Other podcasts

[Badfinger]

You're not alone. There are podcasts I've discarded not even because of the content, but because of the voice or mannerisms of particular hosts. It's not on you as the listener to "get past" particular pieces of content to start enjoying something. It's also not necessarily on them to change. Sometimes our ears just aren't compatible.

[Bjorn]

So, a podcast with Jonathon Coulton as the co-host and in-house musician sounds like a great idea, but so far Ask Me Another is just another terrible public radio humor show. 

 

However, Invisibilia (another new show with ties to This American Life) is fabulous. 

[Mangela Lansbury]

However, Invisibilia (another new show with ties to This American Life) is fabulous. 

 

I endorse this endorsement.

[Merus]

Oh, Invisibilia's okay, is it?

 

I ended up dropping Wait Wait after realising that I had mostly because I didn't have enough good comedy podcasts, because it wasn't ever particularly funny. At least Ask Me Another has wordplay questions, but I did end up dropping that too.

[Bjorn]

Oh, Invisibilia's okay, is it?

 

So far it's very much an extension of the TAL pick-a-theme-and-explore-it-from-multiple-perspectives blueprint, with some of the more sciency aspects of RadioLab mixed in. But it's got a different personality to it (naturally, due to different hosts), and competent shows in that style aren't something I generally get tired of.

[Reyturner]

You're not alone. There are podcasts I've discarded not even because of the content, but because of the voice or mannerisms of particular hosts. It's not on you as the listener to "get past" particular pieces of content to start enjoying something. It's also not necessarily on them to change. Sometimes our ears just aren't compatible.

Audibly clinking ice cubes or the sound of booze being poured are deal breakers for me, especially when the presenters bother to edit otherwise. Not that I'm some kind of teetotaller, it's just that it makes me think you want to sound the way this guy looks. 

 

[Merus]

I've never been sold on TAL and I dropped Radiolab after deciding it was a science program for people who didn't actually like science all that much (the Hmong debacle was a factor, as well). But I really enjoy Planet Money, which does have a similar public radio style and structure.

[Twig]

I like science and I like Radiolab. ):

 

Never much liked TAL. Gave it a shot two or three times, and dropped immediately.

 

Invisibilia is pretty good, although the second episode* was... well it involved a woman going on at length about her fear of snakes and I dunno it was really offputting. The episodes since then have been much better, though.

 

*Technically, I think that was the first episode. There was a preview episode on Radiolab which in my mind is always the first episode.

[Badfinger]

This Friday's episode of Video Games Hotdog had special guest Gary Butterfield, which encouraged me to look up the other things he does on the radio internet.

 

Searching feeds for Duckfeed TV, I can't tell which have him and don't, which are still running, etc except Watch Out for Fireballs. Is anyone familiar with the site and could throw me a basic rundown beyond the iTunes feed blurb?

[Bjorn]

Invisibilia is pretty good, although the second episode* was... well it involved a woman going on at length about her fear of snakes and I dunno it was really offputting. The episodes since then have been much better, though.

 

I actually find that stuff kind of interesting, as I have very low level of fear of spiders or snakes (they can surprise me if I don't know they're there, but otherwise don't scare me). So hearing people try and explain their fear, or find a source of it, is somewhat enlightening.  And the sound of the one co-host walking in with the python while the other was on mic had me laughing so hard I had to pause the episode.  My dad had a habit when I was younger of catching bull snakes to transplant back to the farm house (there was an old farmer's myth about bull snakes chasing off rattle snakes, but I don't know if that's actually true).  But he'd usually walk around for several hours with it wrapped around his arm before going back to the farm, and scared the shit out of a bunch of people that way.

[Twig]

It wasn't the fact that it was explained. It was the... method of explanation? I dunno. I can't really put into words why I found it off-putting - it was just an in-the-moment emotional "ugh why am I listening to this" sort of thing. But it's fine. The show's still good!

[pkirkner]

Slate just started up a companion podcast for The Americans featuring folks involved in the production of the show.

 

Season 3 kicked off on FX Wednesday night with a wonderfully suspenseful episode called “EST Men.” So Joe, showrunner Joel Fields, and script coordinator Molly Nussbaum sat down on one of their Brooklyn soundstages to talk us through their writing and research process. Over the coming weeks, we’ll talk with some of the show’s actors, prop and set designers, musicians, craftspeople (including those who design all those great disguises), and the other artists who together make The Americans.
We’ll be releasing new podcasts every week, a few hours after each TV episode finishes airing on FX.

[Bjorn]

Crossposting from the ethics thread, but people really should listen to the last ten or so Joystiq podcasts.  Each is a one-on-one interview between Mike Suszek and another staffer about their relationship with Joystiq.

[Griddlelol]

After moaning in another thread that I only listen to gaming podcasts, I had a cull. I left Idle Thumbs and Bombcast, introduced philosophy bites and resubscribed to skeptoid (critical thinking) and Battleship Pretension (movies).

 

It's more diverse, but most update on Tuesday or Wednesday, and two are quite short in comparison to what I used to have, so I am without podcast material most of the week. 

 

Any good science podcasts? I used to listen to the guardian one, but I got a bit bored of it because the presenter always felt so lifeless. 

[Merus]

If you're looking for lively, there's always Dr Karl's science hour. Basically he takes questions from callers for about forty minutes (interspersed with songs that aren't syndicated on the podcast) and they run the gamut from 'what's a brontosaurus' to 'why have we evolved to find nails on the chalkboard extremely irritating'.

[SuperBiasedMan]

If Psychology is a science you're looking for, I always recommend You Are Not So Smart. The combination of good hosting and interesting learning sells it well.

[Merus]

The cookie thing is weird, though.

[osmosisch]

If Psychology is a science you're looking for, I always recommend You Are Not So Smart. The combination of good hosting and interesting learning sells it well.

The latest eposiode about reduced empathy with outgroups and using virtual reality to at least in the short term improve this seems especially relevant in the context of gg.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I always skip the cookie bit because as fun as the idea is, I know I rarely get time to bake stuff I want to so it's just going to be a recurring reminder to bake.

That episode was really perfect for that. I feel like there's a weird atmosphere online right now of thinking about how to tackle the problem of online behaviour that's seeping through into mainstream discussion and stories.

Or maybe that's been a constant clear presence and I'm a dummy for not seeing it sooner, just like with the harassment itself.

[JonCole]

The cookie segment basically convinced me to buy a stand mixer, so don't listen to You Are Not So Smart if you don't have $300 of extra money lying around.

[supasheep]

The Infinite Monkey Cage is a good science podcast. One of the hosts is a particle physicist, but they cover a pretty broad spectrum of different sciences and most episodes are both interesting and funny.

[zerofiftyone]

If Psychology is a science you're looking for, I always recommend You Are Not So Smart. The combination of good hosting and interesting learning sells it well.

Thanks for the recommendation, sounds interesting. Lately I've been eating up podcasts at an unsustainable rate, so I'm glad to find this thread. 

[Twig]

The Infinite Monkey Cage is a good science podcast. One of the hosts is a particle physicist, but they cover a pretty broad spectrum of different sciences and most episodes are both interesting and funny.

Yeah I like it a lot. I recently listened to All of It after it was recommended in this thread. I sometimes really dislike some of the guests (always the comedians...), but overall definitely a good thing. It doesn't really go into great detail about anything it talks about, but the broad set of topics more than makes up for the lack of detail.

[Justin Leego]

Hey so is this thread still the kind of unofficial Justice Points forum?

Because #80 It Happened In England has an interview with one of the chaps from The Marvellous Miss Take, who explains how a bunch of middle-aged white guys came to make an unpredictable stealth game with a smart, confident but sometimes slapstick female lead and a racial minority (in Caucasian European terms), movement-impaired, playable secondary character.

It's a good segment.

[Apple Cider]

I don't want to clog up this thread with JP stuff, but thank you for the compliment. We're also reachable on Twitter  or our email, or you can PM me But thank you! We were taken by that game a lot and we were super stoked that Adam managed to come on our show.