Whilst it isn't a continuous narrative, the best podcast I listen to is without a doubt the BBC's In Our Time, hosted by Melvyn Bragg. They get on respected, teaching academics who are experts on the topics, and perfectly balance (as well as you can within 40 minutes at least..) the narrative of the week's topic with historical insight and academic debate. And Bragg is one of the most entertaining radio hosts on the air today.

Here is a link to their history catalogue, and here is their listener-voted top 10.

Is it weird to say that mine does? Or at least my primary aim was a Carlin-esque deep dive (I'm a fan), that is accurate and done in a story-telling style... just done on a topic no one else had tried to do yet, and the one I had spent a long time learning about. Here is a review rather than me saying it:

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Mr Rogers discusses Pol Pot

Methodical, thorough, professional and always interesting, Dr Peters presents a complex and difficult subject that has many lessons for today’s world. He’s as good as Dan Carlin(!), but less military-centric and less caffeinated. His calm, measured lecture style belies a strong interest in the subject, in getting the history right, and in examining long-arc trends and causes rather than just names and dates.

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That being said, it is a niche topic. Series is focused on Cambodian history with an aim of explaining the long rise of the Khmer Rouge and the factors that led to the disastrous Democratic Kampuchea in 1975. It does touch on other pertinent global historical things as well I should say... Southeast Asian history, French Revolution, an intro to communist thinking and examples in practise like USSR and PRC. I’ve collected almost all of the best sources on the topic, spent countless hours watching the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and was fortunate enough to learn from one of the most distinguished scholars on the subject.

Its called 'In the Shadows of Utopia', and you can visit www.shadowsofutopia.com for more info or click here to go straight to your device's podcast app.

/u/EdHistory101 has previously offered examples of podcasts that are better than Hardcore History. There are other comments in that thread explaining why Dan Carlin is bad at history.

Link to the AskHistorians podcast. The subreddit podcast has had multiple hosts over the years and covers a wide variety of topics.

/u/cthulhushrugged hosts a long-running podcast about the history of China, currently in the Ming dynasty.

EDIT: EdHistory101 the redditor also has a podcast of the same name.

One of my favourites is the (dorkily named) "Byzantium and Friends" by Anthony Kaldellis. He's one of the most interesting scholars working in the field of Byzantine studies nowadays and knows pretty much everybody in the field which makes for a good guest list.

It doesn't tell a straight up narrative history (for that, find Kaldellis' own books) but features conversations with all kinds of very interesting scholars on a wide, wide variety of topics. Some of these are a bit esotheric, (episode on a specific statue?) others are fascinating answers to questions I never thought to ask (How do modern Turkish films represent Byzantium?) and yet others are just plain fun. (I heartily recommend the episodes on "If you could meet and interview one person from Byzantine history, who would it be and why?" with some very thought-out answers to a thoroughly un-scholarly question.) There's even an episode on Byzantium in video games.

A lot of fun, as well as a great way to get insights in the latest scholarship on these topics. But feel free to skip the statue episodes if they do not appeal.

I'm going to misconstrue the prompt slightly here in assuming that what you are interested isn't a podcast, per se, but rather that you are interested in is content in audio form - something you can listen to while doing chores, driving, or the like - for which my recommendation is always going to be that audiobooks are inherently better than podcasts! Often "good" podcasts are going to be little more than regurgitated material primarily from one book or long form article - coincidentally the fact that this is often done without proper credit and acknowledgement was the day's topic in some corners of Twitter about a week ago - and as such, my response is generally 'Why don't you just go to the actual book?'

Generally you can get audiobooks for free through your local library via Overdrive or a similar service, and there are literally mountains of them available out there! As for recommendations... dipping into my own listening history, some past highlights of books I've consumed in audioform would include:

Eric Cline's 1177

Heather Ann Thompson's Blood in the Water

Rick Perlstein's series on American Conservatism (Before the Storm, Nixonland, Invisible Bridge, Reaganland)

Benjamin Park's Kingdom of Nauvoo

Burrough, Tomlinson, and Stanford's Forget the Alamo

That's only a small sampling, as I go through well over 100 audiobooks a year (some of which end up being utter crap, to be sure), and if you check out the AskHistorians booklist you'll find quite a large number of those are available as audiobooks (some time back we went through to try and mark which ones, with a little headphones icon next to it, but it could use an update).

There is of course a downside in that part of the appeal of podcasts, for many, is finding a host whose style you really enjoy, but at the end of the day I would trade that for a better quality of content any day of the week, and of course there are tons of great narrators out there working in the audiobook world too, so I don't think it to be much of a sacrifice at all.

Tides of History is maybe the easiest recommendation from me, for a well produced, professional quality podcast that is by someone with a background in academic scholarship. So far it has had two "seasons" (or maybe four? not really sure how it is counted), one starting at the end of the Middle Ages and ending with the Hapsburg-Ottoman Wars, and the one going on now which began with human origins and is about to end in the Bronze Age Collapse (it is also something of a "successor podcast" to The Fall of Rome). It is a nice mix of chronological episodes that are broad overviews of a topic and interviews with individual historians and archaeologists. I think Patrick Wyman does a very good job of synthesizing scholarship and presenting it to you in a way that doesn't feel like a boring historiography section at the beginning of a book.

If you want something that is purely topic focused and not chronological at all, I would recommend The Ancients which is basically just interviews but they are very well produced and the topic choice is excellent. Recent episodes have ranged from the remains of weapons found in the Terracotta Army to Mary Magdelene to dogs in ancient Greece to the peopling of Australia. It is somewhat by necessity Rome centric but the host (Tristan Hughes) is also open about wanting to range more widely.

Similarly, the BBC History Extra podcast is structured around interviews with a variety of researchers on varied topic. Warning on that occasionally the interviews will be with historical novelists or TV writers (or even political figures) which can be a bit of a mixed bag.

Also if I can speak entirely outside of my expertise, the History of Japan podcast is very good.

In addition to Shadows of Utopia, already mentioned by, well, u/ShadowsofUtopia, I really like Beyond Huaxia for Chinese history going way back. A lot of history podcasts expand too far outside the hosts' expertise in order to keep content going. The more contained run of this one helps keep that from happening much. He's a college prof/lecturer, and hosts the podcast very much in that same tone of trying to keep the students attention.

I also really like Myanmar Oral History Project which does things a bit differently. The host's audio quality isn't great, their delivery is a bit slow, but the subject matter and approach through using oral history interviews is tops. And often the people who are the focus of individual episodes don't have the audio quality issue anyway. But some of the guests are great.

The issue there is really just that the entertaining presentation is really down to someone who may only be on the podcast that one episode, and the main host lacks all those qualities you mention.

A few of my favourites:

• Ancient Warfare Podcast; an offshoot of the Ancient Warfare magazine, this has 2-5 expert historians on each episode who know their stuff to discuss ancient warfare topics. It is focused on the Mediterranean and Middle East, generally covering ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman periods, but also touches on Assyrians, Hittites, etc.

This is a great podcast for two reasons: the topics are surprisingly diverse (e.g. "what did military maps and cartography look like on campaign? How diverse were armour standards in different periods? What happened to deserters and defectors?"), and the presenters are great. They have deep academic knowledge (and regularly cite both well-known and pretty niche sources), and "real" experience. Some are interested in reenactment, so have personally tried marching 25 miles in a day under full Roman legionary marching load, etc.; and others have served in modern militaries, and so have a real insight into things like morale and teamwork in dangerous situations.

• The Napoleonacist; as you can see, I'm interested in military topics. This podcast is well-researched, being produced by a PhD student / post-doc historian, and features a network of knowledgeable experts. It gives a good insight into what it means to be "up-to-date on emerging historical consensus" when the topic is one as well-covered as the Napoleonic period.

Though it is a primarily military focus, there is a lot of discussion on related topics, such as military and civil law, the role of civil society, art and poetry and how they impacted on National politics, the huge un-sung role the women played in international diplomacy, etc. And, of course, a large number of battles!

This podcast, the Ancient Warfare Podcast, and this subreddit, are the examples I often give people on how the accessibility of history are changing for lifelong learning. They give knowledge, and also a deeper understanding of historiography and the difficulty of understanding the past.

• Dan Snow's History Hit; this is a bit basic to be honest, but covers a wide variety of topics to a surface level. It's entertaining and a good entry point for some topics, but the value is the breadth and prolific production of new material. Keep it in the podcast list and just listen to episodes you think you might enjoy!

• In Our Time; described above, these are insightful and interesting debates on diverse historical topics, all in under 40 minutes!

Well, maybe you should consider expanding your preferences into audiobooks? I, like you, started off my audio historical learning with Mr. Carlins telling. He’s fascinating and he reignited my love of history and drove me down a path I still follow. After his WWI telling I needed more, I tried his ancient civilizations and others but realized nothing quite hit the level of detail and battle descriptions of my first experience with him. So I looked inward, “what don’t I know about that I wish I did?” Napoleon was my first. I then looked for books with a good narrator and found my first historical audiobook. and boy did it change everything for me.

Note, you’ll always hear from a very vocal few that book learning is always the way to go and that you do not get the full experience unless u do so. In some ways, they are correct. But if you’re a casual lover of history like me, it’s alwAys about personal preference. Enjoy history the way that beat suits you. For me, my love of reading was killed my first day of law school. Despite that, and nearly 8 years later, I’ve completed over 90 audiobooks including 12 historical novels. I’m no historian, but I am that much more knowledgeable because of this great tech.

Here’s my list of recommendations:

• Napoleon, a Life: by Andrew Roberts — this title has one of the best narrators and contains excellent descriptions of battle strategy. Robert’s piece takes the known history of Napoleon and digests it for the reader eloquently and clearly. It was also surprisingly entertaining.

• Battle Cry of Freedom: James M. McPherson, narrated by Jonathan Davis — it took me a while to finally arrive at this piece, but this is by far my FAVORITE historical audiobook of all time. If you want to actually have a reliable solid base of knowledge on the American Civil War, I would start here.

• Vicksburg by Donald L. Miller, narrated by Rick Adamson — yet another great telling of the military genius of the civil war

• The Storm of War by Andrew Roberts, narrated by Christian Rodska - a birds eye telling of WWII if you want a “quick” understanding of it. For a more detailed discussion, I’d recommend next, the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson. Truly informative.

• The Crusades by Thomas Asbridge, narrated by Derek Perkins Pretty much speaks for itself. I had a lot of fun with this one.

• 1776 by David McCullough, narrated by David McCullough I haven’t started this one yet, but I have heard nothing but great things re the American Revolution.

Of course, historical books are trial and error. Staying interested on a topic is not always easy. With audiobooks you’ll find that having a good story, a fantastic author, and a great narrator do not always come as a package. For example on recommendation, I “read” SPQR by Mary Beard for a birds eye of Roman Empire history. Bad mistake because 1 it’s too big for one book, and 2 the recommendation was not for audiobook. Though informative, the narrator was dull, and the author was also one who frequently viewed history through a critical 21st century lense. Something I loath. Anyway, . I hope this helps you, and wish you luck!

I recommend the medical history podcast Bedside Rounds. The author Adam Rodman or /u/BedsideRounds was on an episode of the AskHistorians podcast so I feel it qualifies as well researched, and he’s a fantastic storyteller.

http://bedside-rounds.org/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8pk9ip/askhistorians_podcast_113_the_history_of_medicine/

Hi there anyone interested in recommending things to OP! While you might have a title to share, this is still a thread on /r/AskHistorians, and we still want the replies here to be to an /r/AskHistorians standard - presumably, OP would have asked at /r/history or /r/askreddit if they wanted a non-specialist opinion. So give us some indication why the thing you're recommending is valuable, trustworthy, or applicable! Posts that provide no context for why you're recommending a particular podcast/book/novel/documentary/etc, and which aren't backed up by a historian-level knowledge on the accuracy and stance of the piece, will be removed.