The 17 Best Learning Podcasts (2026)

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.

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.

Andrew Huberman is a Stanford neuroscience professor who somehow made a podcast about brain science one of the top ten shows in the world. Huberman Lab launched in 2021 and has grown to 381 episodes, frequently ranking number one in Science, Education, and Health & Fitness categories simultaneously. The show holds a 4.8-star rating from over 27,000 reviews, which is remarkable for content this technical.

The format has evolved from Huberman's solo deep-dives into specific topics to include more interview episodes with experts. Recent guests include behavioral geneticist Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden, neuroscientist David Eagleman, habit expert James Clear, and psychiatrist Dr. Paul Conti. Episodes can be long, often stretching past two hours, but Huberman structures them clearly enough that you can jump to the sections most relevant to you.

What makes this show work is Huberman's ability to translate dense neuroscience into practical protocols. He does not just explain how dopamine works; he tells you exactly what to do with that information to improve your sleep, focus, or recovery. The show covers neural plasticity, learning, fitness, nutrition, mental health, addiction, and emerging research on the nervous system. Rogan has had Huberman on JRE multiple times, and those episodes were consistently among the most popular. If you found yourself taking notes during those conversations, Huberman Lab gives you an entire library of that same content.

Stephen Dubner built a career on asking questions that economists are not supposed to ask, and Freakonomics Radio is where those questions get the full treatment. The podcast grew out of the bestselling book series he co-authored with Steven Levitt, but it has long since evolved beyond its origins into one of the most consistently interesting shows about how the world actually works.

Each week, Dubner picks a topic and peels back the layers. Why do some policies that sound great on paper fail completely in practice? What can wolves teach us about organizational behavior? How does the airline industry really make safety decisions? The episodes run 45 to 65 minutes and feature a mix of expert interviews, data analysis, and Dubner's own narration tying it all together.

With over 950 episodes and a 4.5-star rating from more than 30,000 reviews, the show has earned its reputation for rigorous but accessible thinking. Dubner is a skilled interviewer who pushes back on his guests without being combative. He genuinely wants to understand, and that curiosity comes through in every conversation.

The Freakonomics Radio Network has spawned several spinoffs, but the original remains the flagship for good reason. It takes the tools of economics and applies them to everyday life in ways that feel both surprising and obvious once you hear the explanation. That is a tough trick to repeat weekly for almost a thousand episodes, but Dubner keeps pulling it off.

Roman Mars made a podcast about design that somehow appeals to people who have never thought about design for a single second. That is the magic of 99% Invisible. The show covers the built world around us: why street signs look the way they do, how a hospital floor plan affects patient recovery, the story behind the flags that cities fly. Design, as Mars frames it, is everywhere you have stopped noticing.

With 780 episodes and counting, 99PI has covered an astonishing range of topics since 2010. Episodes typically run 30 to 40 minutes, which is just right for a commute or a walk. Mars has one of the most recognizable voices in podcasting, warm and measured, and the production quality from the team consistently ranks among the best in the industry.

The show earns its 4.8-star rating from over 25,000 reviews by being genuinely surprising. You go in thinking you are going to hear about architecture or urban planning, and you come out understanding something deeper about human behavior and the invisible systems that shape daily life. Recent episodes have expanded beyond pure design into related territories like infrastructure, politics, and cultural history.

If you have ever walked past a building and wondered why it looks the way it does, or noticed a weird detail on a street corner, this podcast will scratch that itch every single week.

Malcolm Gladwell takes things you thought you understood and turns them sideways. Revisionist History re-examines events, people, ideas, and even songs from the past, asking a pointed question: did we get it right the first time? The answer, more often than not, is no.

Gladwell is a polarizing figure, and that is part of what makes the show compelling. He commits fully to his arguments, sometimes provocatively so. One season he spent multiple episodes on the problems with American higher education. Another time he dissected how country music evolved through a single song. He is at his best when he takes a small, overlooked detail and builds outward until you are seeing a familiar subject in an entirely new light.

The show is now on its fourteenth season, with 196 episodes total. Each runs about 35 to 45 minutes and is produced by Pushkin Industries with the kind of polish you expect from a professional audio house. The 4.7-star rating from over 58,000 reviews tells you that the show connects, even when listeners disagree with Gladwell's conclusions.

The storytelling style is novelistic. Gladwell does not just present facts; he builds narratives with characters, tension, and emotional payoffs. Some episodes feel like short stories that happen to be true. If you enjoy having your assumptions challenged, and you do not mind a host who occasionally gets under your skin on purpose, Revisionist History delivers that experience reliably.

TED talks changed how ideas spread, and TED Radio Hour takes those talks and builds something richer around them. Host Manoush Zomorodi selects several TED speakers around a common theme and weaves their ideas together into hour-long episodes that feel more cohesive than watching the individual talks would.

The show has been running since 2012, with 378 episodes covering themes like creativity, resilience, artificial intelligence, and the future of work. Each episode runs about 50 minutes and features extended interviews with the speakers that go well beyond the 18-minute stage format. You hear the thinking behind the talk, the doubts, the research that did not make the final cut.

What makes TED Radio Hour work as a knowledge podcast is the curation. A single episode might connect a neuroscientist, an architect, and a social worker around a shared idea, revealing connections that none of them would have drawn individually. Zomorodi and previous hosts Guy Raz and Alison Stewart guide these conversations with a steady hand, keeping the focus on ideas rather than personalities.

The show holds a 4.3-star rating from over 20,000 reviews. NPR's production quality is evident throughout, with clean audio and thoughtful editing. It is particularly good if you enjoy TED talks but wish they went deeper. The format gives speakers room to breathe, and the thematic structure means you come away with a more complete understanding than any single talk could provide.

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.

Guy Raz interviews the founders behind the world's most recognizable companies, and the conversations consistently go deeper than the usual startup success story. How I Built This releases episodes on Mondays and Thursdays, running anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half. Each interview follows a founder from their earliest days — the moment of inspiration, the initial failures, the funding struggles — through to the company becoming a household name. Raz has interviewed the people behind Airbnb, Spanx, Patagonia, Instagram, and hundreds more across 818 episodes. The show holds a 4.7-star rating from nearly 30,000 reviews. Raz is an exceptionally skilled interviewer. He asks follow-up questions that other hosts would miss, and he creates space for founders to talk about doubt and failure, not just triumph. The "Advice Line" episodes add a nice variation where previous guests mentor new entrepreneurs with specific problems. The educational value comes not from abstract business theory but from pattern recognition — listen to enough of these stories and you start noticing what successful founders have in common, and more interestingly, where they diverge completely. It is a masterclass in entrepreneurship delivered through personal narrative, and one of the best business podcasts for anyone who learns through stories rather than textbooks.

Dan Carlin does not release episodes often — sometimes months pass between them — but when one drops, it commands your attention for four to six hours straight. Hardcore History is a solo show where Carlin narrates sweeping historical events with the intensity of a dramatic performance and the sourcing of a graduate seminar. His series on World War I, the Mongol Empire, the Atlantic slave trade, and the fall of the Roman Republic are genuinely riveting, the kind of content that makes a long road trip feel too short. The archive holds just 73 episodes because each one is the length of an audiobook. Carlin builds tension, reads primary sources aloud, and constantly asks listeners to imagine themselves inside historical moments — what it felt like to be a soldier at the Somme or a citizen watching the Republic crumble. His 4.8-star rating from over 63,000 reviews makes it one of the most beloved podcasts ever produced. The approach is unorthodox by academic standards — Carlin is a journalist and commentator, not a historian, and he is upfront about that. He prioritizes narrative and emotional truth over exhaustive historiography. That means professional historians sometimes quibble with his framing, but for most listeners the trade-off is worth it. Nothing else in podcasting sounds like this.

Running since 2005 with over 1,100 episodes, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is one of the longest-running science podcasts and one of the most consistent. Dr. Steven Novella hosts a rotating panel that includes Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Evan Bernstein, and Cara Santa Maria, and together they dissect the week's science news through the lens of critical thinking and scientific skepticism. The format is panel discussion with recurring segments: science or fiction, news items, interviews with researchers, and listener questions. Episodes run about 80 to 90 minutes and release biweekly. The show carries a 4.7-star rating from over 6,000 reviews. What makes the SGU valuable as a learning tool is that it does not just report on science — it teaches you how to evaluate scientific claims yourself. The panel regularly breaks down logical fallacies, cognitive biases, and the mechanics of bad research design. Steve Novella is a Yale neurologist, and his ability to explain complex medical and scientific topics without dumbing them down is a genuine skill. The family dynamic between the Novellas adds personality without derailing the content. If you want a podcast that strengthens your ability to think clearly about evidence, this one has been doing it longer than almost anyone.

Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick spend their days thinking about the strangest corners of science and culture, and Stuff To Blow Your Mind is where they share what they find. The show lives at the intersection of neuroscience, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary biology, and speculative future technology. If it makes you tilt your head and go "wait, really?" it probably belongs on this podcast.

The format has evolved over the show's 2,000-plus episodes into several recurring segments. Core episodes tackle big scientific topics in multi-part series, giving subjects the space they deserve. "Weirdhouse Cinema" applies the show's analytical lens to bizarre and overlooked films. "The Monstrefact" examines the science behind mythological creatures. Listener mail rounds things out.

Episodes run anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes and drop daily, which is a staggering output. The 4.3-star rating from over 5,500 reviews reflects a loyal audience that appreciates the show's willingness to get weird. Lamb and McCormick are well-read hosts who bring genuine academic curiosity to every topic without taking themselves too seriously.

The show is particularly good when it finds the overlap between hard science and the uncanny. An episode about bioluminescence might lead into a discussion of deep-sea mythology. A series on sleep disorders could veer into the history of dream interpretation. That willingness to follow ideas across disciplinary boundaries is what keeps longtime listeners hooked.

Physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince make an unexpectedly effective double act. The Infinite Monkey Cage is a BBC Radio 4 panel show that tackles scientific topics — nuclear fusion, brain-computer interfaces, the secret lives of eels — with genuine expertise and genuine humor in equal measure. Each episode runs about 42 minutes and features Cox and Ince alongside a rotating panel of scientists and celebrity guests. Jane Goodall, Tim Peake, and dozens of other prominent researchers have appeared. The show has produced 247 episodes with a 4.7-star rating from nearly 1,900 reviews. Cox brings the physics credentials and the ability to explain complex concepts without condescension. Ince brings the comedy and, more importantly, the willingness to ask the questions that a non-scientist audience is actually thinking. The panel format means you get multiple expert perspectives on each topic rather than a single narrator's take, and the live-audience setting adds an energy that studio recordings cannot replicate. Episodes release in batches tied to BBC broadcast seasons, which means gaps between runs, but the back catalog covers an enormous range of scientific ground. British listeners already know this show well. International audiences who discover it tend to wonder why it took them so long.

David McRaney built this podcast on a humbling premise: your brain is lying to you, and it is doing it constantly. You Are Not So Smart explores the psychology of reasoning, cognitive biases, and decision-making — all the ways human minds take shortcuts that feel rational but lead us astray. McRaney interviews researchers, psychologists, and authors in episodes that typically run 45 minutes to an hour and 20 minutes, releasing twice a month. The show has produced 330 episodes and holds a 4.5-star rating from about 1,700 reviews. McRaney is not a passive interviewer. He brings substantial knowledge to each conversation and pushes back when claims get too broad, which gives the discussions a collaborative feel rather than the standard question-and-answer rhythm. The topics range from confirmation bias and the backfire effect to moral psychology and the science of persuasion. His bestselling books grew from this podcast, and the influence runs both ways — the show benefits from the depth of research he puts into his writing. For anyone interested in understanding why people (including yourself) believe what they believe and do what they do, this is one of the most focused and rewarding shows available. It will make you more skeptical of your own certainty, and that alone makes it worth the time.

Comedian Chris Duffy hosts this TED Audio Collective show, and the comedic background matters. How to Be a Better Human approaches self-improvement from unexpected angles — cognitive science, workplace dynamics, meditation research, the mechanics of love — with a lightness that keeps it from becoming preachy. Each weekly episode runs 37 to 47 minutes and features conversations with TED speakers and other experts who bring sharp, specific insights rather than broad motivational platitudes. The show has produced 354 episodes across six seasons and carries a 4.1-star rating from about 1,300 reviews. Duffy is good at finding the practical takeaway in academic research. Guests do not just talk about their work — they explain what listeners can do differently starting today. The format works because Duffy is genuinely funny without undermining the substance, and he asks the kind of follow-up questions that turn a good interview into a useful one. Some listeners note the ads can be heavy in the free version, which is worth knowing. But the actual content consistently delivers concrete ideas for personal growth grounded in evidence rather than wishful thinking. It sits in a sweet spot between pure entertainment and pure education that not many podcasts manage to occupy.

Ira Flatow has been hosting Science Friday since 1991, making it one of the longest-running science programs in American media. The podcast version, co-hosted with Flora Lichtman, releases daily segments that run 12 to 30 minutes each, drawn from the longer weekly radio broadcast on WNYC. The format is interview-based: Flatow and Lichtman talk with scientists, researchers, and engineers about current discoveries, emerging technologies, and the natural world. With 1,200 episodes in the podcast feed and a 4.4-star rating from over 6,000 reviews, the show covers an extraordinary range of scientific ground. Flatow has a warm interviewing style that puts experts at ease, and his decades of experience mean he knows how to translate jargon into plain language without losing accuracy. The shorter episode lengths make Science Friday ideal for commuters or anyone who wants their science in digestible pieces rather than multi-hour deep-dives. Topics span from microbiology to astrophysics, and the show does a particularly good job of covering environmental science and climate research with both urgency and nuance. It is the kind of show that has earned its audience through decades of consistency rather than viral moments, and that reliability is exactly the point. When a major scientific story breaks, Science Friday is usually among the first to explain it clearly.

Intelligence Squared calls itself the home of lively debate, and with four episodes a week and over 1,600 in the archive, it has the track record to back that claim. The show covers economics, politics, literature, health, technology, and current affairs through in-depth interviews and structured debates with experts who genuinely disagree with each other. Episodes run 29 to 51 minutes and feature authors, policymakers, scientists, and public intellectuals discussing the ideas shaping the world right now. The 4.3-star rating from about 720 reviews reflects a smaller but dedicated audience. What makes Intelligence Squared stand out in a crowded field is the debate format. Rather than presenting a single perspective on a contested topic, the show stages real arguments and lets listeners hear strong cases on multiple sides. The quality of the guests is consistently high — these are people who have spent years thinking about their positions and can defend them under pressure. The show also includes branded partnership series and author conversation episodes that provide variety within the feed. For listeners who want to sharpen their thinking on complex issues rather than just absorb information passively, this show provides a model for how intelligent disagreement is supposed to work.