I’m ditching YouTube and cancelled my Premium account because they recently purged videos and accounts of Palestinian human rights organizations, and I’m generally trying to boycott the US and Google further.

I’m switching to podcasts to give myself something to listen to instead. I found CBC Podcasts and TVO Podcasts. I also found this Lemmy thread from 2 years ago, but I’d figure it’s time to ask the community again.

What are your suggestions for Canadian or non-US podcasts?

  • patatas@sh.itjust.works
    5·
    8 hours ago

    Suddenly realising most of my podcast lineup is US-based - but here are a few Canadian standouts:

    ‘Tech Won’t Save Us’ is a fantastic tech-critical podcast;

    ‘Theory & Philosophy’ is David Guignion, from Montreal(?), doing excellent and accessible explanations of a wide range of thinkers;

    ‘The Breach Show’ is journalists Desmond Cole and Martin Lukacs talking about Canadian politics from a left perspective.

    Edit: Oh, and Front Burner is a relatively listenable CBC politics podcast.

    • brianpeirisOPEnglish
      2·
      8 hours ago

      I appreciate the philosophy recommendation especially, thanks!

  • gwildors_gill_slitsEnglish
    1·
    6 hours ago

    Pretty much all the podcasts in my rotation are comedic and I’m not sure what kind of vibe you’re interested in, but nevertheless here are a couple that are either fully Canadian or at least have a Canadian association:

    • Blocked Party: Hosted by a couple of Canadians. They ended their non-paywalled main feed fairly recently but the free episodes from the past 6+years are still available.
    • What’s all this then: Both hosts are British but one lives in the US and the other is in Toronto.
    • brianpeirisOPEnglish
      1·
      9 hours ago

      Thanks, didn’t know about this instance. I’ll probably spend time exploring PeerTube some more, but I know it’s still pretty sparse, and I figured there are tons of podcasts that I could listen to in the mean time.

  • non_burglar@lemmy.world
    6·
    12 hours ago

    We have a lot of culture in common with other Commonwealth countries. I highly encourage you to check out Irish, British, Scottish, Aussie, kiwi and south African podcasts.

  • bathroomconnoisseur
    4·
    11 hours ago

    Canadaland has some very good shows, in particular, openly gay animals. The Beaverton is quite good if you like political satire. The numbers, if you want to listen to some nerds talk about polls

      • Avid Amoeba
        2·
        7 hours ago

        And ONpoli if in Ontario. Actually Steve Paikin does a separate one too. He had Avi Lewis on.

      • patatas@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        8 hours ago

        yeah the last time I checked out one of their shows was maybe a couple years ago and I was pretty shocked at how bad it had gotten. I was a regular listener once upon a time, but no more.

        • bathroomconnoisseur
          1·
          43 seconds ago

          You guys should try A Field Guide To Gay Animals. It’s really interesting and well produced

    • brianpeirisOPEnglish
      2·
      10 hours ago

      Nice. I’m trying out Miniflux on my own CapRover server for now.

  • Albbi
    2·
    9 hours ago

    I’ve got a bunch of CBC podcasts that I love.

    Under the Influence has great storytelling and talks a lot about the history of marketing in very interesting ways.

    We Regret to Inform You is by the same people and talks about the hardships some people have had to go through before making it big. I really only listen to episodes about people I already know about though.

    The Debaters is a great comedy podcast. I also listen to Laugh out Loud and have been caught laughing my head off in the middle of the dog park.

    Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is going through Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe stories and adding a bit of background about each story. I thought I’d skip the background stuff, but it’s actually not bad to listen to. Stuart McLean was such an amazing story teller and I always love hearing these stories about Canada.

    Quirks and Quarks is a great science podcast although I kicked it off my list for a while until I can clear my other backlog.

    One US based podcast I would still recommend (They’re not political, but still not pro Trump) is Go Fact Yourself. Great podcast in a trivia game show format. The central idea is really cool. Pick 3 topics outside your field of work that you’re an expert in. They then quiz you on one of those three topics with a special guest expert in the topic who comes on at the end. And the people they get are absolutely amazing! They had Walter Koenig on as an expert, and then he liked the show so much he came back as a player.

    • masterofn001
      1·
      6 hours ago

      When I would travel up to northern Ontario there were basically 3 stations on the radio, 6 of them were CBC.

      I love each and every one of the programs you listed. The debaters is always hilarious and quirks and quarks, well, I’m a nerd and being in the middle of the wilderness and geeking out on that show was the pinnacle of existence.

      Some people had mix tapes, I had my CBC.

  • FerretyFever0@fedia.io
    1·
    9 hours ago

    Newpipe for android if you have one, ublock for pc. Still using it, but they don’t get money. Not podcasts, but, it’s what I use.

    • brianpeirisOPEnglish
      3·
      9 hours ago

      I’m glad options exist to give YouTube less money, but I guess I’m more interested in reducing their dominance, both at large on the Internet, and also in my life. People go to YouTube because it’s where their favourite creators are, so if we signal to creators that we’re moving away, creators will choose to publish elsewhere too. Of course, I’m under no illusion that this will happen quickly, but hey we’re on the Fediverse, so we already know that :)

  • Reannlegge
    2·
    12 hours ago

    I am all for this however I hate to admit that the Google has something of a monopoly on web streaming. I personally use Unwatched on my iPhone and iPad as it blocks all the Google ads when I watch YouTube.

    • brianpeirisOPEnglish
      3·
      11 hours ago

      I’ve heavily relied on YouTube for my media for years, so I definitely get the reluctance to ditch it, but the human rights censorship has forced me to rip the band-aid. I’ll have to deal with Gmail at some point.