The best podcasts for German speaking folks

One of the most important podcasts in Germany. The hosts Philip Banse and Ulf Buermeyer show their listeners each week, what constructive journalism looks (and sounds) like. Explaining current topics in politics and society, they combine attention to detail and comprehensability while never sounding condescending.

Two physicists, Dr. Nicolas Wöhrl and Dr. Reinhard Remfort talk about what's new in science by presenting each other (mostly) current papers from the scientific community. Biology, chemistry, psychology, engineering, linguistics and of course physics are just some examples of what those papers can be about, but you can always sense that you listen to two friends talking about what they are passionate about: Science!

An interview podcast about anything and everything. Host Matze Hielscher invites musicians, politicians, comedians, authors, journalists, podcasters, actors and anyone who can be considered interesting, to talk about who they are, what they do and what they like to talk about.

THE history podcast par excellence. Two trained historians, Richard Hemmer and Dr. Daniel Meßner, telling each other stories from history. In over 400 weeks they never failed to publish an episode! Their stories can be about everything that has happened at some point in history: incredible incidents, interesting (and most of the time undeservedly fameless) figures and any footnote of human history can serve as a topic all while trying to abandon pure eurocentristic views. Non-native speakers of German be warned: since one of the hosts is Austrian, some words and expressions are being used that you might not have encountered while learning German.

Originally I would have loved to include the famous "Not Safe For Work" podcast as the original blabbering podcast in German, but it has been discontinued, so I decided on a more recent example. Comedian Bastian Bielendorfer and physicist Reinhard Remfort (yup, he made this list twice), friends of the closest kind: those kind of friends who insult each other on a regular basis and who even show up to the other one's wedding without any gift. Sometimes funny, sometimes annoying, sometimes boring, sometimes informative, you never know which one it's gonna be this week.