All Things Considered, Fresh Air, and Wait Wait are all traditional NPR broadcast programs, but since you're not listening via broadcast, your listening behavio

All Things Considered, Fresh Air, and Wait Wait are all traditional NPR broadcast programs, but since you're not listening via broadcast, your listening behavior is covered here, and it's important to understand why (I'll get into that in a bit). The rest of the shows are either strictly podcasts (Planet Money), not NPR produced (This American Life, Left Right & Center) or built specifically to fight this trend (Ask Me Another). The reason why the way you listen matters is because NPR gets its money from broadcast stations. Every time they do something that has a whiff of asking listeners to donate directly to them, there is a backlash from the stations they are bound by contract to serve. If you listen via podcast and you don't donate to your local public radio station, there's no very good way for NPR to get paid for that listening. Ads exist, but they generally do not support this type of programming entirely and NPR has a complicated relationship with them anyway.