The 4 best of the fair and balanced political podcasts

Last updated on January 8th, 2020

The Trump Administration has contributed to growth in unexpected areas such as Twitter fatigue, fake news red alerts, and news and political podcasts. Since the 2016 presidential election, podcasts about politics have sprouted faster than DIY YouTube videos.

When the two political sides meet on network or cable TV away from the sanctity of their ideological temples, sparks fly as each side is more interested in scoring debate points that can send cheers through their base supporters instead of listening for areas of agreement and engaging in civilized discourse. It’s a cage match with harsh words, spit and sharp-edged accusations.

Left Right & Center

So when you listen to KCRW’s podcast Left Right & Center for the first time, it’s like bathing in ideas, civility, respectful disagreement and rhetorical chess play. KCRW is a Santa Monica CA-based NPR station with an impressive slate of podcasts.

The weekly podcast, which is about 55 minutes long, is moderated by Josh Barro – a business columnist at New York Magazine. Taking over from Matt Miller in 2015, Barro excels at keeping the podcast focused, articulate, insightful and, most of all, free from the vitriol of most other shows with talking heads from divergent political ideologies.

And true to the mission of the podcast, Barro artfully points out the holes in the view points of liberals and conservatives. From a flow perspective, Barro excels at escaping the mud pit of mutually destructive invective and seems to move to the next topic at just the right moment.

 On the Right is Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, a U.S.-based conservative magazine. Lowry defends the Right with intellectual rigor but still can criticize Trump for his personal behavior and for violations of traditional conservative ideology such as budget deficits and perceived foreign policy missteps like the North Korea summits.

The left is currently represented by guests such as Ana Marie Cox, a political columnist and host of the “With Friends Like These” podcast and Washington Post opinion columnist Elizabeth Bruenig. Both women present cogent arguments that support progressive positions and can chide Trump without sounding mean-spirited.

At the end of each three-topic podcast, Barro allots time for each panelist to fire a rant and asks, “What’s your soapbox this week?” giving the panelists about a minute to either wail on their political opponents or expound about an event, trend or development they embrace.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher

Ken Rudin’s Political Junkie

If you can answer this question “Who was the last person elected president whose only public office was being a member of the Cabinet?” or even care about the answer (Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce) then you may enjoy the Political Junkie podcast. Hosted by Ken Rudin, former NPR and ABC New political analyst, the podcast is more interested in the nuts and bolts of politics than party ideologies. Rudin interviews reporters from around the nation about political hot spots – for example, recently quizzing Vermont Public Radio’s Bob Kinzel about Bernie Sanders’s strengths and weaknesses as a candidate.

Rudin also delves into key moments in U.S. political history such as an episode last year when Ted Shaw, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, discussed the violence that led to President Lyndon Johnson’s leadership on the passage of the Voting Rights Act 53 years ago and what roadblocks it faces today.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher

FiveThirtyEight Politics

If you celebrate Pi Day with 3.14159 slices of pizza for dinner then the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is for you. Crunching numbers and using data and analysis to make political predictions is their specialty and the podcast revels in poll numbers, survey results, probabilities and how much public support there is for everything from health care reform to marijuana legislation.

In a recent episode, for instance, Nate Silver, Clare Malone, Micah Cohen and Galen Druke give out their report card for press coverage for the first quarter of the year and play “good use of polling or bad use of polling.”

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher

Whistlestop

Finally, the man for all seasons in political podcasts has to be former CBS This Morning co-host and now 60 Minutes corespondent John Dickerson. A grandmaster of political insight and strategy, Dickerson co-hosted the CBS This Morning podcast, the Slate Political Gabfest podcast and hosts Whistlestop. Using past political history to read the tea leaves of today’s turbulent politics Whistlestop, Dickerson leverages episodes such as “U.S. presidents of the past didn’t always act politely either” and “Are President Trump’s moves in North Korea a lesson taken from the Nixon Playbook” to remind us that we can learn from the past on how to cope the massive turbulence that rocks us today.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher

So far, the podcast world has mostly avoided the Game of Thrones political battles and the good news for listeners is that there is a variety of options for listeners who want a wider spectrum of political viewpoints than they could find on broadcast TV and cable.