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The Deadline
The Telegraph's Obituary section is a surpassingly rich source of wit, wonder, tragedy and trivia. How absolutely appropriate, then, that the team behind it should have started a weekly podcast discussing the lives of the recently departed, as well as offering a look into the "dark arts" of writing obituaries themselves. Hosted by the ebullient Obituaries editor Harry de Quetteville, it's a lively series which celebrates rather than mourns the dead, and has so far touched upon the likes of Pete Seeger, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Dam Busters hero Guy Gibson.

Inside Syria
This weekly video podcast produced by the Qatar–based TV news channel Al Jazeera about the crisis in Syria makes for deeply sobering viewing but is a laudably constant source of information about a war that otherwise drifts in and out of the headlines. Recent episodes have contained much illuminating discussion of UN diplomacy, Syria's chemical weapons, and the alliance between Hezbolla and Bashar al–Assad.

The Arab Spring: a History
There was a time when the term 'Arab Spring' simply described a cartwheel–like gymnastic manoeuvre. Good luck to anyone trying to find out about that on Google now, where the search term brings up countless pages of information and opinion on the revolutions and protests that have swept the Arab world since 2011. This weekly podcast, written and presented by a talented amateur historian called Jamie Redfern, provides a useful overview of those tumultuous events, and the century or so of political history that preceded them.

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Mid Atlantic

This lively transatlantic series, presented by Roifield Brown, is less satirical than The Bugle (John Oliver's and Andy Zaltzman's much lauded US-UK podcast: tgr.ph/P9pclu), but ploughs the same rich "Special Relationship" furrow. Each episode features debate about culture and politics on both sides of the pond, with regular contributions from the Dublin-based journalist Mic Wright and US historian Rob Monaco.

Real Time with Bill Maher
Listeners with an appetite for American satire and current affairs analysis should make a beeline for this audio version of Bill Maher's weekly HBO show. Reliably witty, unapologetically confrontational and featuring a more informed (and less celebrity–oriented) selection of guests than most US talk shows, it's one of the sharpest things on American TV – and translates surprisingly well into podcast form. I tend to listen to the full, hour–long edition; but they also upload condensed highlights.

Geo Quiz
If you're the kind of person who always reaches for the geography questions in Trivial Pursuit, then this podcast will be for you. Each five–minute episode, released every weekday, features a different geographical brainteaser alongside an interview or report that reveals the mystery location. The quiz itself is excerpted from an excellent international news and analysis programme called The World (http:// www.theworld.org/) – co–produced by the BBC World Service, WGBH public radio in Boston and Public Radio International – so expect high production values as well as a cerebral workout.

Elements

Dedicated fans of World Service may already be up to speed with this fantastic documentary series, in which the BBC's business correspondent Justin Rowlatt gives a bracingly original perspective on the global economy – by looking at it through the prism of the periodic table of elements. Luckily for the rest of us, the episodes are available to download as podcasts. I've found them all stimulating, but can particularly recommend the episode on carbon, which takes in everything from the evolution of life on earth to global warming.

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