For context on the election

On the Media

Time required: 50 minutes per episode, hundreds of episodes

Don’t believe the title. This show is often about much more than “the media” as one might typically understand it. This season, for example, Brooke Gladstone has reported a tremendous series on poverty in the U.S., a subject that feels to me as though it hasn’t really made an appearance in presidential politics since the 2008 primaries. (Presidential candidates love to talk about that middle class, though.) Really, I think of this as a show about how to process everything I hear—when to be skeptical, where to find perspectives I’m missing, how to understand the codes of political language in the U.S. And as both an editor and consumer of coverage, I find OTM’s breaking news handbooks invaluable. Eps to start with: “Personal responsibility,” “After the facts,” and “The system is rigged."

Backstory Radio

Time required: 1 hour per episode

Whistlestop

Time required: ~30 minutes per episode

Both of these can be dry and droning. Both of them are also deeply insightful, often absorbing reminders of the peculiar ways in which history can rhyme, and of the forgotten alleyways of American political life. Backstory Radio is a more conventional radio show; every episode features a few different segments on a different theme. Whistlestop is John Dickerson waxing nerdy about major presidential campaign stories of yesteryear. (After the success of the podcast, Dickerson wrote a book on the same theme, and it has an audiobook version, but I haven’t listened.) Listen long enough to either, and you might come to appreciate their calm, dry tone. Don’t panic, the hosts suggest. Crazier things have happened before, and yet here we still are. Eps to start with, from Backstory: “Islam and the United States,” “You’ve come a long way,” and “The GOP.” From Whistlestop: “Goldwater vs. Fact magazine,” “Andrew Jackson: The Dangerous Candidate,” and “Stand Up for America."

For in-the-moment reporting on the election

Each of these shows offers a slightly different spin on news from the 2016 election, so the one you come to like most probably depends somewhat on your sensibility. (I listen to all five because I have a problem.) Because they’re so tied to the news, I omit recommendations for three of the five.

Trumpcast

Time required: ~20 minutes per episode

If you like James Fallows’s Donald Trump time capsule—a moment-to-moment catalogue of the candidate’s departures from American political norms—you’ll probably appreciate Trumpcast, Jacob Weisberg’s audio diary of Trump’s candidacy. This is probably the most nakedly partisan podcast on my list, although the partisanship on display tends to be much more anti-Trump than pro-Clinton. Because of the show’s tight focus on Trump, however, it winds up being a much more thorough, if unloving, exploration of the candidate than almost anything else on offer. Weisberg speaks about the nature and portents of Trump’s campaign with reporters covering it, Trump’s ghostwriter, his supporters and surrogates, the man who started his Twitter account, journalists outside the U.S., and many, many others. Nearly every episode begins with the candidate’s own words on Twitter, read by the suddenly very busy Trump impersonator John D. Domenico, a segment that could be an entire podcast of its own. Because of the partisan nature of the show, each of my recommendations includes a conversation with a Trump supporter: “My mom’s voting for him,” “Where’s my bailout?” and “The talented Mr. Miller.” (Months after “Where’s my bailout?” was released, the Trump supporter interviewed in the episode changed his mind about the candidate and spoke with Weisberg a second time.)