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Man, no new Bugle episodes until September. Not a huge surprise, given John Oliver's new show, but still. :(

It's left a significant hole in my weekly podcast rotation, and my heart.

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Song Exploder

"A podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made."

 

So this was a guest podcast on the 99% Invisible design podcast which I believe was recommended earlier in the thread. Loving it so far, really recommend it.

 

Plus it's fun to hear different ways that pod hosts try to make the Squarespace ads sound non-scripted :violin:

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Does anyone know of a good philosophy podcast? I used to read a lot on the subject but stopped for some reason, and I think I prefer listening anyway.

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Plus it's fun to hear different ways that pod hosts try to make the Squarespace ads sound non-scripted :violin:

 

Hey, Small Businessman.

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Does anyone know of a good philosophy podcast? I used to read a lot on the subject but stopped for some reason, and I think I prefer listening anyway.

The Philosopher's Arms is good.

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Does anyone know of a gaming podcast (of decent audio-quality and that talks mostly about games) with more than one woman opinionator at the same time or even a woman who is considered more than a guest?

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One Life Left? It's an actual radio show in the UK, I believe, with two dudes and a lady on every episode. At least last I listened. I stopped listening a while ago because I didn't find it all that great. Not enough time for any real insightful discussion with the radio show format.

 

http://www.onelifeleft.com/

 

I haven't listened for at least a couple years so maybe it's gotten better.

 

1up.com used to have a number of such podcasts before Ziff Davis died.

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Isometric, which was mentioned earlier, has a normal cast of 3 women and 1 man and the dude doesn't really talk all that much. That said, I wasn't super fond of it but I also listen to like 20 podcasts and I don't have time for anything I don't like a lot right off the bat. Might give it another go at some point.

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Thanks for the references; I didn't know either existed. I'll try them out.

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Does anyone know of a gaming podcast (of decent audio-quality and that talks mostly about games) with more than one woman opinionator at the same time or even a woman who is considered more than a guest?

 

The Not a Game podcast typically features two female voices (and is mostly about games obviously), only the audio quality might not always qualify as decent, depending on your standards.

 

Also, Ellie Gibson was a regular on the Eurogamer.net podcast for a while, but I haven't listened to that in ages.

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The Philosopher's Arms is good.

 

Do they discuss philosophical literature or is it more about philosophical topics?

 

I've been trying to get through some Bergson for the last year(s, if I'm being honest), and feel like a companion podcast to works of philosophy would be an amazing thing.  I really doubt I'll ever read Hegel or make it through a full Derrida book without someone else to discuss it with, so a podcast of people reading something and chatting about broad strokes stuff would probably kick-start my habit.

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Boy am I glad I asked. I'm listening to my first episode of Not A Game (#41) and it's already paying off. Fallen London sounds really interesting and I was not at all expecting Netrunner talk. This is great.

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Fallen London talk that almost got read out on Idle Thumbs:

 

The key is they train the player very early on with irreversible choices that provide flavour, and then they start giving players irreversible ethical dilemmas*. Other storylines act as sucker bait: it warns you that continuing the storyline may not be wise, and then when you do, you permanently lose stats or sell your soul or something. After that, the idea that there are storylines and events you don’t necessarily get to see is easier to swallow, because you can’t always anticipate the results of your actions, and if you insist on finding out, you may make a very expensive mistake.


There is a storyline called Seeking Mr Eaten’s Name which allows you to go into a self-destructive cycle, obsessing over the fate of the titular Mr Eaten. The game tells you at every opportunity that this storyline is bad news, and it is: pursuing it requires you to sacrifice your resources, your stats and your actions. At one point, deep into the storyline, your character is given the option to spend US$50 or so to ride a carriage into the sun, which the game makes clear will destroy the player’s account. One player tried it, and then politely reported that the action did not work correctly and that he still had his account. He was allowed to keep it, and was given a special prize.

Fallen London contains the single hardest choice I’ve ever made in a game: you’ve done some errands looking after a spoiled contessa, who disappears at one point. You investigate, and find she had been romancing a Clay Man and had been planning on eloping with him/it. You eventually find the Clay Man deep under London, who is putting the finishing touches on turning her to stone so, he/it says, they can be together forever. All that’s left unpetrified are her frightened eyes, looking at you. The two choices you get are: smash the statue, or leave, allowing them to escape.

 

They've finally started to fix up the opening stuff, but it never really becomes not grindy so you have to make your peace with that. Sunless Sea, their new game (now on Steam), is set in the world of Fallen London, and is just as well-written, but is also an actual game.

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Fallen London is so good. SO GOOD.

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I've just started listening to Slate's Audio Book Club after seeing Chris tout it on twitter, and am enjoying it quite a bit. I've just been listening to their past episodes on books I've already read, but their discussions have been though-provoking and enjoyable to listen to. They did one for the last Harry Potter book, and brought their kids in to record it, which was hilarious, and awesome to listen to.

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Fallen London talk that almost got read out on Idle Thumbs:

 

 

 

They've finally started to fix up the opening stuff, but it never really becomes not grindy so you have to make your peace with that. Sunless Sea, their new game (now on Steam), is set in the world of Fallen London, and is just as well-written, but is also an actual game.

 

I had never heard of Fallen London until checking out Sunless See when I saw the banner for it on Steam.  Sounds freaking fascinating.  How long does going through FL take?  How badly grindy is it?

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Boy am I glad I asked. I'm listening to my first episode of Not A Game (#41) and it's already paying off. Fallen London sounds really interesting and I was not at all expecting Netrunner talk. This is great.

 

I started with Not A Game #47 and it's really refreshing to hear people chat about games as good friends would talk, without tending towards performing for the audience, but still taking care to give clear explanations about each new game they mentioned.

 

For example, there was really simple, almost throwaway 10 second summary of how League of Legends works as a spectator sport, and that's not easy to do. Top stuff.

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I had never heard of Fallen London until checking out Sunless See when I saw the banner for it on Steam.  Sounds freaking fascinating.  How long does going through FL take?  How badly grindy is it?

 

It runs on an action pool system, although actions will refill after about 2 hours. There will be frequent points where the only thing to do is repeat the same action over and over again in order to build up a quality. It has improved some from the early days, where there were also big content gaps and they didn't have the technology to expose different choices in a cycle like they do now, but there's still a big hump around level 60-100 where it's particularly rough. There are ways to essentially skip the grind, by equipping items that improve your qualities, but that requires earning in-game currency and items get increasingly pricey.

 

On the other hand, it is an excellent setting and the writing is exquisite.

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Does anyone know of a gaming podcast (of decent audio-quality and that talks mostly about games) with more than one woman opinionator at the same time or even a woman who is considered more than a guest?

 

This doesn't fit your criteria of always featuring more than one woman, but the Indoor Kids podcast has two hosts, and one of them is a woman.

 

The short lived LAN Party podcast (sort of a post-GFW podcast after Sean Elliott and Jeff Green left to work in game development) featured two women panelists if I recall correctly.

 

Other than that I'm drawing blanks unfortunately. It's sad, if I was trying to think of comedy podcasts, for example, I would have no trouble coming up with tons of examples.

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Oh, on the subject of female people on nerdy podcasts, there is also The Nerdy Show, which is this enormous podcasting conglomerate with a billion different podcasts (and unfortunately no way to subscribe to them on an individual basis, but it's okay because they don't spam their feed with a new episode every day).

 

http://nerdyshow.com/

 

They can be rather... enthusiastically ignorant in their nerddom but their passion sorta makes it really fun. Featured among the various podcasts is a series with an all-gay cast, a fantasy table-top roleplaying radio show featuring one consistent woman (and a self-proclaimed asexual man playing a female character (I hope I'm not mixing up hosts, that would be really embarrassing!)), a Ghostbusters table-top roleplaying radio show featuring one consistent woman, etc.

 

Obviously they don't talk just about video games - they also talk about comics and Star Wars and cartoons and sci-fi TV and and and and LOTS of music talk, they love their nerdy music. They have lots of very awkward fanperson interviews with Nerd Thing creators, but also plenty of actually decent interviews (in my opinion). It may not be your thing, this strange hydra of nerdy podcasting, but it also may! So I'm throwing it out there.

 

They're not perfect and do make some mistakes - I think it was a couple months ago, one of the hosts on the Main Show made a casual rape joke, but a guest on that episode from another podcast (The Derpy Show, I think) on the network called him out on it. But overall I think they're much, much better than the majority of nerdy communities tend to be.

 

So there's my weird quasi-recommendation.

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It runs on an action pool system, although actions will refill after about 2 hours. There will be frequent points where the only thing to do is repeat the same action over and over again in order to build up a quality. It has improved some from the early days, where there were also big content gaps and they didn't have the technology to expose different choices in a cycle like they do now, but there's still a big hump around level 60-100 where it's particularly rough. There are ways to essentially skip the grind, by equipping items that improve your qualities, but that requires earning in-game currency and items get increasingly pricey.

 

On the other hand, it is an excellent setting and the writing is exquisite.

 

I made an account to check it out.  I dig the world and writing.  It's got a very similar vibe to it that the board game Arkham Horror has, with a mix of noir and the strange.  Not sure I can handle the action point system though.  I get that it's a good monetization model for a world like this, but I really just want to be able to click around for an hour or so if I want to.  It will definitely get me to check out their new game when it's finished though. 

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I find the grinding mechanic really strange. I ended up just asking a rich widow if she would put me up over and over again until my persuasion was high enough to succeed. While that narrative is interesting in this specific instance (and possibly the one where I just continually write articles about mushrooms for cash), the mechanical necessity of clicking on a choice box with a known outcome repeatitively is boring.

I do enjoy the writing though. I also think the choose-your-own-adventure format with chances of success showing on mouse-over is interesting. I'd prefer that the player internalize their skills with something like symbolic, visible pieces of a costume or party members providing their assurance or doubts; but still, it was interesting in that it both created motive to gain skills and a little bit of gambling to the choices.

The writing is really fun isn't it? The tone kinda reminds me of the one episode of Welcome to Night Vale I listened to.

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Both Fallen London and Welcome to Night Vale are "weird fiction", though Fallen London does veer a bit more toward the Victorian era whereas Night Vale is set in a modern world.

 

Fallen London is fantastic to play because you just check in every now and then and make some decisions. Don't treat it like a game you play all day every day. Treat it like a game you check in on once a day. It's so good.

 

Also Daft Souls has women on it. Not every episode, but it's gone 13 episodes so far and had women on I think just under half of the episodes? I think they just have a pool of people and whoever's available talks for the week. http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/daft-souls-new-podcast-us-about-video-games/

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