Three podcasts to cure your quarantine boredom

As soon as quarantine started and I forced myself to run a few days a week, I knew I needed something to keep me entertained beside my 2014 Hits playlist on Spotify. So, I turned to podcasts to try and make my mundane days and workouts a little more exciting. After doing some research on Spotify I found three that sounded entertaining: “Anything Goes,” “Timesuck” and “Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet.”

“Anything Goes”

Ever since Emma Chamberlain’s subscriber count shot up in 2017, teenagers across the country have found it necessary to listen to or watch anything she posts. After 10 months of production of her old podcast, “Stupid Genius,” she decided to come up with a new podcast. Once I heard she released “Anything Goes” in Feb., I knew I had to give it a listen — and my newfound freetime gave me the perfect excuse.

The concept of the podcast is exactly like the name — Chamberlain picks any topic and talks about it for around 40 minutes and then answers voicemail questions from people who called in. The episodes range from how she developed her sense of fashion to how social media has affected her mental health.

In her most recent episode, she discussed her experience with competitive and high school cheer. Let me just say, it was extremely relatable — she talked about how she had to give up her social life, the long hours she put into practice and even how much pressure she put on herself — all things many high school and competitive athletes face. To give you an idea of how good it was, I was listening to it while I was online shopping and I got through an entire extra episode without realizing the first one was over — I could not stop listening.

I think it goes without saying, but I will definitely listen to “Anything Goes” every Thursday when the new episode comes out.

“Timesuck”

“Timesuck” by Dan Cummins was recommended to me by my borderline-insomniac friend who listens to it before she goes to bed.

The episodes, uploaded each Monday, dive deep into a topic of Cummins’ choice, with episodes ranging from topics like Baba Yaga, a supernatural witch who appears in ancient Slavic folklore, to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Upon further inspection, I noticed every episode is well over two hours long — which initially intimidated me, but we all have extra time walking around the house or kitchen to listen to it in sections.

Which is exactly what I did.

I picked the episode titled, “The Kansas City Butcher: Robert Berdella.” Although it took him a while to get started with the actual story of Berdella, once he started sharing the information from the “investigation” Cummins did, I was hooked.

Berdella was a serial rapist and killer in Kansas City from 1984 to 1987 and in this episode, Cummins gave us his entire life story, telling us about his childhood and even going into detail about his murders, which, not gonna lie, were extremely disturbing.

The horrifying details were broken up by Cummins’ sarcastic, dry sense of humor and made the podcast all the more interesting. I ended up listening to the episode throughout an entire day before I finished it. Although it was a little too long for my taste, there wasn’t a bored minute.

I think I might just have to listen to his episode comparing COVID-19 to the 1918 Spanish Flu next — I could probably use a little history knowledge right now.

“Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet”

To start off, I think the podcast “Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet” is the funniest podcast I’ve ever listened to. The hosts are siblings Alex and Christine Schiefer, and they put two of my favorite things together — talking and one-star Yelp reviews.

In each episode Alex and Christine pick a random topic like resorts in Mexico or universities in England. Then, they each look on Yelp and find the funniest one-star reviews they can and dramatically read them, commenting on each one.

I mean come on, who wouldn’t want to hear about a one-star review where someone complained about how they found an erectile dysfunction pill in their bed or about how mad someone was after they got coupons and a hand-written apology note from a car dealership after a “horrible experience there.”

The best thing about this podcast though was that I could stop it and resume playing the episode at any point because it was easy to follow and I didn’t have to worry about forgetting any of the details.

Each episode is around an hour, which is perfect for a long drive or maybe even a long workout, plus it’ll keep you entertained and laughing the whole time. I definitely recommend giving this podcast a try.