Long road trips to your new travel assignments and hours-long day trips back home on your days off call for the classic road trip playlist. If your usual music playlist is feeling stale or putting you to sleep these days, we got you covered with a list of solid podcast recommendations (including which episodes to try first) from fellow nurses and self-proclaimed podcast addicts.
Genre: Medical, True Crime
Description: Limited series podcast that chronicles the slow unraveling of disgraced spine surgeon Dr. Christopher Duntsch’s medical career. As the number of his botched surgical procedures and list of critically injured patients grows, his colleagues, hospital administration, and the surrounding medical community start looking deeper into Dr. Duntsch’s background to uncover his egregious history of professional and personal missteps, drug abuse, and the egregious incompetence that went undetected for far too long.
Start with: Episode 1: Three Days in Dallas
Genre: True Crime
Description: Hosts Alaina (autopsy technician) and Ash (hairstylist) take turns selecting and researching crime cases to present during each biweekly episode. The subject matter they dissect throughout each episode tends to get pretty heavy, but the hosts’ familial chemistry combined with their specific brand of tongue-in-cheek humor makes this informational podcast feel more like a guilty pleasure.
Start with: Episode #299: The Horrific Murder of Dorothy Eggers (Released 2/17/2022)
Genre: Medical, Comedy, History
Description: Dr. Sydnee McElroy and husband Justin McElroy walk through our many medical missteps throughout history up to the current day. Dr. Sydnee provides knowledge and research through the lens of her medical training and experience, while Justin tries to relate and relay this information in “laymen’s terms” and provides comic relief. Also, they are intentional about keeping their language clean, so most episodes are family friendly depending on the episode’s specific subject matter.
Start with: Mariko Aoki Phenomenon (Released 1/4/22); Sawbones Classic: Home Alone (Re-released 12/14/21)
Genre: Educational, History
Description: HowStuffWorks.com writers and long-time friends Chuck and Josh come together to educate listeners (and each other) on a new topic based on their own independent research. The lighthearted humor and effortless chemistry between Chuck and Josh breathe life into every single topic, regardless of how dull or boring the topic seems at face value.
Start with: Hot Dog(s)! (Released 11/16/21)
Genre: Comedy, Advice
Description: Outrageously goofy brothers Justin, Travis and Griffin McElroy are determined to offer “helpful” advice for navigating life’s many random and outrageous predicaments. Whether it’s a question submitted directly from their listener base or pulled from the dumpster fire that is the internet, the McElroy brothers collaborate, crack jokes, or get wildly sidetracked by reminiscing on (sometimes) related millennial pop culture references in their pursuit to offer sage (but mostly silly) advice for getting through life (mostly) unscathed and with some (but probably very little) dignity intact.
Start with: Episode #421: Spoonhog (Released 8/20/18)
Genre: Pop Culture, Comedy
Description: Sisters Sydnee, Teylor and Rileigh get together to talk, laugh, cry or cringe at their own unique journeys from adolescence to early adulthood across two distinct generational perspectives – Sydnee and Teylor are both true millennials in their mid-to-late thirties, followed by their much younger 21-year-old Gen Z sister Rileigh. Each week, they take turns choosing a pop culture topic or event (e.g. music, movies, shifts in cultural narrative, etc.) for the three of them to discuss and unpack how their individual perception and feelings about a topic can drastically differ from one another or even more surprisingly, not feel very different at all.
Start with: Episode #291: Supermarket Sweep (Released 12/19/21)