Other podcasts

[BenLuke]

Yeah,  they put things out reaaally slowly and they're not on iTunes and have their rss feed hidden away somewhere so it's hard to know when they actually do release something. :\

[sclpls]

I went to the GFW Radio reunion panel today at PAX.

 

Goddamnit I would Kickstart that like a motherfucker. NO HESITATION, if it would just happen. GODDAMNIT.

 

GFW meetups are always awesome. I could also use some more of A Life Well Wasted in my life.

[Dosed]

What exactly is GFW? 

 

I'm glad you finally got into Giant Bomb Zeus. Those guys are awesome. And I love the fact that the podcasts go on for 3 hours. Time passes so much quicker when I'm listening to those guys just blather on. But I was listening to one recently and it kind of bugs me how exclusive those guys can be sometimes about their video content. I personally never really visit their site, but I love the podcasts and they frequently mention things that happened in their videos, panels and lives but then never actually go into any detail and feels like I'm missing out on some sort of in joke which doesn't make for good listening. There was one recently where they talked about something "crazy" happening at a panel but then failed to discuss it or elaborate and I just stopped listening to the podcast after that because I didn't really get what they were going on about. 

[pabosher]

GFW: Games For Windows

[toblix]

: Origins

[Justin Leego]

: Revengeance

[sclpls]

I've been listening lately to the Crate & Crowbar. It is a games podcast with Tom Francis of Gunpoint & Spelunky Explorers Club fame, as well as a bunch of other UK games journalists having smart conversations about games that I think most Idle Thumbs listeners would appreciate.

[Justin Leego]

If you like Nightvale, one of the creators used to write for the Something Awful front page and was consistently great. Here are his archives.

 

I have a soft spot for this article.

 

Oh totally. There are times when it's really hard not to reimagine the Nightvale monologue in

. Especially the closing lines from "Square, you must publically apologize..." at 1m24s onwards.

[JonCole]

I've been listening lately to the Crate & Crowbar. It is a games podcast with Tom Francis of Gunpoint & Spelunky Explorers Club fame, as well as a bunch of other UK games journalists having smart conversations about games that I think most Idle Thumbs listeners would appreciate.

 

Considering your pitch was that "most Idle Thumbs listeners would appreciate" C&C, I'm a little disheartened that I didn't like it at all. It still felt incredibly nascent - the guys haven't really found a voice, so their "ehh" audio quality and pacing is a lot more noticeable. I gave it a good try, three episodes, and found myself building up a backlog of unlistened episodes so I unsubbed. Too bad, I was hoping for another Idle Thumbs-like thing.

 

Re: this other thread:

 

Hello, all:

 

I've realized how much time I've invested solely in podcasts with hosts discussing what games are hot and what games they've played during the last week.  It's great and all, but it feels like I'm missing out on a lot of different topics going on outside of gaming.

 

I already listen to some non-game-related podcasts: 

• RadioLab: their stories are absolutely eye-opening, but they're few and far between
• Planet Money: learning about how economics effect our daily lives and the world around us is great, but the amount of content has been receding recently (at least it feels that way)
• Laser Time: is a pretty great look into different aspects of pop culture
• This is Only a Test: a decent show discussing numerous consumer electronics and other weird things they tinker around with in their spare time
• Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project: a show where members of This is Only a Test talk with Mythbusters' Adam Savage about topics that interest him

Aside from that, I have nothing else in the non-game spectrum of non-gaming podcasts.  

 

What I'm looking for are podcasts that cover the following topics:

• current events in the government (mostly to keep up to date about worldly matters)
• movies (used to listen to the Screened podcast back when Alex Navarro and Matt Rorie ran the site)
• improvements in robotics, online security, etc. (basically anything covered in Ars Technica)
• discussions about jobs within computer science
• discussions about developing, programming games 

I know that last one is a bit of a cop out on the "non-gaming" spectrum, but I truly want to learn how it is to make a game directly from the people who make them; not filtered through a feature on Polygon; not a one-on-one interview on the Sup, Holmes stream or on an article on Gamasutra; maybe not even the new podcast hosted by Steve Gayner via Idle Thumbs.

 

I want a podcast featuring game developers just "shooting the shit" about what games they've made in the past or are making currently and how they went about designing or coding for them.

 

The podcast I envisioned above may be a stretch, but I would appreciate it if anyone could refer me to some podcasts held up to the aforementioned criteria.

 

I'd recommend Decode DC for "current events in the government". It's hosted by Andrea Seabrook, a former NPR Congressional Correspondent, who tries to give an outsider's perspective to government journalism. So, while many of her episodes are solely fixed on the current government issues of the day, she also focuses the microscope on the news cycle's effect on politics and vice versa.

 

I don't listen to movie podcasts anymore because I really don't watch movies in the movie theater (can't afford it like I used to). That said, I used to listen to Filmspotting, The /Filmcast, and The Creative Screenwriting Podcast quite voraciously. The last one was my favorite, as it was hosted by Jeff Goldsmith of Creative Screenwriting where he would sit down with screenwriters for both popular and indie movies and discuss how they were made from a writer's perspective. As it turns out, the screenwriting process is interesting whether or not a movie is a huge hit and hearing the writer talk about his process of creating certain characters or plot devices can really change your reading of a film. The podcast has since closed, but upon a little research it looks like Jeff Goldsmith is still doing his thing at The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith.

 

I have absolutely no input regarding the third and fourth bullet points, and for the fifth I would just recommend any number of podcasts created by game developers. I remember getting huge insights on game development when listening to the Kojima Productions podcast back when Mark MacDonald hosted it, and I heard the Naughty Dog podcast is also quite good when it's going. Mark still does his thing at 8-4 Play, where he currently works doing Japanese localization, so that provides it's own degree of insight into game production (although clearly not the more technical/programming aspect that you were asking about).

[Justin Leego]

Read Goldsmith as

.

[clyde]

I'm listening to episode 15 of Crate and Crowbar. The email about the person who played 20 hours of Oblivion thinking that the entire game would take place in Anvil (I'm not sure how they ended up there first, but whatever) was really neat. I love how perception of a game's scope can give the player these eureka-moments of ecstacy.

[clyde]

I've also started to listen to the Diet Soap podcast. Those of you who can't listen to poor audio-quality shouldn't bother because it can get really bad sometimes. It's a pop-philosophy podcast and the host manages to strike chords with some frequency (3-8 times per podcast I'd estimate).

Episode 189 about the debate between Chomsky and Zizek is particularly interesting. It starts out poorly with an indiscernable audio clip from Chomsky, but moves on to discuss the relevancy of non-empirical philosophy and the roles of Zizek and Chomsky in the Left.

[TychoCelchuuu]

If you like movies, The Treatment is a tremendous podcast. Elvis Mitchell interviews filmmakers and he does a great job of it. He often offers his reading of the film to the filmmaker and asks them about it, and he also knows like, everything about movies, and he's big on intertextuality, so it's fun to see what movies he links together. It's been a long time but I think good episodes include Brad Bird on Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Nicholas Winding Refn on Drive, and Will Gluck on Easy A.

[Ben X]

Wowzas, that goes back to 1996! Sadly, only the stuff from mid-2006 onwards is downloadable.

[SilentBtAmazing]

In Conversation with Jeff Garlin is the bees knees

[Merus]

No-one told me there was a new You Look Nice Today.

[Irishjohn]

I know there are a couple of thumbs that have podcasts... I have a bit of an iTunes issue with mine. Anyone around to offer some advice via message?

[seamus2389]

Considering your pitch was that "most Idle Thumbs listeners would appreciate" C&C, I'm a little disheartened that I didn't like it at all. It still felt incredibly nascent - the guys haven't really found a voice, so their "ehh" audio quality and pacing is a lot more noticeable. I gave it a good try, three episodes, and found myself building up a backlog of unlistened episodes so I unsubbed. Too bad, I was hoping for another Idle Thumbs-like thing.

 

Re: this other thread:

 

 

 

I'd recommend Decode DC for "current events in the government". It's hosted by Andrea Seabrook, a former NPR Congressional Correspondent, who tries to give an outsider's perspective to government journalism. So, while many of her episodes are solely fixed on the current government issues of the day, she also focuses the microscope on the news cycle's effect on politics and vice versa.

 

I don't listen to movie podcasts anymore because I really don't watch movies in the movie theater (can't afford it like I used to). That said, I used to listen to Filmspotting, The /Filmcast, and The Creative Screenwriting Podcast quite voraciously. The last one was my favorite, as it was hosted by Jeff Goldsmith of Creative Screenwriting where he would sit down with screenwriters for both popular and indie movies and discuss how they were made from a writer's perspective. As it turns out, the screenwriting process is interesting whether or not a movie is a huge hit and hearing the writer talk about his process of creating certain characters or plot devices can really change your reading of a film. The podcast has since closed, but upon a little research it looks like Jeff Goldsmith is still doing his thing at The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith.

 

I have absolutely no input regarding the third and fourth bullet points, and for the fifth I would just recommend any number of podcasts created by game developers. I remember getting huge insights on game development when listening to the Kojima Productions podcast back when Mark MacDonald hosted it, and I heard the Naughty Dog podcast is also quite good when it's going. Mark still does his thing at 8-4 Play, where he currently works doing Japanese localization, so that provides it's own degree of insight into game production (although clearly not the more technical/programming aspect that you were asking about).

 

 

Camouflaj radio is by a studio developing a game. Every month they talk about the progress they made, future plans, what went right/wrong along with games they are playing and interesting stuff they came across related to their game

[Brannigan]

Finally getting caught up on Welcome to Nightvale.  The faceless old woman that secretly lives in your house is the best.

[Merus]

I keep bouncing off Welcome to Night Vale. I like the idea of the mixing of the banal and the unknowable, but it feels like they mix in the most obvious way possible. Here is a list of things to watch out for on a camping trip, and number four is the sinister one. What relaly pulls me out of it, though, is that no-one seems upset that their family died. I can't sympathise with anyone in the town, because they don't feel human emotions.

 

On the other hand, I liked the dog attack episode because it got closest to the tone I wanted - here is a problem, and there is something very off about this seemingly very normal problem.

[Gormongous]

I keep bouncing off Welcome to Night Vale. I like the idea of the mixing of the banal and the unknowable, but it feels like they mix in the most obvious way possible. Here is a list of things to watch out for on a camping trip, and number four is the sinister one.

 

Well put. This is the principal reason that I've dragged my feet on listening to much if any of Welcome to Nightvale.

[Patrick R]

Yep! Also, I think the host is pretty bad. He delivers...lines in such a...stilted and...IDIOSYNCRATIC way. I think it's the exact wrong approach. They should be playing things straight, but he sounds more like the G-Man than a local radio host.

 

I kind of want to support it just on the basis that it's obvious they are one of the try -hardingest podcasts to try hard, and I think more podcasts should put in this level of effort. But I tire of the unanimous praise it gets.

[Justin Leego]

Your post works best read in the voice of Ce-cil Baldwin.

[Brannigan]

Given the town, pretty sure the G-man is the proper route.  He does break that up when he gets all flustered over carlos.  Or when expressing hatred for the apache tracker.

[shammack]

Yep! Also, I think the host is pretty bad. He delivers...lines in such a...stilted and...IDIOSYNCRATIC way. I think it's the exact wrong approach. They should be playing things straight, but he sounds more like the G-Man than a local radio host.

 

Oh man, I totally agree. I feel like if I were just reading the scripts for that podcast there might be some moderately amusing stuff in there, but that wacky voice just completely ruins it for me. It just sounds like a dorky young guy trying to put on a spooky voice.