My favorite Podcasts
Even though I’ve owned an Ipod for months now and am absolutely in love with it, I almost never listen to music on it. Instead, I’m a podcast junkie and also occasionally lay down money for an audio book when I have some extra cash. Discovering new podcasts is harder than discovering new blogs, since one has to devote significantly more time testing a podcast than spending the 60 seconds it takes to read over a blog, I obviously don’t add new podcasts to my list unless recommended by a friend. Below are my absolute favorite podcasts:
Brainfood: I put this one first because it’s the rags-to-riches of the bunch. Its formula is really quite simple: the guy takes everyday things and tells you how they scientifically work. After doing this, he runs through a bunch of science headlines and random facts. It’s incredibly entertaining and this podcast has really caught fire despite the fact that it’s a grassroots type venture.
Filmspotting: Filmspotting is the first podcast I ever subscribed to, on a whim no less, while I was surfing through podcast listings, and I can honestly call myself a Filmspotting junkie. You know you’re one of these whenever you find yourself rushing home to write them an email, hoping they’ll read it out loud on the air. It’s run by Adam Kempenaar and Sam Van Hallgren, and do a show once a week. Three out of every four shows are just podcasts, but once a month they’re on air on Chicago Public Radio. Utterly fantastic banter about movies, fun games to play along with, cool prizes, the occasional interview. I love it.
Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me: A lot of people know about this show already since it’s been around for awhile, but I have to mention it anyway. It’s one of the few NPR shows that you can download for free, for some reason they make you pay for shows like “This American Life,”which is utterly stupid. If you’re a news junkie, then Wait Wait Don’t Tell me will make you feel like a genius every week, and there are very few episodes where I don’t have several laugh-out-loud moments during the show. It makes me want to travel to Chicago solely so I can be an audience member.
New York Science Podcast: What’s great about this is that they don’t just read the articles to you, they actually interview the writers who wrote the articles. Very interesting.
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first of all, to defend TAL, it is now cheaper, only $.95 an episode to download archives, and if you have audible it’s only $.66. second of all, it’s a very unique show and different from shows like OTM - for one the music they use - they actually pay royalties and such to the artists and things like that, and it’s much more labor-intensive than alot of the other shows on npr (not that they aren’t great). and they still have the streaming broadcast. and actually NOW there’s a free podcast. so they’ve improved. give them some slack. had to defend my ira.