
This has been a strange week. The COVID-19 pandemic has been escalating around the world for a while now, but this was the first week where it seemed to penetrate our university’s walls.
By Thursday and Friday, everyone was talking about what would happen before St. Patties went down on Saturday (St. Patrick’s day is generally one big street party at universities). Would the university close classes? (This was my prediction, if the university cared at all about the health of its students and staff.) Would they wait for a case first to justify their decision? Would we move to online classes or cancel courses for a short while?

On Thursday I made up my mind to leave for the weekend anyways and started packing. I knew many people would still be partying and hugging and sharing drinks that weekend and did not want to be around for it. On Friday, after nearly every university in Ontario had done so, our university announced it was cancelling classes for a week after which they would resume remotely.
And so the packing for a week became packing for an indeterminate amount of time.
In my imagination, it felt like packing for the end of the world. Or a war. Like an evacuation. But as I thought about that, I realized that every generation goes through some extremely difficult times. If you look at it that way, we are very lucky. All we need to do is stay home – something I was continuing to see neglected by my peers.
In any case, the 4 hours I spent driving home went by in a flash because my housemate agreed to tag along as well. We listened to my Spotify On the Road playlist and talked about how this would affect our summer internships.



My first day home, I decided to make this spread compiling all of my favourite podcasts at the moment for anyone who isn’t driving with a buddy home.
favourite podcasts
- Stuff you Should Know
- The Journal
- Economist Radio
- On Purpose with Jay Shetty
- Power Hour
- Freakonomics Radio
- Radiolab
- The Life Scientific
- The Health Code
Or for anyone who just likes podcasts and wants some recommendations. 😉
I posted the photo on my Instagram page and asked if anyone had recommendations to share. Here were some of the one people suggested. I looked through all of them and wrote down the ones that I would be interested in listening to. I particularly focused on podcasts that continue to release regular episodes.



podcast recommendations
- Detail Therapy with Amy Landino
- The Daily Stoic
- No Such Thing as a Fish
- The Infinite Monkey Cage
- Therapy for Black Girls
- The Generation Why
- My Favourite Murder
- Arm Chair Expert
- Joe Rogan Experience
- Making Sense with Sam Harris
- Art and Cocktails
- Lore Podcast
- Reply All
- Happier with Gretchen Rubin
- Ologies
- Heavyweight
- The Model Health Show
- Swindled
- The Girl Recovering with Kelli Jagger (this is my friend’s podcast and she is AWESOME!)
- In the Shower with Taz and Marcus
- The Adventure Zone (particularly the Amnesty arc)
Do you see any missing from this list? Comment your other recommendations down below and I will keep adding them and checking them out!
Hope everyone stays safe at home until this pandemic begins to slow its spread. Huge – and I mean enormous – respect goes out to the front-line workers and decision makers right now. You’re incredible.
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Comments (3)
mostlyfictional
March 19, 2020 at 3:37 pm
I definitely felt like I was waiting for my university to catch up to the reactions of other schools around us last week; it seemed like a constant flood of email updates! It’s definitely strange to think about the rest of this semester – and next school year – but I love that you made this spread with some of that time! 🙂 I’m a big fan of storytelling podcasts – one of my favorites is The Adventure Zone, particularly the Amnesty arc. It’s a bit unconventional (the story unfolds as they play a game called Monster of the Week), but it would be great for someone who’s into role playing games or just likes fiction/fantasy!
Ioana
March 20, 2020 at 10:05 am
Thanks for your comment! <3 I felt the exact same way about my university – I'd actually been telling all my friends for a week that classes would probably be cancelled and no one believed me until the emails started rolling in. I'm wondering what will happen with summer jobs also…
Thanks for the recommendation! I've listened to a few crime podcasts which feel like short stories, so I might enjoy The Adventure Zone! I'll add it to the list in the blog post, too. 😉
video || how to learn MORE from every podcast you listen to – Mistral Spirit
November 13, 2020 at 6:35 pm
[…] For more, check out my post from a few months ago on podcast recommendations! […]