They’re basically the modern version of radio shows and can be nearly anything. A lot of them are just interview or current event shows. Public radio puts out a lot of good news and educational ones. My personal favorites are comedians playing Dungeons & Dragons (The Adventure Zone, Not Another D&D Podcast). They end up being part collaborative storytelling and part improv comedy, with the dice introducing enough chaos to keep it interesting.

Podcasts are an open standard (they’re just an RSS feed with audio files attached), so there’s tons of different phone apps that can play them.

Podcasts can be highly personal. Personal taste and all that. In other words, my recommendations probally wouldn’t hit with you. Lots of “two white guys talking” energy. But I’ve listened to them for so long I “know” them well.

I’d say, try exploring them. Stay away from political ones, and maybe away from ones run by big conglomerates like iHeartRadio.

Also, in my opinion, while the word podcast means content you can subscribe to via an rss feed. Audio, or video. It has come to include “long form content you could listen to, while ignoring the video part.”