Finding good podcasts worthy of your time is no easy task. But every year, the Discover Pods Awards, which are the largest annual fan-voted podcast awards, recognize the very best in the world of podcasting. The 2021 awards, which were just announced earlier this week, were the fifth annual installment. 

The award for the best overall podcast of 2021 went to ‘Old Gods of Appalachia’ an eldritch horror anthology podcast. But we are here to look at some of the best podcasts, both finalists and the winner, from the technology & science category. There were overall 8 finalists in this category for the award this year.

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Ologies: This science (plus comedy) podcast hosted by Alie Ward, was voted by fans as the best in the technology & science category for 2021. As my colleague Shrabonti Bagchi had written while recommending the “deeply funny show” last year, Ologies is one of the best scientific resources for the eclectic, curious mind. Ward, an award-winning science correspondent, explores the science and history behind “ologies” ranging from phonology (linguistics) to eschatology (the apocalypse), zymology (beer), ferroequinology (trains) and volitional psychology (procrastination).

Hidden Brain: The runners up in the technology & science category this year, Hidden Brain is a podcast where host Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. One of its recent episodes, titled ‘The Halo Effect’, uses a real-life incident around the Ford Pinto vehicle’s safety record to answer a critical question: is it possible to evaluate our past actions when we know how things turned out?

Curiosity Daily: If you only had 10 minutes daily to listen to a podcast on science and technology, it should probably be Curiosity Daily, an award-winning podcast by Curiosity.com. In less than 10 minutes, you get an interesting mix of research-based life hacks and latest science and technology news, among other things.

Science Vs: Hosted by Wendy Zukerman, Gimlet Media’s Science Vs pits science and facts against everything else. What’s fact and what’s not? This podcast gives you the answer. One of its recent episodes tackles a problem a lot of us are potentially facing these days: burnout. This episode looks at how burnout affects our brains and bodies, and whether working from home is making matters worse. With inputs from subject-matter experts, the hosts also discuss whether the four-day workweek could be the key to fixing our jobs.

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