted lighthouses, mysterious disappearances, and creatures that predate modern horror movies by centuries. Mahnke narrates every episode solo, and his voice has this calm, measured quality that makes the creepy stuff hit harder than it should.

The show drops new episodes every other Monday, and with over 700 in the back catalog, there is no shortage of material. Each episode runs around 30 to 40 minutes and focuses on a single topic, building a narrative that reads more like a well-researched essay than a typical podcast script. Mahnke pulls from primary sources, academic texts, and regional histories, which gives the show a credibility that sets it apart from podcasts that just retell Wikipedia entries.

Lore has grown well beyond audio. It became an Amazon Prime TV series in 2017, and Mahnke has published multiple books expanding on episode topics. He also runs a network of related shows including Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured. The podcast itself holds a 4.6 rating from over 44,000 reviews on Apple Podcasts, which is a staggering number for any show.

What keeps Lore working after all these years is Mahnke's genuine fascination with the material. He is not trying to scare you for shock value. He is interested in why people believed what they believed, and how those beliefs shaped communities for generations. It is the kind of show that makes you look at old buildings and local legends differently.

Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal -- the duo behind the massively popular YouTube show Good Mythical Morning -- spent twelve years having weekly conversations that were somehow both deeply personal and wildly entertaining. The podcast wrapped in December 2025, but the 500-plus episode archive is a goldmine for road trips. These two have been best friends since first grade, and that lifetime of shared history comes through in every episode. They talk about everything from existential questions about faith and identity to ridiculous debates about whether cereal is soup. The tone shifts effortlessly between hilarious and surprisingly vulnerable, which is part of what earned the show a 4.9 rating from over 23,000 listeners -- one of the highest ratings you will find on any major podcast. For families with teens, this is especially smart because Rhett and Link already have a massive following among younger audiences from their YouTube content. The candid format means episodes feel like eavesdropping on a genuinely interesting conversation between two people who care about each other. Some of their most memorable episodes tackle big life changes, health scares, and the messiness of growing up, all delivered with warmth and humor.

Yale psychology professor Laurie Santos created the most popular course in the university's 300-year history — a class on the science of happiness — and The Happiness Lab is essentially that course in podcast form. Each episode runs 30 to 47 minutes and takes a specific assumption about what makes life good (money, achievement, a perfect body) and tests it against the actual research. Santos interviews psychologists, neuroscientists, authors, and ordinary people, building episodes that balance academic rigor with genuine warmth. The show has produced 270 episodes across multiple seasons and carries a 4.7-star rating from nearly 14,000 reviews on Apple Podcasts. What makes it land is Santos's ability to deliver findings that contradict common intuition without sounding smug about it. She is clearly passionate about the research and skilled at making studies feel relevant to everyday decisions. Some episodes focus on individual stories; others go broader, tackling topics like creativity, resilience, or the psychology of social media. The weekly release schedule means the catalog has real depth. If you have ever suspected that the things you are chasing might not actually make you happier, this show provides the evidence — and more importantly, the practical alternatives that research says actually work.

Slow Burn does something unusual in the podcast world — it takes a single historical event and rebuilds it from the ground up, episode by episode, season by season. Produced by Slate, the show started with Watergate back in 2017 and has since covered the Clinton impeachment, Biggie and Tupac, David Duke's political rise, the road to the Iraq War, the L.A. riots, Roe v. Wade, Clarence Thomas's confirmation, and the rise of Fox News across ten seasons.

What makes the show special is its commitment to the people at the margins of these stories. You think you know Watergate, but Slow Burn introduces you to the forgotten witnesses, the low-level staffers, the journalists nobody remembers. The production is meticulous — archival tape woven through first-person interviews with people who were actually there. Each season runs about eight to ten episodes, and they build momentum the way a great documentary series does.

The numbers back up the quality. A 4.6-star rating from nearly 24,000 reviews, an Apple Podcasts Show of the Year award for the Roe v. Wade season, and a Podcast of the Year Ambie for the Clarence Thomas season. Different hosts tackle different seasons — Joel Anderson, Christina Cauterucci, Josh Levin — and each brings a distinct editorial voice while maintaining the show's trademark careful pacing. It rewards patience. These aren't stories you rush through. The slow burn is the whole point.

Flora Lichtman hosted this Gimlet Media gem where listeners called in with their burning questions and the show actually tracked down the answers. Why do news anchors all sound the same? How did Elvis impersonators take over Las Vegas wedding chapels? The questions were always delightfully specific, and the reporting was thorough without ever feeling heavy. Lichtman had a warm, curious style that made every topic feel worth investigating. The show ran from 2017 until Spotify cancelled it in October 2022 along with a batch of other Gimlet originals, which was a real loss for podcast fans. But the 213-episode archive is still available and holds up perfectly because the questions are timeless rather than newsy. Episodes are short and punchy, usually around 20 minutes, which makes them ideal for filling gaps between longer shows on a road trip. The format is simple but effective: someone asks a weird question, and Flora finds the most interesting person in the world to answer it. Rated 4.6 from over 4,400 reviews. The cancellation clearly stung -- listener reviews are full of people asking Spotify to bring it back. For families who like curiosity-driven content, this is a fantastic back-catalog binge that rewards listeners who pay attention to the small stuff.

Mick Sullivan has a real talent for finding the weirdest, most entertaining corners of history and turning them into stories that kids actually want to hear. This show covers spies, funny foods, George Washington's personal quirks, early ballooning experiments, and much more, all with original music and professional scoring that gives each episode a polished, almost theatrical feel. As a proud Kids Listen member, the show maintains high production standards while keeping the tone playful and accessible. With 139 episodes released on a bimonthly schedule, the archive is manageable enough to work through over a few road trips. Sullivan is a natural storyteller who knows how to pace a narrative so it builds to a satisfying payoff. Recent episodes have covered the history of peanut butter and jelly, submarine incidents during World War II, the building of the Erie Canal, and Peter the Great's stranger habits. Rated 4.7 from over 2,500 reviews -- that is a notably high rating for a kids' history podcast. The sweet spot for this show is probably ages 7 through 13, so older teens might find it a bit young. But for families with a mix of ages, it is a reliable choice that makes history feel alive and occasionally absurd in the best possible way.