New Podcast Review

[peristaltor]

Okay, flisties, time once again to review the audio podcast offerings being sucked out of the intertubes. I did this a few years ago and got some good recommendations. In interwebs time, though, a few years ago equals a few decades. I feel I've gotten horribly out of date.

So, if you're one to stuff your ears with free (or really, really cheap) audio content easily downloaded, do share your faves and hates with raves and pans.

My own machine currently gets stuffed with subscriptions to the following (listed in order of relative favorite selected by me):

• The C-Realm Podcast: kmo has been producing the C-Realm for over 200 episodes now, and will soon be coming out with a book based on a selection of his past interviews. He focuses on issues related to societal collapse, spirituality through selective chemistry, and whatever appeals to his well-honed and very well-read sensibilities.
  
  
• The KunstlerCast: Author James Howard Kunstler uses his podcast as a bully pulpit to not only promote his books and other writings, but to cast a skeptical eye toward what he sees as societies ills. A delightful curmudgeon that often gets me and his interviewer, Duncan Creary, laughing out loud.
  
  
• SModcast: Filmmaker Kevin Smith and his producer Scott Mosier usually sit around the kitchen table shooting the shit. The difference with Smith and Mosier and most of us mortals is plain: they are professional entertainers. Their shit shoots at a much higher caliber, leading often to side-splitting hilarity. The SMod has gotten so popular, in fact, that they have taken the show on the road, filling large theaters across the planet doing nothing more complicated that improvising on stage. I really admire that level of hilarious spontaneity.
  
  
• The Onion Radio News: What's not to love. The Onion can do no wrong, and the Radio News is usually under a minute in length.
  
  
• The Skeptics Guide to the Universe: These guys have also been podcasting for a while, up to #270 in once-a-week shows. They focus on science and resistance to it, noting and debunking all sorts of woo-woo mystical and religious thinking.
  
  
• RadioLab: The best public radio show on the web, if not on the entire freakin' radio. These guys also focus on science, spiffing up the data and conclusions with a very well produced hour and podcast extras. I've quoted their shows in the past and anticipate doing so in the future.
  
  
• This American Life: Another amazingly well-produced radio show, making an almost seamless move to podcast.
  
  
• Geologic Podcast: Has nothing to do with geology. No, this is George Hrab's baby, almost up to 200 episodes. He's a professional musician and skeptic I first heard interviewed on the SGU. Oh, and he's freakin' hilarious.
  
  
• PRI's The World: Technology: Clarke Boyd has been selecting this amalgam of technology content produced for The World, a radio show, for over 300 weekly episodes. At first it was just a labor of love, but it has spawned so many PRI and NPR ilk on the web that I think this is Public Radio's way of shifting its marketing focus away from broadcast. While I have reservations about this approach, Clarke does a good job.
  
  
• The Thomas Jefferson Hour: I only got into this recently, but I really like a good pair of historical scholars relating present events to the contexts found hundreds of years ago. Clay Jenkinson has over 800 shows under his belt impersonating Pres. Thomas Jefferson. His scholarship is sound, based on reading Jefferson's thousands of letters and publications.
  
  
• Counterspin: FAIR, or Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, has a weekly podcast that tries to find the hidden and not-so-hidden biases in corporate media news reports. It's more hard-hitting and accusatory than the more soft-pedaling NPR version . . . .
  
  
• NPR's On The Media: Not as insightful as Counterspin, but still well-produced and with necessary insights. Their greater prominence of course gets them better interviews than Counterspin. It's amazing what you can get when you agree to compromise your journalistic integrity, I guess.
  
  
• Science Talk: Scientific American pays Steve Mirsky to recap recent science papers and events. He's not unentertaining and uninformed, and has a great host style with a good bit of snark. I like snark.
  
  
• Search Engine: This is a Canadian pod focusing on internet policy and fair use issues. Several of the topics consider the United States as well as Canada, especially when host Jesse Brown suspects any collusion of commercial and governmental interests crossing the border.
  
  
• The Naked Scientists: This is a weekly BBC radio show aimed at non-scientists, especially kids. It's amazing the difference in available content between the US and other nations, a difference which probably explains the achievement differences between the US and other nations. We're starting to totally suck, Fellow Americans.

There are others in the list, but every other one is on my chopping block or doesn't post regularly anymore. For example, Stephen Fry had a great pod -- and may still -- but it has sat un-updated now for months. Ricky Gervais, same. I was even a regular guest on a book club podcast, but it seems to have gone away after the host had a pretty severe hard drive crash. Ah, well.

And Planet Money is still on the rotation, but until I see some less libertarian leanings it's on probation. I have cut podcasts before. I will not hesitate to do it again.

So, folks, anything out there I'm missing?