There is a peculiar irony in listening to podcasts about reducing screen time, and I am aware of it. But audio is the one form of media you can take for a walk, and a good episode in your ears while you are outside is roughly the opposite of doomscrolling.
A warning about this category: search results for “digital detox podcast” are now heavily polluted with AI-generated shows — fifteen-minute episodes, no named host, a studio name instead of a person, suspiciously regular output. Everything below has a real human being behind it, and I have checked when each one last published.
The shows
Your Undivided Attention Active
Tristan Harris & Aza Raskin, Center for Humane Technology
The definitive archive on the attention economy and persuasive design. Be aware it has shifted heavily toward AI policy — the phone and social media material is mostly in the 2019–2024 back catalogue, and it is superb.
Deep Questions Very active
Cal Newport
Long-form listener questions on deep work, digital minimalism and building a deliberate life. Several episodes a week, and the most practically useful show here.
Screen Deep Active
Kris Perry, Children and Screens
One working researcher per episode, explaining their own findings. The most rigorous and least sensational show in the field.
Scrolling 2 Death Active
Nicki Petrossi
Parents, children and social media, including the big tech litigation as it happens. The best parent-facing show currently running.
Parenting in the Screen Age Active
Dr Delaney Ruston
From the doctor behind the Screenagers documentaries. Short, practical, evidence-led.
Offline Active
Jon Favreau, Crooked Media
What the internet is doing to us, interviewed at length. Drifts into US politics, so pick episodes rather than subscribing blind.
Hidden Brain Active
Shankar Vedantam
Not a technology show, but it returns repeatedly to attention, compulsion and dopamine — and does it better than the shows that specialise.
How to Feel Alive Occasional
Catherine Price
Excellent when it appears, but only occasionally — a handful of episodes and long gaps.
Seven episodes worth your time
If you do not want to subscribe to anything — which is a perfectly reasonable position on a site like this one — these are the individual episodes I send people most often.
Controlling Your Dopamine For Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction
Huberman Lab
The best free explanation anywhere of why chasing peaks lowers your baseline — which is the whole mechanism of why your phone stopped being fun and you still cannot put it down.
Dr Anna Lembke: Understanding & Treating Addiction
Huberman Lab
Lembke on the pleasure-pain balance, why boredom has become rare, and abstinence as a reset rather than a punishment.
Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis
Your Undivided Attention
The short version of The Anxious Generation, framed around what to do rather than how bad it is.
The Man Who Predicted the Downfall of Thinking
Your Undivided Attention
On Neil Postman, with one of his former students. The perfect companion to Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Why Do Digital Detoxes Fail? What Works Better?
Deep Questions
Newport on exactly the question this site exists to answer. Recent, and he is not entirely complimentary about detoxes — which is worth hearing.
The Path to Enough
Hidden Brain
Anna Lembke on self-binding, deliberate discomfort and the role of other people in recovery. The most emotionally accessible thing she has done.
The Costs of Using Devices to Calm Children
Screen Deep
On what happens when a screen becomes the way a small child's difficult feelings get managed. Essential for parents of under-eights.
Michael has spent much of his working life online—and much of the rest of it trying to stop that technology taking over. He has thrown a phone into a lake, locked devices in boxes and experimented with long periods offline. He writes about what helped, what failed and how to keep the useful parts of digital life.
Last updated 9 August 2026. This page is checked and corrected as new research comes out. If you spot something out of date or wrong, tell me and I will fix it.