SOME OF YOU might have no idea what a podcast is. Some of you may have listened to them back in 2005, when they were declared the future of radio, and then stopped in 2008, when they clearly weren’t the future of radio. Many of you probably listen to “Serial,” not realizing that other amazing podcasts exist. (They do!)

But no matter where you stand on the podcast-consuming spectrum, we’re going to repeat what folks said back in 2005 because it’s for real now: Podcasts are awesome. You should listen to some.

Essentially a free-form radio show delivered on-demand over the Internet rather than the airwaves, podcasts have come a long way in the past decade. Last year, “Serial” became a breakaway smash hit (episodes of the show have been downloaded 95.7 million times to date). People were talking about the serialized nonfiction crime story around the water cooler. “Saturday Night Live” did a parody. Podcasts were, at last, mainstream.

Then came the ripple effect. Guy Raz, host of NPR’s “TED Radio Hour,” credits “Serial” with helping to double the number of downloads for his own show’s podcast. The streaming-media company Spotify has taken note; it’s starting to make select podcasts available through its service for some users, with a larger rollout to come.

Although podcasts are known for their casual, we’re-just-shooting-the-breeze format, that doesn’t mean they aren’t legit. A couple of months ago, President Barack Obama sat down in podcaster Marc Maron’s garage for an hour-long interview. The show’s name is “WTF,” which stands for what you think it does—a far cry from CNN.

“If [Obama] had done that with another news agency, it would have been more stiff; it wouldn’t have felt as relaxed,” said actor, model and podcaster RuPaul. “That’s what makes podcasts so lovely—you feel like you’re spending intimate time with the subject.”

Despite all the momentum, there are kinks to be worked out. Listening to podcasts isn’t as simple as tuning into traditional radio. (Don’t worry, we supply a primer.) And it still isn’t easy to discover new podcasts—or to share episodes that you’ve enjoyed with your friends.

Jake Shapiro, founder and CEO of Public Radio Exchange, looks to email newsletters, like “The Audio Signal,” that review new shows. He also uses the Clammr app, which plays a string of 18-second highlights from various programs. But tools like this are few and far between.

“Podcast discovery is still pretty fundamentally broken,” said Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of Reddit. “There’s still no good solution.”

Well, there is one: Talk to a dozen podcast enthusiasts to find out which shows they love and recommend. For their eclectic playlist, read on.

BEN GIBBARD

Ben Gibbard Photo: Corbis

Singer/songwriter, Death Cab for Cutie

“Basically the only podcasts I listen to are on ultra running and baseball,” said Mr. Gibbard, who completed his first marathon in 2011 and now focuses on trail and ultradistance events. “ ‘Trail Runner Nation’ and ‘UltraRunner Podcast’ are tied for my favorite running podcasts. They’re both just really good resources,” he said. “They have a lot of professional and elite ultra runners who talk about their process and training regimes. And ‘Trail Runner Nation’ especially will have a lot of people on to talk about nutrition and condition-specific elements you might have to face. For example, if you’re running a mountain race and you don’t live near the mountains, how do you prepare for that? That stuff’s really helpful to me.”

GINGER ZEE

Ginger Zee Photo: Getty Images

Chief meteorologist, Good Morning America

“ ‘WeatherBrains’ is the only podcast I listen to consistently,” said Ms. Zee. The show is hosted by James Spann, chief meteorologist for the ABC-TV affiliate in Birmingham, Ala., and recent guests have included storm chasers, the chief of staff for the National Weather Service, and a former on-site meteorologist for a major-league baseball team. “[Mr. Spann] will sometimes have several guests on at a time and it becomes a debate over something that happened that week in the weather world,” said Ms. Zee. “I’ll get so into it that I’ll want to jump into the conversation—that means it’s a good podcast.” While discussions can get quite in-depth, Ms. Zee thinks the show will appeal to more than just insiders. “The one thing that connects everyone is weather.”

ALEXIS OHANIAN

Alexis Ohanian Photo: Getty Images

Co-founder of Reddit

Mr. Ohanian’s favorite podcast comes from Tim Ferriss, the productivity guru who wrote the best-selling book “The 4-Hour Work Week.” “One of the things that I really appreciate about ‘The Tim Ferriss Show’ is that he tries so, so hard to surface new things,” said Mr. Ohanian. Each episode is packed with takeaway: General Stan McChrystal on the military tests everyone should take, performance coach Tony Robbins on common money mistakes. “It’s one thing to have a conversation with some interesting or famous person. It’s another thing to really try and tell a different kind of story,” said Mr. Ohanian. “Tim, on an atomic level, understands that on the Internet you really have to be doing something that’s different and new and that hasn’t been done before.” These are not your typical interviews. “As I understand it, he’s really fanatical about finding out all the questions his guests have been asked before and then not asking them,” said Mr. Ohanian. “And he’s got some key questions that are pretty unique to him that he always tries to ask his guests—questions that fit the mold of living the optimized-human-being lifestyle, which is the Tim Ferriss thing.”

RUPAUL

RuPaul Photo: Getty Images

Actor, model, recording artist and host of “RuPaul: What’s the Tee?” podcast

RuPaul’s top pick—“Straight Talk with Ross Matthews”—bills itself as offering advice “from the gay best friend you wish you had and know you need.” “I just love the way [Mr. Matthews’s] mind works,” said RuPaul. “I love how funny he is and really how sweet he is. He can get the laugh in there without hurting anyone’s feelings.” Celeb guests have included Margaret Cho, Kristen Bell and Chelsea Handler. And the topics are broad. When Rosie O’Donnell was on, she talked about everything from marriage equality to tipping. “Could he be on terrestrial radio? Maybe. He could definitely be on Sirius, for sure. But the podcast form feels more modern. It feels more intimate. It feels more targeted toward a specific audience. That’s why somebody like Ross Matthews works: he has a specific audience that he talks to.”

ANN PACKER

Ann Packer

Author, most recently, of the novel “A Children’s Crusade” (Scribner)

“I think the form of ‘The Moth’ is wonderful,” said Ms. Packer of the podcast in which storytellers relate a personal tale for a live audience. “It’s just somebody standing there telling a story. It’s a window onto character. Now, these happen to be real-life characters, but it’s still character. The material has the shape of a story, which is very satisfying for me, because I like stories.” Presenters might be famous—Neil Gaiman, Ed Koch and David Chang have appeared on the show. Or not. The show has also featured pickpockets, physicians and random people. “They’re very prepared, but they don’t sound very prepared. They have a kind of spontaneous quality—falsely spontaneous—but it’s an arresting quality. And I like the fact that there’s an audience that you can hear, and I even like that there are moments when, clearly, the storyteller has done something that a listener can’t see, but that the audience reacts to. There will often be a laugh when there has been no sound. It emphasizes the liveness of it. It emphasizes the fact that this was something that happened in space and time somewhere.”

AARON FRANKLIN

Aaron Franklin Illustration: LEAH OVERSTREET FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Owner and chef at Franklin Barbecue in Austin, Tex.

The Austin pit-master is a fan of the food and travel podcast “Go Fork Yourself,” hosted by Andrew Zimmern of the Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods” series and blogger Molly Mogren. “Those guys are so on the same page as us for food,” said Mr. Franklin. “The stuff that they like to talk about is not really hoity toity,” said Mr. Franklin. “It’s just them having a conversation, like, We ate at this place and we ended up finding this little old lady that was grilling steaks in her backyard. It’s a pretty easy listen.”

ADAM CAROLLA

Adam Carolla Photo: Corbis

Comedian and host of the podcast “The Adam Carolla Show”

The comedy world has embraced podcasting wholeheartedly. “The thing that comedians hate the most is leaving their apartment,” said Mr. Carolla. “What if somebody said, ‘You never have to leave your apartment. Just hook up your laptop and put this microphone in it, and you can sit in your kitchen in your bathrobe and do a podcast?’ That sounds a lot better than getting on a flight to Wichita, right?” In addition to hosting his own podcast, Mr. Carolla has appeared on fellow comedians’ shows as well. (The language is sometimes R-rated.) “It’s fun to do ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ because it’s so incredibly long form,” said Mr. Carolla (episodes run about three hours). Mr. Carolla also enjoys “The Nerdist,” hosted by Chris Hardwick. “He’s really engaged and his disposition is always very positive. You just feel better when you’re done with it.” And Mr. Carolla recommended “Girl on Guy,” by Aisha Tyler, host of the TV show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” “Aisha Tyler’s really good. She has a great way about her,” said Mr. Carolla. “And it’s nice talking to a female because there’s a lot of dudes in this space.”

EVAN KLEIMAN

Evan Kleiman Photo: Getty Images

Chef and host of “Good Food,” on Santa Monica’s KCRW

Ms. Kleiman recommends the design and architecture podcast “99% Invisible,” which started as a collaboration between the public radio station KALW in San Francisco and the city’s chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “The loose idea of it is design, but they use that as an excuse to explore many different things,” said Ms. Kleiman. “An episode about food that just blew my mind was ‘The Sizzle.’ It was about fajitas and the idea of selling the sizzle and how radical that was. It was just so well done and so unexpected. Anybody who cooks for a living or even just cooks a lot at home understands that your ears are as involved in cooking as anything else. It was a very smart way to take a look at the marketing of food, particularly for the medium.”

CHRIS BALLEW

Chris Ballew Illustration: Alamy

Singer/songwriter, The Presidents of the United States of America

Mr. Ballew’s top pick: “Roderick on the Line,” a podcast based on phone conversations between life-hack guru Merlin Mann and John Roderick, lead singer and guitarist of the Long Winters. “I listen to it with my teenagers as I drive them to and from school. John and Merlin touch on every subject, from music—they talk a lot about music, actually—to Hitler to theories about drug use, sex and how people in society work,” said Mr. Ballew. “And I’ve told John flat out: You are helping me raise my children. Because the mix of comedy and a real intention to provoke people to think about tough things really gets the conversation going with me and my teenagers.”

ROBERT KASSINGER

Robert Kassinger Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Bassist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Mr. Kassinger steers clear of music podcasts. “I’m usually in the process of learning new music all the time or learning about a particular artist or genre, so I get sort of saturated. For me, listening to a podcast is a chance to get my head into a different subject.” His escape: Slate’s “Political Gabfest.” “The hosts are all very interesting writers. And they’re funny. So much of what you hear on the news shows is just people yelling at each other all at the same time,” he said. “On ‘Gabfest,’ occasionally they get into pretty heated discussions of things, but it seems more like a civil discussion.”

RICK BAYLESS

Rick Bayless Photo: Getty Images

Chef and host of the PBS series “Mexico—One Plate at a Time”

Mr. Bayless subscribes to about 20 podcasts, but a few rise to the top. Among them: “The Torch: Great Courses.” “You know those Great Courses that you see advertised all the time?” asked Mr. Bayless. “Haven’t we all looked at some of those courses and said, ‘I think I’d like to take that course,’ but we never do? This podcast is just people who do those courses being interviewed,” he explained. “It sounds like late-night TV because it doesn’t have the NPR laid-back thing. But it’s a good way to review a lot of stuff that you’ve known in your life that you’ve forgotten details of.” Podcasts also serve as Mr. Bayless's crib sheet for more contemporary topics as well. “I’m not much of a pop-culture person, but I want to be able to have conversations at a cocktail party and be up on things. So I like the ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour,’ which is three or four very smart people talking about movies and award ceremonies and things that I wouldn’t normally go to or watch.”

MOLLY KNIGHT

Molly Knight

Sportswriter and author of “The Best Team Money Can Buy”

“There is this woman named Tara Brach, a Buddhist meditation teacher in Washington, D.C., who gives these awesome talks every week at a church in Maryland,” said Ms. Knight. Those talks are the basis for the “Tara Brach” podcast. “I’m not a religious person, but she’s sort of the closest thing to religion that I get,” said Ms. Knight. “It’s very calm and proactive.”

Now Hear This: A Podcast Primer

You could listen to podcasts on a computer with your Web browser (just go to the show’s website), but a smartphone is more convenient.

Most podcast apps work the same way: The app will present a list of popular or featured podcasts (you can also search by name). If you “subscribe” to a show, new episodes will automatically be downloaded to your phone. You can also tap on a specific episode to listen to it—or download it for later.

The iPhone comes with an app called Podcasts. Its killer feature is that it works with Siri. Just say “Play [insert show’s name] podcast” to listen to one you’ve subscribed to. (Android doesn’t come with a stock app.)

But one of the best and easiest to use podcast apps is Pocket Casts ($4, pocketcasts.com). It works on Android, iOS and Windows Phone—and has a Web-based player ($9) for listening from a computer. Not only does it have a pleasing, clean layout, it also syncs your subscriptions among your devices. And if you start listening to an episode from your work computer then launch the app for the ride home, the episode will start playing where you left off.