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Podcasting came about 16 years ago and has quickly taken the media world by storm. It seems like everyone has a podcast, from the guy down the road to your favorite celebrities. It is estimated that there are over a million different podcasts out there, with over 29 million different podcast episodes.

There are literally podcasts about everything, but one of the top three categories of podcasts is education. 

Now, either you have jumped on the bandwagon and love them (listening to them while driving, doing chores, working out, and talking about them obsessively to uninterested audiences), or you are so annoyed by this new trend (and the people who talk about them) that you have absolutely no interest in ever listening to one.

There is a third group of people: those who are interested but too intimidated to even try and figure out how to listen to them, where to listen to them, and which one to listen to.

New to Podcasts?

If you are using an Apple device, it probably came loaded with the Apple Podcast app, just as Androids have the Google Podcast app. Simply search your device for “podcast”. 

If your device does not have one of these apps preloaded, or if you want to upgrade, just go to the app store and search for a podcast player. There are many different podcast players with different features and layouts. Some are free, others are not. Explore the features and read the reviews to decide which one you want. You may even want to try out a few different apps.

There’s also nothing wrong with just keeping it simple. One of our writers tried several different apps only to go back to the basic preloaded podcast player on his phone. You can even just listen to the podcasts from the host’s website.

Once you are in a podcast app, you can start searching for what you want to listen to. You can search by genre, title, topic, or host. You can select individual episodes or subscribe to a podcast to be notified of new episodes or even automatically download new episodes.

Here are some of our favorite podcasts. Some provide professional development while others could be used as instructional tools. You could even  assign students to listen and respond to specific episodes.

Teachers

The Cult of Pedagogy - Episodes like: Creating Moments of Genuine Connection Online; Nine Ways Online Teaching Should Be Different from Face-to-Face; Backward Design: The Basics; Why White Students Need Multicultural and Social Justice Education

The Education Exchange - Episodes like: Condoleezza Rice on the “Deep Visceral Wounds of Slavery”; How Parents and Teachers Felt About the Covid-19 School Shutdowns; How Do Charter Schools Affect Traditional Public Schools; The Gap Between High School Graduation and College Preparedness

The Harvard Edcast - Episodes like: The Digital Divide and Remote Learning; School Leadership During a Crisis; Schooling for Critical Consciousness; College Students in the Age of Surveillance; Racial Differences in Special Education Identification

UnearthED - Episodes like: Getting Ready for Race Discussions Waiting for Us As We Return to School; Unlearning the Habits That Undermine Our Attempts to Support Great Teaching; Five Things We Wish We Knew About Distance Learning Before We Took the Leap; Mislabeling Students: Why Does It Still Happen, How Do We Stop It?

Administrators

Letter Leaders Better Schools - Episodes like: The Distance Learning Playbook; Deep and Joyful Learning; How to Best Prepare New Teachers; Creating Inclusive Spaces in School

ASCD Radio Learn Teach Lead - Episodes like: Managing the Residual Trauma of the Abrupt Transition to Remote Learning; Keeping Students Engaged and Connected Online: Three Things That Work; Traditional Classroom Practices to Leave Behind During Remote Teaching; How Can We Manage Our Emotions As We Learn Through an Unprecedented Crisis?

Principal Center Radio - Episodes like: Robert Barr & Emily Gibson—Building the Resilient School: Overcoming the Effects of Poverty With a Culture of Hope; Douglas Fisher—The Distance Learning Playbook; Michael Roberts—Shifting from Me to We: How to Jumpstart Collaboration in a PLC at Work

Content-Specific

Social Studies

Stuff You Missed in History Class - Episodes like: Wu Lien-Teh and the Manchurian Plague; Why No One Talks About “The Irish Slaves”; Seneca Village; Wat Tyler and the Uprising of 1381; Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning in Love

Ridiculous History - Episodes like: Ridiculous “Remedies” of the Spanish Flu; The Vikings Made a Fortune in the “Unicron” Trade; Miguel de Cervantes and the Case of the Fake Don Quixote

Our Fake History - Episodes like: Did Shakespeare Write the Plays; Who Was the First Emperor of China; What Caused the Black Death; Who Built the Pyramids; What is America’s Weirdest Secret Society

English Language Arts

The History of English Podcast - Episodes like: The Indo-European Discovery; A Grimm Brother Resurrects the Dead (…language); A Trilingual Nation; Chaucer’s Vulgar Tongue; Dialect Dialogues; You Say ‘To-may-to’; 

Teaching Middle School ELA - Episodes like: What’s Preventing You From Having Your Best School Year Yet; Quick and Easy Tips to Get Your Student Mastering the Writing Standards; 4 Things The Bachelor Can Teach You About Creating Engaging Lessons; 4 Tips for Leaving Meaningful Digital Feedback

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing - Episodes like: Writing Lesson from Bad Job Applications; Postal Zones, Reenter, Bougie; Why Aren’t We ‘Whelmed’? And Cabin ‘Fever,’ Anyone?; The Semicolon Is So Much More Interesting Than You Imagine

Science

StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson - Episodes like: Lunar Geology; Explore the Evolution of Stargazing; Neil deGrasse Tyson and Volcanologist Janine Krippner Answer Cosmic Queries on Volcanoes; Neil deGrasse Tyson Explores Our Love/Hate Relationship with Technology; Neil deGrasse Tyson and Michael Shermer Investigate Conspiracy Theories in the Coronaverse

Brains On! Science podcast for kids- Episodes like: The Buzz on Bees; Masks and Mouth Mist: What We Know About the Coronavirus Now; Poop Party: Answers to Your Poo Questions; Why Does Green Mean Go? And Other Color Conundrums; Injustice and Anger: Understanding Your Emotions

Nature Podcast- Episodes like: Why Skin Grows Bigger As You Stretch It; When Did People Arrive in the Americas? New Evidence Stokes Debate; Super-Efficient Catalyst Boosts Hope for Hydrogen Fuel; Galileo and the Science Deniers, and Physicists probe the Mysterious Pion

Science Magazine Podcast- Episodes like: Alien Hunters Get a Funding Boost, and Checking on the Link Between Chromosome ‘Caps’ and Aging; Arctic Sea Ice Under Attack, and Ancient Records that Can Predict the Future of Climate Change; Wildlife Behavior During a Global Lockdown, and Electric Mud Microbes 

Math

Breaking Math Podcast - Episodes like: Go with the Flow (Conceptual Calculus: Related Rates of Change); Vestigial Math (Math That Is Not Used Like It Used to Be); Walk the Dog (Calculus: Chain Rule); Maybe? (Probability and Statistics); Reality Is More Complex (Group Theory and Physics)

Teaching Math Teaching Podcast - Episodes like: High School Mathematics Lessons to Explore, Understand, and Respond to Social Injustice; Technology, Twitter, and Balance in Teaching Math Teachers; High School Math Teacher Discusses Math and Data Science in High School; Connecting Secondary Teaching to Advanced Mathematics