Podcast: Our 9 Favourites of the Moment

In parallel to the launch of our Futur et médias podcast, we present to you our more recent and not-to-be-missed podcasting discoveries, this fully vibrant format that is taking up more and more place in Canadians’ consumption habits.

Over the course of the past year, we have been well served in terms of podcasts. Both locally and globally, there has been an abundance of productions on a wide variety of topics. And there is a podcast available out there for everyone’s taste: whether in English or in French and whether the topic is new technology, the audiovisual industry or investigative journalism. How can you sort through such a wealth of content to listen to anywhere and anytime? We’ll show you how.

1. TIFF Long Take

The Toronto International Film Festival hits the mark straight on with this podcast that caters to both industry professionals and film buffs. Each week, hosts Rob Kraszewski and Geoff Macnaughton welcome creators, cinema lovers and experts and raise questions on the universe of motion pictures.

2. The Dropout

A must for all fans of investigative journalism. Over the course of six episodes, The Dropout tells the troubling story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, her promising enterprise and rising star of Silicon Valley, which nevertheless ends up being a dismal failure. How did a young billionaire who was destined to become the next Steve Jobs manage to lose everything in a heartbeat? After three years of investigating, ABC News plunges us straight into the heart of this saga through exclusive interviews granted by former employees, patients, investors and—for the very first time—the testimony of Elizabeth Holmes herself in the form of a deposition.

3. Distorsion

Montrealers Émile Gauthier and Sébastien Lévesque have reaped tremendous success with their Distorsion podcast throughout the French-speaking world. Each week, the duo scrutinizes the internet’s underworld in search of unusual cases and dark stories that are really chilling and presents weird stories of the digital era. You want more? Distorsion is now available in book format and presents 13 untold stories that ignited the World Wide Web.

4. La puce à l’oreille

La puce à l’oreille is the very first platform in Quebec that presents documentary podcasts intended for young audiences. We literally fell in love with the Femmes et technologies podcast, which paints the portrait of five women who revolutionized their respective fields by their contributions to major technological and scientific innovations over the centuries. For young and old alike.

5. IRL

Produced by Mozilla, IRL explores the fascinating gap between our real-world lifes and our virtual realities. Inspiring herself from web-based stories, host Manoush Zomorodi exposes major problems related to our online identity: invasion of privacy, computer hacking, fake news, cyberbullying, etc. In the end, is our online life is real life?

6. Le carnet

This podcast is a must to remain connected with the latest digital news. Each week, Bruno Guglielminetti, a communications expert and former journalist for Le Devoir, La Presse and Radio-Canada, welcomes guests and collaborators to discuss the issues of the day with respect to new technology, innovation and the web.

7. Reply All

Created by the American company Gimlet and broadcast for almost five years now, Reply All ingeniously tackles the subject of life in the internet age by focusing on the relationship that we have with technology on a daily basis. As The Guardian so eloquently put it, it’s a “podcast about the internet’ that is actually an unfailingly original exploration of modern life and how to survive it..” With over one million listens per episode, it goes without saying that you are missing out on something if you have not already tuned into this podcast!

8. Pèse sur start

Hosted by Kazzie Charbonneau and Christine Lemus, this French-language podcast that was recently rewarded in the Games & Hobbies Series of the Canadian Podcast Awards (CPA) invites you to plunge into the world of video games. Whether you’re interested in console games, computer games, mobile games or even table games, Pèse sur start is for gamers of all generations and geeks of all horizons.

9. Should This Exist?

What impact does new technology have on humans? Should This Exist? is a podcast that tackles this burning issue by inviting innovative creators to set their business plan aside the time of an episode and re-examine their way of doing things from a more social perspective. How far could a technology’s potential lead us? And what could go wrong? Caterina Fake meets up with some of today’s leading entrepreneurs to shed light on these questions.