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I think of Serial as essentially a season on one episode of This American Life. Some TAL episodes are not great, so for Serial it will be a whole season you might not care about.

I actually stoped listening to TAL a while back because I have started losing interest in anecdotes.

 

This is also a good and relevant point. I felt like shuffling it out for a while and i have too many podcasts now so it's probably going to be dropped for a bit.

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Yeah, listened to the final ep of Serial S2 the other day, and while it overall wasn't as gripping as S1, it's still good! It just didn't feel like the mystery was as great as in S1, nor did it have as much a potential of unearthing new evidence/clues.

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I think that's actually what made me feel kind of icky about serial season 1. There was a group of people who forgot that this was real people and not a fun mystery to solve.

They did break details in the Bergdahl story, like his mental health diagnosis, the stakes are lower here because no one died. This story gave some great context to the systems surrounding Bergdahl, but at the end of the day his parents still have him and Hae Min Lee's don't have her.

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I think that's actually what made me feel kind of icky about serial season 1. There was a group of people who forgot that this was real people and not a fun mystery to solve.

They did break details in the Bergdahl story, like his mental health diagnosis, the stakes are lower here because no one died. This story gave some great context to the systems surrounding Bergdahl, but at the end of the day his parents still have him and Hae Min Lee's don't have her.

 

Also I don't know if this was intended as a course correction from S1 or just coincidence but out of the gate Beau Bowe is seen as sympathetic. The narrative with Adnan was starting with the assumption that he was correctly incarcerated (even though doubt is planted in episode one) while it seemed like from the start Sarah was not accepting the narrative that placed blame squarely on Bowe's shoulders. Come to think of it, it may have also had something to do with the fact that before the season Bowe was known and widely villified, whereas Adnan was basically unknown before the show started.

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Chris Remo appeared on some sort of Kotaku podcast with Kirk Hamilton. A lot of talk about music as a medium and how it compares to games as a medium.

 

https://simplecast.com/s/d82110a0

 

EDIT: Oh uhh, also Firewatch spoilers, so heads up on that!

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2 Dope Queens has really impressed me as well, and I'm pretty much the same on comedy podcasts, I always bounce off them. 

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Rumble Strip Vermont's newest episode gives an intimate look at having a meth-addicted parent

 

http://www.rumblestripvermont.com/2016/04/jesse/

 

Gravy looks how agriculture and racism are so intertwined

 

https://www.southernfoodways.org/gravy/fighting-for-the-promised-land-a-story-of-farming-and-racism-gravy-ep-29/


I've really fallen in love with Wish We Were Here. They delve into India Wood's life and her discovery of "one of the finest Allosaurus fossils ever found."

 

http://krcc.org/post/wish-we-were-here-episode-13-girl-who-dug-dinosaurs

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Hey, I've not revisited this for a while. Checkpoints #33 is up with Keith Stuart, Games Editor of the Guardian.

This is a family episode. From his earliest memories of he and his dad as co-conspirators in the notion that a home computer would be 'good for homework', through to his own life as a father, and how he and his son's relationship has been completely transformed by Minecraft. Family chat! The teens are gonna love it.

We talk about writing Video game manuals, the magic of Phantasy Star Online, the forgotten Mario and Zelda games on the CDi, chasing the football dragon in Champ Manager, the role of a games journalist in the world of the streamer and the fascinating relationship between acting and playing video games. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. CHOOSE YOUR CLASS.

If you're into the show a rating or review on iTunes is massively appreciated and genuinely helps out the show a great deal, as does any kind of social media sharing. Thanks!

iTunes  RSS  Web

 

For the sake of balance, and in case nobody's mentioned it yet, the Beautiful/Anonymous podcast is amazing. I've been hugely enjoying it. Hell of a lot of pressure on the host and he does incredibly well - http://www.earwolf.com/show/beautiful-anonymous/

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After flitting around between various D&D podcasts, I settled on Friends at the Table for a bit. Austin walker and some of the StreamFriends folks, It's a great mix of comedy, serious business, and philosophy that not a single other podcast or youtube show has hit.

 

http://friendsatthetable.net/

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Friends at the Table is awesome. Especially the second season. 

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Oooo, that's totally what I'm listening to at work tomorrow.

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I'm officially done with Daft Souls. Matt Lees is an arsehole - there, I've said it. 

 

Frankly the only reason I actually liked that podcast was because Keza McDonald from Kotaku UK was a regular guest. Her appearances were rare then almost non-existent apart from Monster Hunter and Dark Souls shows. If she did a podcast, I'd totally listen to that.

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what did Matt Lees do now? 

 

i have been enjoying the Fizzle Show, and recommend it to any entrepreneurs out there going at it alone with their online business.

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I'm officially done with Daft Souls. Matt Lees is an arsehole - there, I've said it. 

 

Frankly the only reason I actually liked that podcast was because Keza McDonald from Kotaku UK was a regular guest. Her appearances were rare then almost non-existent apart from Monster Hunter and Dark Souls shows. If she did a podcast, I'd totally listen to that.

 

If you don't mind, could you elaborate on what he did / said?

 

I stopped listening quite a while back, there was always something vaguely offputting about the show. I think the final straw for me was when the main co-host (dunno his name), in response to some complaints about a game being too expensive, made reference to "poor people" or something to that effect.

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He's not done anything in particular, just generally an annoying person. His opinions rarely seem his own, as though he's read an article about something then gone, yeah - that's what I think too, but the most grating thing is how he's constantly saying (actually the main co-host does this too) about how everyone should just accept people liking different things etc, which is fine and great, then later goes on a rant about how people who like X are all idiots/wrong/should like it for a different reason.

 

It's not even something personal to me, what made me stop listening is how there was half an episode bitching about people who like to play games at 1080p 60fps on PC as though they're monsters and idiots. I don't care about visuals in games, but how they were speaking about people who enjoy this stuff really irritated me. If the conversation had been "lol who cares?" I'd have agreed, but it was "lol who cares, these people like the wrong things and therefore are dumb."

 

I don't really care that much, there were a few good shows, but overall it was the least interesting video game podcast I've ever listened to. Now there's Idle Weekend too, I feel like listening to 4 games podcasts is a bit much anyway. 

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Heh, I think I heard that one. With Jim Trinca? He's another one who's always harping on about how people who care about technical stuff should be killed horribly, without realising that he's being much more irritating by moaning about it so much. Just ignore it!

That said, I quite like Lees and Quinns. And Trinca, sometimes.

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He's not done anything in particular, just generally an annoying person. His opinions rarely seem his own, as though he's read an article about something then gone, yeah - that's what I think too, but the most grating thing is how he's constantly saying (actually the main co-host does this too) about how everyone should just accept people liking different things etc, which is fine and great, then later goes on a rant about how people who like X are all idiots/wrong/should like it for a different reason.

It's not even something personal to me, what made me stop listening is how there was half an episode bitching about people who like to play games at 1080p 60fps on PC as though they're monsters and idiots. I don't care about visuals in games, but how they were speaking about people who enjoy this stuff really irritated me. If the conversation had been "lol who cares?" I'd have agreed, but it was "lol who cares, these people like the wrong things and therefore are dumb."

I don't really care that much, there were a few good shows, but overall it was the least interesting video game podcast I've ever listened to. Now there's Idle Weekend too, I feel like listening to 4 games podcasts is a bit much anyway.

Yeah, I dumped Daft Souls from my feed a couple of months ago because Twig and N1njaSquirrel pointed out that I was always complaining about Matt Lees, and I realized that I didn't really miss it once I'd skipped a couple of episodes. I don't know that Matt's an asshole, but he is a very annoying and unthoughtful person sometimes. That means he's just not very good as a podcast host for me, even though he's great in pre-scripted reviews on Shut Up & Sit Down and Cool Ghosts. Shit that he does all the time includes:

  • He complains regularly (maybe every third show) that gamers don't appreciate how much work goes into games and how it's really a miracle that games get made at all, then he'll turn around and dismiss a game (or even shut down another co-host who's talking about it) for something incredibly shallow and childish, like its marketing or the kind of people that he imagines play and enjoy it. Street Fighter V was a recent example, bad enough that Matt apologized (and then Quinns told him he shouldn't have apologized, for some reason).
  • He gives absolutely rapturous pre-release evaluations of certain games, which sound great but are mostly conjecture and usually turn out to be partially or entirely wrong. The XCOM 2 preview episode is full of Lees imagining what the best possible version of that game was going to be and, in hindsight, it was an absolutely meaningless exercise born out of hype and woo.
  • A lot of times, even for games of which he's a big fan, he seems to come to the table with no idea why he likes what he likes and he'll stall the conversation for ten or fifteen minutes disagreeing with someone but being unable to explain or back up his own feelings with anything substantive. Often, Quinns or another co-host will have to walk Matt back into an argument that justifies his feelings, even though they personally don't agree with him, just to move the conversation past Matt insisting that a game's "nice" or how people who don't like it "aren't playing it right." The Stardew Valley discussion was a recent example of this, where Matt spent fifteen to twenty minutes absolutely struggling to articulate the difference in feel between Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing.
  • He has a tendency to trump himself as a tastemaker and it's tedious to have that recur in the host of an hour-long podcast. Whether or not it's true, I need to hear Matt's story about singlehandedly ensuring the success of Dragon's Dogma in Western markets exactly once, not four times, and I need to hear about how he was one of the earliest proponents of Bloodbourne not at all, especially during a podcast that's supposed to be about Dark Souls 3 and Keza MacDonald's new book.
In general, I've also been pruning back the gaming podcasts that I follow. The rule's been pretty clear-cut for me: I don't care to listen to a bunch of journalists or industry figures i) psychoanalyze gamer culture, through discussion of the latest crisis or fad, from their armchairs; or ii) proscribe feelings or behavior in gamer culture, again through discussion of the latest crisis or fad. I'm interested in people talking about how they feel about stuff, not how they feel about how other people (who aren't there and can't explain themselves) feel about stuff, and that's put Isometric, Idle Weekend, and now Daft Souls on the chopping block for me.

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You're totally setting me up for promoting my own show and I'm sorry, it's gross, but I really think you'd dig it. I felt all of those frustrations with Video game shows. I made this one  because it was something I really wanted to listen to. It's a show about people as much as it is about games, and about how games have influenced their life, how certain games hit you at a certain point and just twist your point of view. I didn't want to do anything as simplistic as 'pick your favourite games!' because your favourite game might not be the one that got you through that break up or bonded you with your best pal. 

 

One of my favourite examples is from a recent ep I recorded with Stephen Bailey, a Video game analyst. He talked about how after two years of panicked study in university, he offered himself a lifeline and bought a Sega Saturn and a copy of Guardian Heroes. The explosion of colour and joy made him realise he had to start looking after himself, because if he didn't, he was going to miss out on some spectacular shit. It sounds kinda trite written down but it was such a great moment in the show. 

 

On the latest episode my guest is William Pugh, one of the co-creators of the Stanley Parable. I really, really enjoyed recording this episode but it's proven quite divisive to regular listeners. Listen here: declandineen.com/checkpoints all the iTunes and RSS stuff is on the site too. 

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Stuff.

 

Pretty much spot on, just articulated in a way I could never hope to do. I also agree with the whole complaining/talking about gaming culture to be the worst part of any video game podcast I listen to. It's old hat, and nothing new is ever added. 

 

I have a super long commute now so I need podcast, but I'm struggling to find them. Really enjoying Reply All. It's right up my alley, listening to weird internet things. However I prefer the longer podcasts like Giantbomb. They're not amazing, but it's 3 fucking hours of content per week. 

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I really like having an episode or two of Watch Out For Fireballs on my phone for throwing on when I run out of my weeklies and still want to listen to people talk about games. They have a big backlog so every once in a while I'll go through and download one for a game I like or have played recently. I'll probably switch over to Bonfireside Chat for a bit since I'm trying Dark Souls again.

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I just got tired of the presenters of. Nothing that really stands out, I just found them a little irritating and in no way charming. 

 

I also stopped listening to Start Up. The first season was just absolute brilliance. The second was a huge disappointment as the whole form changed, and there was less Alex, who has such a great personality and radio presence. Without him and his story I completely lost interest. 

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I'm not sure if they understood that the actual appeal from Start Up was the inside open knowledge it gave people. They were honest with faults, flaws and troubles. But the season 2 company were clearly trying to leverage for good publicity so they're not gonna be quite so honest and open. Season 3 diverged even further so far, it's just unconnected different stories about start ups. Not remotely what I was interested in.

 

I wish Mystery Show was back. :unsure:

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