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Experimentation with Podcasts
Now that I have an iPod, I am trying out podcasts! Unfortunately, I have not had good luck, probably because I am so judgmental. I do give every podcast at least 15 minutes (usually more) before turning it off.
I think that my main issue is that I really dislike amateur podcasts (at least the ones I've sampled thus far), for many of the same reasons that I detest morning radio. I do not want to sit and listen to two people I don't know have unsubstantial witless banter. I don't give a shit how many times you had to record your podcast because your friend erased it; I don't care that you turned off your air conditioning just to record your podcast; to be honest, I don't even care what's going on in your personal life, at all! Just talk about whatever your podcast is supposed to be about.
ABC's This Week with George Stephenopoulus - a podcast of the Sunday morning TV show. National Politics + George Stephenopoulus = <3
I like the fast-paced nature of this show. Everyone's trying to say as much as they possibly can, and the minutes fly by. This is my favorite one so far.
Wisconsin Morning News - Useless! The 8/7/2009 5-minute podcast was about the State Fair. How come WisPolitics doesn't have a podcast? These are things that I would like to know. Wispolitics just seems to post uploads of random, unrelated audio clips every couple of weeks. Which is cool, but not really anything to subscribe to.
NPR: Planet Money - This was okay, but almost too short for me? I think this podcast started when the federal government took over Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac in order to explain complex economic issues to people who don't know much about econ (ie, me). Again, it's okay, but I think I would like it if it were longer.
This American Life - Pretentious, useless. Can be summed up with: "People live in the world and interact with each other; HILARRRRIOUS!" It makes me roll my eyes.
NPR: It's All Politics - Two dudes who are probably important (but I don't know) talking about politics. It's kind of okay, but more of the 24-hour-news esque talk that I hate, where people are all, "Person X has to vote this way, and Person Y leans this way, but s/he doesn't like Z," and it's like a string of useless knowledge that I don't care about.
Daily Catholic Readings - Basically just that; over the course of three years, Catholics cover almost the entire Bible during Bible readings at mass: one from the Old Testament, one from the New, and a reading from the Gospel.
Anime + - Two teenage dudes reviewing anime. Made of fail.
Manga Pulse - Run by same people as Anime Pulse. It comes very highly rated across the Internet. Manga Pulse is two pretentious middle-aged male geeks talking about all kinds of useless topics and penis jokes, and almost never talking about manga, but instead go off on tangents. I cannot stand their speech patterns.
I also really hate the rampant misogyny in this podcast especially! "Once they hit 40, they've almost hit menopause....They're trying to fill an empty void with penis. You can just slip in there, boys! [beat] Sarcastically Boy, I just love misogyny!" You can acknowledge the fact that you're acting sexist, but the entire podcast is laced with stuff like this. I don't think I'd be willing it through it even if they did ever talk about manga. But since they don't, there are no decisions to be made.
Watch me vomit. I don't think I'll bother trying Anime Pulse.
Next to try are: Catholic Insider and Grammar Girl. Suggestions are welcome, but only if you promise not to get mad at me if I tear apart in a blog post review, :)
I have, however, had a lot of good luck with audio podfic.
I think that my main issue is that I really dislike amateur podcasts (at least the ones I've sampled thus far), for many of the same reasons that I detest morning radio. I do not want to sit and listen to two people I don't know have unsubstantial witless banter. I don't give a shit how many times you had to record your podcast because your friend erased it; I don't care that you turned off your air conditioning just to record your podcast; to be honest, I don't even care what's going on in your personal life, at all! Just talk about whatever your podcast is supposed to be about.
ABC's This Week with George Stephenopoulus - a podcast of the Sunday morning TV show. National Politics + George Stephenopoulus = <3
I like the fast-paced nature of this show. Everyone's trying to say as much as they possibly can, and the minutes fly by. This is my favorite one so far.
Wisconsin Morning News - Useless! The 8/7/2009 5-minute podcast was about the State Fair. How come WisPolitics doesn't have a podcast? These are things that I would like to know. Wispolitics just seems to post uploads of random, unrelated audio clips every couple of weeks. Which is cool, but not really anything to subscribe to.
NPR: Planet Money - This was okay, but almost too short for me? I think this podcast started when the federal government took over Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac in order to explain complex economic issues to people who don't know much about econ (ie, me). Again, it's okay, but I think I would like it if it were longer.
This American Life - Pretentious, useless. Can be summed up with: "People live in the world and interact with each other; HILARRRRIOUS!" It makes me roll my eyes.
NPR: It's All Politics - Two dudes who are probably important (but I don't know) talking about politics. It's kind of okay, but more of the 24-hour-news esque talk that I hate, where people are all, "Person X has to vote this way, and Person Y leans this way, but s/he doesn't like Z," and it's like a string of useless knowledge that I don't care about.
Daily Catholic Readings - Basically just that; over the course of three years, Catholics cover almost the entire Bible during Bible readings at mass: one from the Old Testament, one from the New, and a reading from the Gospel.
Anime + - Two teenage dudes reviewing anime. Made of fail.
Manga Pulse - Run by same people as Anime Pulse. It comes very highly rated across the Internet. Manga Pulse is two pretentious middle-aged male geeks talking about all kinds of useless topics and penis jokes, and almost never talking about manga, but instead go off on tangents. I cannot stand their speech patterns.
I also really hate the rampant misogyny in this podcast especially! "Once they hit 40, they've almost hit menopause....They're trying to fill an empty void with penis. You can just slip in there, boys! [beat] Sarcastically Boy, I just love misogyny!" You can acknowledge the fact that you're acting sexist, but the entire podcast is laced with stuff like this. I don't think I'd be willing it through it even if they did ever talk about manga. But since they don't, there are no decisions to be made.
Watch me vomit. I don't think I'll bother trying Anime Pulse.
Next to try are: Catholic Insider and Grammar Girl. Suggestions are welcome, but only if you promise not to get mad at me if I tear apart in a blog post review, :)
I have, however, had a lot of good luck with audio podfic.
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Still, am waiting for Jess to come by this comment thread to have an apoplexy. ;)
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NEXT: MY TAKE ON SARAH VOWELL!
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(I think the 3 of us discussed this @ Wiscon, but i can't help but reiterate that i, too, don't really get the Sarah Vowell thing. I think she gets by largely on her voice, which i find grating rather than cute. I also cannot freaking STAND David Sedaris, for whom i also think the same is true RE: voice.)
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It may not help that I've listened to the thing since the beginning, in Chicago. Also, paying closer attention to Ira Glass sort of put me off of him (why do I like the narcissists?! dammit). Then there's Lynda Barry's comic about how Glass was the worst boyfriend ever...
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There's also PodCastle (http://podcastle.org/) and EscapePod (http://escapepod.org/) and other related podcasts, most of which are recordings of short stories (PodCastle is fantasy, EscapePod is Science fiction). They tend to have fairly decent recordings, and I've listened to short stories by N. K. Jemisin and Tempest and Maureen McHugh and others here!
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I'm a big fan of the Ouch podcast, which is an hour-long disability rights variety show, lots of quirky Brit humo(u)r, news from around the world and (my fave) the "intrusive & annoying quiz Vegetable Vegetable or Vegetable," wherein in the hosts have 60 seconds to play 20 questions with someone on the phone and attempt to suss out "what's wrong with them."
http://bbc.co.uk/ouch
I look forward to your snark on their snark.
While NPR news might not ring your bells, NPR's music site has lots of concerts
http://www.npr.org/music/
She might be too mushy for you, but Krista Tippet's Speaking of Faith is a weekly radio series re: ethics &c from someone who went from polisci to theology.
CSPAN hosts podcasts of almost all its programming: many juicy (meaty?) books are discussed on Booktv.org
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I guess you friended me after I made 18,000,000 caps lock flaily HP posts. I LOVE IT LIKE NONE OTHER.
I will try out this PotterCast you speak of.
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Some Pottercast episodes are better than others. They really do try to keep it structured though; the rambling is mostly at the end. IMO, the heyday for Harry Potter podcasts were the ones leading up to the release of Book 7 and right after, but they still put out some really good episodes. PotterCast is the only HP podcast to have interviewed JK Rowling herself, and her interviews should be near the top of the podcast feed on Itunes.
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Radio Lab -- I'm not sure if you would like this one if you disliked This American Life, but I find it to be awesome. It's mostly about science, but the template for an episode is,
Here is a weird anecdote or human interest story!
Here is the scientific relevance of that weird anecdote. We're going to do a show all about [scientific topic]!
Here are some other anecdotes, experiments, or human interest stories that illuminate [scientific topic]. Isn't that WEIRD? Wow, science is awesome.
Myself, I LOVE popular science stuff with a smidge of weird human interest stories thrown in (see: Simon Singh, Jay Ingram, Oliver Sacks), so it's up my alley, but I think they do some really smart things in terms of making science relevant and fascinating.
Sound Opinions -- Two Chicago music critics talk about music. They do some music news, some interviews, and some reviews. They lean really heavily towards indie music but they're not afraid to call things out as being pretentious pseudoliterary rubber-stamped hipster music, either.
My other favorite podcast is Cast On with Brenda Dayne, but that's a knitting podcast, albeit a really good one.
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This is the show that I thought of when the Weinermobile crashed into a house, because I was all like "Dude,that should be a question on WWDTN."
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But I really, really adore The Writer's Almanac, which is Garrison Keillor talking about info about authors and ending with the reading of a poem. It's also short, so it doesn't add up the way, say, the Podcast of author commentary on BSG episodes does.
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I meant to say that I am likely showing my roots as an English major in liking _The Writer's Almanac_.
Not that my roots show in disliking PHC. Oops.
(Although, to be fair, I did once have a conversation with someone with much deeper Midwestern roots than mine, which are practically nonexistent, about the fact that she adored PHC because it felt familiar to her from her time in the Midwest. I had one parent originally from the Midwest, and I lived there for three years as a young child, but I don't think it "took" the way it had for her, who I think spent a lot more of her childhood there.
So maybe I was showing, in a Freudian slip way, more of my roots than I thought.)
TWA, on the other hand, has actually pointed me to a few poems that I've liked so much they or their writers have found their way into my classes.
Does that help?
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But I have only a tiny taste of the Midwest.
As a result, it would surprise me no more to learn that the version of Midwestern that is PHC is that kind of nostalgic, faux Midwestern that is more stereotype than truth.
All I know is that its sense of humor doesn't work for me. It may have nothing whatsoever to do with geography.
I just--I didn't want to ignore the possibility that my statement had been one of those utterly unconsciously revealing moments.
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I asked because i'm from rural Central PA. When i was still living there and listening to PHC, i loved it because it seemed, at the time, to be a kind of reflection of rural / small town life as i'd lived it for nearly 30 years. Then i moved to Seattle, and more and more i began to kind of see PHC as ... hmmm, a picture of homey, rural life as idealized by urban hipsters who were nostalgic for a small town / country life they'd never really had. If that makes any sense.
Maybe it's too much to expect a lot of nuance from a radio program. But i get tired of depictions of rural life that are either PHC or "Deliverance."
(I was also going to comment that "Our Town" frustrated me in the same way PHC does, but then i realized i read "Our Town" more than 20 years ago and that i probably shouldn't expound too much on a hatred that was formed 2 decades ago, as i can't vouch at this point for how i'm remembering that particular play.)
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I will try Writer's Almanac, too!
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I've got a couple of lists of my favorite podcasts here (http://antarcticlust.livejournal.com/251734.html) and here (http://antarcticlust.livejournal.com/192689.html).
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The only other podcast I've ever listened to is probably one of the weirdest on the internet.
You Look Nice Today: A Journal of Emotional Hygiene (http://youlooknicetoday.com/)
Three dudes, obviously extremely intelligent, having intelligent-sounding conversations about completely ad-libbed, absurd, made-up stuff. C and I find it hilarious, but this might be because we're weird. I have no idea. It's definitely worth a shot, though. For a good introduction, go to page 3 and listen to "Live!: Baby on a Dog" from 7/2/08.
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The second one sounds ridiculous, but I will try it anyway.
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