TIME magazine correspondent Eliana Dockterman represented bias for the company on Wednesday when they published a list of “The 100 Best Podcasts of All Time” (and an accompanying article titled “How We Chose the 100 Best Podcasts of All Time”) without including a single conservative podcast. This comes after many have argued that such podcasts were influential enough to sway the result of the 2024 presidential. election.
Introducing TIME’s list of the best podcasts of all time: 100 podcasts that shaped the genre and pushed it forward https://t.co/2FAGCBJ0kv
— TIME (@TIME) July 23, 2025
Over the last decade, podcasts have boomed as the new medium that people were influenced by. The podcast list Dockterman constructed contained many genres, ranging from comedy to news and politics. The six podcasts under “news and politics” were The Daily, Embedded, The Ezra Klein Show, Longform, Plain English With Derek Thompson, and The Prince.
To give a brief overview of some of the shows, The Daily was a podcast from the liberal The New York Times, and had an episode title that whined: “Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Transgender Minors.” The summary of the show claimed, “…why the court’s decision leaves families more in the dark than ever.” And Ezra Klein was a liberal Times opinion writer.
Embedded was a podcast from NPR. The radio network got defunded last week by Congress for previous biases and partisan promotion. Derek Thompson was a writer for the left-leaning Atlantic and he co-authored a book with Klein. And The Prince was hosted by Sue-Lin Wong, who worked for The Economist.
Aside from news and politics, Call Her Daddy, hosted by Alex Cooper, was on the list despite the show featuring former Vice President Kamala Harris and drag queens. Making Oprah, which was also from NPR, was about Oprah Winfrey, who promoted liberal views. Dockterman boasted that the podcast “focuses on how the daytime TV icon changed American attitudes toward race, gender, and politics.”
In the “society” category, Dockterman included two NPR properties: Code Switch and Fresh Air. “Business and tech” included Times‘ Hard Work and NPR’s Planet Money. “Pop culture” featured two shows from far-left Slate: Decoder Ring and Audio Book Club.
Despite all the “decade’s worth of ‘best of’ lists” that Dockterman created for podcasts, did she forget what was currently ranked as the top podcasts for Apple and Spotify. Programs such as: The Joe Rogan Experience, The Megyn Kelly Show, or This Past Weekend with Theo Von, or does it not back up TIME’s liberal agenda?
Rogan invited President Trump on his podcast less than two weeks before the 2024 election and got almost 60 million views on YouTube. Von also featured Trump as a guest in August and got 17 million views, and had Vice President JD Vance on the podcast twice. Those numbers couldn’t be ignored when it came to influence.
What was hilarious about this podcast list was that TIME appointed Trump as “Person of the Year” for 2024. Even Dockterman admitted with a left-wing bias:
That said, we talk a lot at TIME about influence- we do publish an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, after all. And that list increasingly includes podcasters…Remember when Maron got then-president Barack Obama on WTF, and it was a huge deal? Trump doesn’t make the rounds of the manosphere and Kamala Harris doesn’t appear on Call Her Daddy had Obama not graced Marc Maron’s garage.
There was the bias. This podcast list included shows that did not promote a “man-o-shpere” environment that Trump had been featured on.
If TIME knew about “influence,” why were some of the top-ranking podcasts that happen to be conservative, or at least right of center, with massive platforms omitted from the list?
TIME chose to highlight their left-wing bias without giving credit to actual influential podcasts.
We do recommend that you check out the NewsBusters Podcast.
