Podcasts I Love, and Why
This post is partially meant to recommend Things I Think Are Cool to those of you that might be interested in knowing they exist, and partially asking for recommendations myself; it should give you a decent idea of what I like and why.
Subject-areas I'd love to find good podcasts in, but haven't found any I love yet include: Knitting/textile arts in general, geeky pop culture, gardening, parenting.
The Age of Persuasion - CBC - An inside-baseball view of the history of advertising, but written and produced utterly enthrallingly. Bits of it remind me of Radiolab, and that's high praise indeed.
Freakonomics Radio - Usually fairly interesting, but I'm not upset if I don't listen to it for several weeks. Kind of short (I often listen while driving, and I can't tell it PLAY NEXT automatically, so the end of a podcast means I have to pull over to start the next one).
Friday Night Comedy - BBC Radio 4 - Absolutely hilarious, and usually current-eventsy enough to give me a taste of what's going on Over There. I especially love when they cover American news, because I adore the transpondian perspective. This is not always the same show, I should note: there are series of The News Quiz and series of The Now Show (8+ of each in a row), sometimes with something else interstitial for a week or two. If you turn out to hate one of them, you will have gaps before the show you like comes back.
A History of the World in 100 Objects - BBC Radio 4 - Very short eps and focussed, but wonderfully detailed. There are only 100 eps, it's not a continuing 'show'. A British Museum curator gets very indepth describing the physicality, history, and story of a specific artifact from their collection and why it says something interesting about the history of humanity.
The History Chicks - Two women having friendly conversations about history, using individual female historical figures to guide each episode. Conversational in the GOOD way, not the 'rambling and disorganized and nothing gets covered' way some podcasts are.
Material World - BBC Radio 4 - Geeky pop-sci news, only British. Doesn't get as in-depth on the sciencey end as some other podcasts I listen to, but uniformly very entertaining. Usually the host and several guests in series, each talking about whatever Recent Thing happened relating to their work that got them on the show.
Planet Money - NPR - Usually neat little explanatory pieces about the odder corollaries of economics, though not as odd as in the Freakonomics podcast.
Science ... Sort Of - It's like sitting around with three or four geeky grad-student friends listening to them go off on a subject. As the motto says, this podcast is where "we talk about things that are science, things that are sort of science, and things that wish they were science." The epidemiology of zombies comes up semi-regularly, as do dinosaurs and space (most of the regulars have geology degrees, on top of whatever else), but it ranges all over. Each episode has a "What Are We Drinking" segment (which is mostly beer geekery, and kind of interesting), a "Trailer Trash Talk" segment where they prejudge an upcoming movie based upon its trailer, a "Paleo-Posse" segment where they each bring up a piece of feedback from the audience, and then between one and three sciencey segments with actual topics. Nitpicks: Before about episode 50 the audio is kind of inconsistent (different speakers having very different volumes); the 'description' field in iTunes is a huge rambling paragraph that never actually shows anything useful in the first-80-characters that display.
Thinking Allowed - BBC Radio 4 - Really in-depth thinky discussion of two sociological topics, between the host and a guest.
Radiolab - WNYC - Jewellike and perfect, though sometimes more mental commitment than I feel like making. Not a popcorn podcast.
Stephen Fry's Podgrams - Alas, they don't seem to be updating, but they're still awesome.
A Way With Words - A word nerd's dream. It's made up of a lot of short 'call-in show' type segments on different subjects and themes, but all wordy. The hosts are a linguist and a lexicographer, dyed-in-the-wool descriptivists both, with senses of humor and fun.
And this thing has been sitting in my Firefox tabs waiting to be written and posted for over two weeks, so darnit I'm posting now. :->
Subject-areas I'd love to find good podcasts in, but haven't found any I love yet include: Knitting/textile arts in general, geeky pop culture, gardening, parenting.
The Age of Persuasion - CBC - An inside-baseball view of the history of advertising, but written and produced utterly enthrallingly. Bits of it remind me of Radiolab, and that's high praise indeed.
Freakonomics Radio - Usually fairly interesting, but I'm not upset if I don't listen to it for several weeks. Kind of short (I often listen while driving, and I can't tell it PLAY NEXT automatically, so the end of a podcast means I have to pull over to start the next one).
Friday Night Comedy - BBC Radio 4 - Absolutely hilarious, and usually current-eventsy enough to give me a taste of what's going on Over There. I especially love when they cover American news, because I adore the transpondian perspective. This is not always the same show, I should note: there are series of The News Quiz and series of The Now Show (8+ of each in a row), sometimes with something else interstitial for a week or two. If you turn out to hate one of them, you will have gaps before the show you like comes back.
A History of the World in 100 Objects - BBC Radio 4 - Very short eps and focussed, but wonderfully detailed. There are only 100 eps, it's not a continuing 'show'. A British Museum curator gets very indepth describing the physicality, history, and story of a specific artifact from their collection and why it says something interesting about the history of humanity.
The History Chicks - Two women having friendly conversations about history, using individual female historical figures to guide each episode. Conversational in the GOOD way, not the 'rambling and disorganized and nothing gets covered' way some podcasts are.
Material World - BBC Radio 4 - Geeky pop-sci news, only British. Doesn't get as in-depth on the sciencey end as some other podcasts I listen to, but uniformly very entertaining. Usually the host and several guests in series, each talking about whatever Recent Thing happened relating to their work that got them on the show.
Planet Money - NPR - Usually neat little explanatory pieces about the odder corollaries of economics, though not as odd as in the Freakonomics podcast.
Science ... Sort Of - It's like sitting around with three or four geeky grad-student friends listening to them go off on a subject. As the motto says, this podcast is where "we talk about things that are science, things that are sort of science, and things that wish they were science." The epidemiology of zombies comes up semi-regularly, as do dinosaurs and space (most of the regulars have geology degrees, on top of whatever else), but it ranges all over. Each episode has a "What Are We Drinking" segment (which is mostly beer geekery, and kind of interesting), a "Trailer Trash Talk" segment where they prejudge an upcoming movie based upon its trailer, a "Paleo-Posse" segment where they each bring up a piece of feedback from the audience, and then between one and three sciencey segments with actual topics. Nitpicks: Before about episode 50 the audio is kind of inconsistent (different speakers having very different volumes); the 'description' field in iTunes is a huge rambling paragraph that never actually shows anything useful in the first-80-characters that display.
Thinking Allowed - BBC Radio 4 - Really in-depth thinky discussion of two sociological topics, between the host and a guest.
Radiolab - WNYC - Jewellike and perfect, though sometimes more mental commitment than I feel like making. Not a popcorn podcast.
Stephen Fry's Podgrams - Alas, they don't seem to be updating, but they're still awesome.
A Way With Words - A word nerd's dream. It's made up of a lot of short 'call-in show' type segments on different subjects and themes, but all wordy. The hosts are a linguist and a lexicographer, dyed-in-the-wool descriptivists both, with senses of humor and fun.
And this thing has been sitting in my Firefox tabs waiting to be written and posted for over two weeks, so darnit I'm posting now. :->