Last updated on February 18th, 2018

[extremely Mortal Kombat voice] “Round one, fight.”

We here at Discover Pods don’t condone violence. What we do condone, however, is making competitions out of basically anything. Enter, Podcast Madness 2018. As you may have seen with the announcement on Friday, we’re having a tournament-style competition featuring 64 of our favorite podcasts. Kind of like a college basketball tournament held next month that we can’t legally call by name.

The rules are pretty simple. Each round of the tournament will be open to voting for a week, at which point the polls close and the winners advance. Every person only gets one vote per round — no ballot stuffing. Due to this being an issue for the Discover Pods Awards, we’re having an email capture field to ensure this is a fair tournament. However, you won’t receive any emails unless you opt-in.

Here’s the schedule:

  • Round 1 February 12-18
  • Round 2 February 19-25
  • Sweet 16 February 26 – March 4
  • Elite Eight March 5-11
  • Final Four March 12-18
  • Championship March 19-25

Round 1 Matchups

Up and Comers Quadrant

  1. Twenty Thousand Hertz vs. Our Americana
  2. Beware of the Leopard vs. We Have Concerns
  3. The Monday American vs. Sneak Attack!
  4. My Thing Can Beat Your Things vs. Mission to Zyxx
  5. Podcasts We Listen to vs. The Sound and the Story
  6. Wine and Crime vs. Serendipity City
  7. Hello Internet vs. Doug Loves Movies
  8. Hi Phi Nation vs. Kevin’s Cryptids

True Crime Quadrant

  1. S-Town vs. Someone Knows Something
  2. Dirty John vs. Casefile
  3. Up and Vanished vs. Embedded
  4. My Favorite Murder vs. The Cleaning of John Doe
  5. Heaven’s Gate vs. Small Town Murder
  6. Criminal vs. Bay Area Mystery Club
  7. True Crime Garage vs. Crime Writers On
  8. Atlanta Monster vs. Crimetown

Figurehead Quadrant

  1. WTF with Marc Maron vs. Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations
  2. The Allusionist vs. Fresh Air
  3. 99% Invisible vs. What Really Happened?
  4. The Daily vs. Pod Save America
  5. This American Life vs. The Monday Morning Podcast
  6. The Bill Simmons Podcast vs. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History
  7. Lore vs. The Adam Carolla Show
  8. The Joe Rogan Experience vs. How I Built This

Audio Drama Quadrant

  1. Welcome to Night Vale vs. Godsfall
  2. Deliberations vs. Wooden Overcoats
  3. The Black Tapes vs. The Truth
  4. Tanis vs. Hector Vs The Future
  5. Knifepoint Horror vs. The Walk
  6. Homecoming vs. Magnus Archives
  7. King Falls AM vs. Poplar Cove
  8. The Blood Crow Stories vs. The Bright Sessions

I tried to make the survey as organized as possible, so the quadrants are separated by page on the survey — feel free to jump to a particular quadrant if you’d like. You don’t need to vote on every matchup, but it’s encouraged. 🙂

VOTING IS NOW CLOSED

Here’s a PDF version of the bracket