Staying informed about current events has become increasingly difficult due to the overwhelming volume of breaking news, insights, and developments occurring in real time. If you’re like me, you’ve cycled through various consumption methods—news apps, newsletters, social media, cable news—only to find that each has significant limitations in terms of depth, convenience, or perspective.
Podcasts offer a compelling alternative for news consumption. The audio format of podcasts with its hands-free, eyes-free nature allows for “double productivity” during otherwise mundane activities like commuting or household chores. Episodic release schedules create natural stopping points, preventing the endless scroll problem of news websites and social media. Additionally, modern podcast apps enhance this experience by removing barriers to consumption through features like speed adjustment and live transcripts.
While podcasts offer significant advantages over other news consumption methods, relying on a single podcast source introduces its own limitations. Every publisher, no matter how objective they aim to be, operates with inherent biases, editorial priorities, and time constraints that limit both coverage breadth and depth.
What’s needed is a strategic approach that combines multiple sources in a deliberate way, what I call a podcast stack.
The Podcast Stack
A podcast stack is more than just a collection of news shows, it’s a deliberately structured information playlist where each source builds upon the last and serves a specific role in your information diet.
By curating complementary news sources in sequence, you create an intentional progression from headlines to deeper analysis and understanding. A well-crafted stack might start with a brief podcast that delivers essential top stories, and then branches into specialized content based on your interests and priorities. By layering additional shows that introduce new stories or expand upon and reexamine stories from the previous podcasts through different perspectives, you create a listening experience that no single source could provide. Even on busier days, the stack’s design delivers value by starting with high-level coverage that orients your day, whether or not you get through it all.
This structured layering also aligns with how our brains naturally process information and learn. Beginning with summaries provides crucial context before encountering deeper analysis. This gradual increase in information density prevents overload, while reinforcing key points through natural spaced repetition. This progression from simple to complex mirrors effective educational approaches, improving comprehension and critical thinking.
Another benefit of the podcast stack lies in its layered diversity, with each source helping to validate, contrast, or complicate the narratives offered by the others. Different shows fill in each other’s gaps: what one might highlight as major news, another might downplay or critique. When multiple voices converge on the same topic, you gain clarity through contrast, identifying consensus, unpacking assumptions, and distinguishing fact from interpretation.
Ultimately, a podcast stack fosters real understanding, not just surface-level awareness. By layering perspectives and deepening context, the stack becomes more than the sum of its parts—a self-reinforcing ecosystem for staying informed.
Building Your Stack
Creating an effective daily news podcast stack requires thoughtful curation and intentional design. Here’s how to construct your own personalized news ecosystem:
- Start with headlines: Begin with a short show (~10 minutes) that provides a broad overview of the day’s top stories. This establishes your foundation for deeper content to follow.
- Customize for relevance: Add podcasts that align with your professional needs and personal interests, ensuring the content serves your specific information goals.
- Diversify your sources: Include podcasts from publishers with varied political perspectives. This develops nuanced understanding and helps avoid echo chambers.
- Think globally: Go beyond US-centric coverage by incorporating international sources. Global perspectives provide essential context in our interconnected world.
- Be realistic about time: Design a stack you can realistically consume most days. Consider your daily routine and schedule. When can you listen, and how much time does that allow?
Additionally, be sure to optimize for accessibility. Most podcast apps let you create channels or playlists that automatically pull in the latest episodes of a show in a specific order. Combine that with creating an automation on your phone (like iOS Shortcuts) that starts playing your stack with one tap for easy listening. Lastly, take advantage of speed adjustments (listen at 1.2x-1.5x to save significant time) and skip buttons (e.g. 30s skip forward) to bypass stories you feel you’ve already heard enough about when necessary.
My Stack
1. The 7
Duration: 10 minutes | Publisher: The Washington Post | Host: Hannah Jewell
- Delivers seven daily headlines with just enough context to orient your day
- Perfect “first layer” foundation with its efficient breadth-to-time ratio
- Conversational tone that eases you into the day
2. Apple News Today
Duration: 14 minutes | Publisher: Apple News | Host: Shumita Basu
- Builds on familiar headlines, while introducing additional stories
- Publisher-agnostic approach surfaces diverse journalistic perspectives
- Natural progression from The 7’s surface-level coverage to moderate depth
3. The World in Brief
Duration: 10 minutes | Publisher: The Economist | Host: Rotating Team
- Shifts focus to international developments missed by US-centric shows
- Adds global context to stories from previous podcasts
- Maintains headline-level efficiency, while expanding geographic scope
4. FT News Briefing
Duration: 10-12 minutes | Publisher: Financial Times | Host: Marc Filippino
- Analyzes how the day’s events impact markets and business
- Focused deep-dive into 3-4 stories through financial/economic lens
- Expert commentary from FT journalists adds analytical depth
5. The Intelligence
Duration: 20-25 minutes | Publisher: The Economist | Host: Jason Palmer and Rosie Blau
- Closes out the stack with deep dives into 2-3 significant current affairs stories
- Connects immediate events to long-term trends and implications
- Uncovers the “why it matters” behind stories, blending sharp storytelling with the analysis you’d expect from The Economist.
Total Investment: ~75 Minutes
If you’re struggling with news overload or finding yourself uninformed despite good intentions, experiment with your own podcast stack. The key is finding complementary voices that build on each other without unnecessary redundancy. Sometimes the best solution isn’t more content, it’s smarter curation that builds understanding layer by layer.