01: Stuff You Should Know

by Erica Hohn
Stuff You Should Know is one of the five most popular podcasts on iTunes, and with good reason. The world is full of fascinating things (exploding lakes, face transplants) you don't know about, and other things (health care reform, economic policy) you feel like you should know about but seem complicated, boring and impenetrable. Stuff You Should Know introduces the first kind and demystifies the second with in-depth research and engaging delivery. Whether it's cannibalism, credit default swaps, toxoplasmosis or Delta Force, this is the place to begin the search for your next embarrassing obsession.
What makes the show a success is not so much the material - though it is, with a few exceptions, really interesting - but the hosts. Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant exude great enthusiasm for their subjects without coming off as pretentious or preachy. They mention every so often that they're working from notes, but the tone of the show is conversational and easygoing, with natural, genuine banter - there's no attempt to make the hosts or the show seem artificially cool. You learn a lot, but the content is actually fun and interesting, exactly the kind of stuff that you like knowing so you can impress your friends or your date with how knowledgeable and appealing you are. It also helps that the topics are so varied; regardless of your interests, there's a good mix of familiar and unfamiliar information, serious material and fun material, often in the same episode.
The show's earliest episodes suffer a bit in comparison to the later ones, due to both the rotating cast of co-hosts preceding the current Golden Age of Josh and Chuck's epic, nerdy bromance, and a significantly shorter running time. Early episodes are generally under six minutes long, which is hardly enough time to give a comprehensive or truly entertaining examination of most subjects. While five minutes is long enough to give listeners a pretty good overview of the world's most expensive toilet, it's not sufficient to do more than scratch the surface of topics like abandoned cities, the CIA's torture manual, or the field of Ripperology. So unless you're the completist type or curious about a specific show, I wouldn't really bother with most of the episodes from before August 2008. (Also worth skipping is the more recent discussion of "tinnovators," unless you really, really care about Altoid-tin craft projects.)
In summary, this show is totally awesome. Why are you still reading this instead of listening to the one about Muppets?