18 podcasts that will make you smarter

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With the massive success of "Serial" and the fact that Marc Maron interviewed Barack Obama for his "WTF" podcast, we can declare that podcasts are aren't just incredibly cool, they're culturally important.  

We've selected the best of the best — from love to money to design — for your listening pleasure.

Put these on during your commute, and you'll learn something new before even getting to the office.

'Reply All' immerses you in the weird world of the internet.

You probably use the internet every day, but Alex Goldman and PJ Vogt will give you more insight into its effects on our culture than you were ever aware of.

They've covered great stories like the ways ISIS uses social media and how an Orthodox Jew ultimately left his family behind because of the world he discovered online.

And Goldman and Vogt's goofy rapport will keep you hooked episode to episode.

Start listening here >>

'Dear Sugar Radio' untangles the knots of love and relationships.

"Dear Sugar" started out as a love advice column for the Rumpus online literary magazine. It became a cult hit and was collected in a life-changing book called "Tiny Beautiful Things." 

You may be familiar with the author, Cheryl Strayed. Her bestselling memoir "Wild" was turned into a Reese Witherspoon movie last year.

In both its written and now podcasted form, "Dear Sugar" is an excruciatingly compassionate journey through the loves and losses that animate people's lives. 

"The podcast fields all your questions — no matter how deep or dark — and offers radical empathy in return," its description reads.

Start listening here >>  

'Roderick on the Line' teaches you about the parts of adulthood everybody else missed.

Every week, the friendly scalawags Merlin Mann and John Roderick get on the phone for an hour and talk about the important topics no one clued you in on: how to visit a junk yard, what to look for in a good box, and the art of dining out (hint: order a pizza as soon as you sit down). 

Mann is a longtime internet personality and Roderick is a career musician (he was in the Decemberists), and their 40-plus years of adventuring lend the podcast a lot of wisdom about this thing called life. 

Start listening here >>