6 Great Columbian-Helmed Podcasts You Should Listen to This Winter
From a deep dive into the whale who played Free Willy to a treatise on censorship and surveillance on the border, add these to your queue.
The days are shorter, the dark lasts longer, and we officially need some great audio to accompany us during these chilly winter months. Luckily, Columbians have answered the call — producing, hosting, and guesting on podcasts designed to entertain, enlighten, and bring us closer to one another and the world around us.
Below, we're highlighting six episodes or shows we think you should add to your podcast queue, to be used to perk you up on your commute, in your kitchen, or as accompaniment on a brisk winter walk.
You can always find more inspiration in our Columbia podcast directory. Are we missing a show that we should know about? Send it in to [email protected].
Happy headphones time to all!
The Good Whale
Columbia Journalism Professor and MacArthur "Genius" Grant winner Daniel Alarcón (CC'99) hosts and reports for a new podcast from The New York Times and Serial Productions about efforts to free an orca whale named Keiko, who played Willy in the 1993 blockbuster Free Willy.
This six-episode series follows Keiko's journey and the "wildly ambitious science experiment to return Keiko to the ocean." Equal parts nostalgic, terrifying, and thought-provoking, the podcast asks the question: is it possible, or right, to train a captive animal to thrive in the wild?
Views on First: Free Speech on the Border
Season three of Knight First Amendment Institute's award-winning podcast Views on First could not have been more prescient, with immigration policies soon to change. This season, titled "Free Speech on the Border," tackles "the ways our government uses the border as a justification for censorship and surveillance."
Each episode features scholars, journalists, filmmakers, and activists whose lives have been shaped by government surveillance related to the border and is hosted by Knight Institute attorneys, including George Wang, Anna Diakun, Ramya Krishnan, and Alex Abdo.
Author Colm Toibin on James Baldwin's Interiority
Long before Colm Tóibín, Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities, became known for his 11 award-winning novels such as Brooklyn and The Master, he was fascinated with James Baldwin, reading Go Tell It on the Mountain as a teenager. In November, he joined WNYC's Notes from America with Kai Wright, to discuss Baldwin's interiority.
The episode is a love letter from the acclaimed author to the acclaimed author, an episode for all writers hoping to draw deeply from the well of inspiration.
Beyond Unprecedented: The Post-Pandemic Economy
Season four of Beyond Unprecedented, a Columbia Law School podcast hosted by law professors Eric Talley and Dorothy S. Lund, dives deep into the "interaction between our legal and regulatory frameworks and current economic developments."
From Elon Musk to autonomous vehicles to AI, this season moves beyond the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the economy into the economic and legal complexities faced by workers, investors, and companies today.
Food Pod for Humanity
If you've been grocery shopping in the past six months, you've probably noticed a seeming uptick in food recalls — from waffles to, more recently, cucumbers. What's going on there? Enter: The Columbia Climate School's new podcast Food Pod for Humanity, which explores "how our food is grown, harvested, processed, marketed, sold, bought, consumed, and discarded."
Hosted by the Food for Humanity Initiative's Jochebed Louis-Jean and Dannie Dinh, this four-episode season tackles food waste, compost, and food rescue.
Vis A Vis
Brought to you by the Alliance Program at Columbia University (a partnership bringing together Columbia University and three leading French higher education institutions: Sciences Po, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and Ecole Polytechnique), the Vis a Vis podcast "features conversations that challenge our understanding of key global, economic and social issues by casting them in a transatlantic perspective."
Hosted by Emmanuel Kattan, recently released episodes include insights into political polarization, jihadism, screen addiction, and artificial intelligence's impact on the planet.