September 17, 2008

Curious George needs some podcasts. Do you monkeys have any favourite podcasts you'd care to recommend? I do a few from among the ceeb's offerings (usually C'est la vie and Quirks & Quarks), but I'm looking for something a little different. Downloadable preferred over streaming. Suggestions?
posted by Capt. Renault 15 years ago
  • Tim Gunn's podcasts are always entertaining. Those in need of soothing feline sounds can check out Purrcast. I listen to these whenever I get panicky at work.
  • Alan Cross's Ongoing History of New Music has 248 fabulously educational episodes available for download.
  • Sorry...maybe those are streaming only. I'm sure I saw some downloadable somewhere...
  • You might be interested in some of the US Public Radio podcasts. Here's what I have on my iPod right now: Radiolab. Cannot recommend highly enough. The episode on emergence is one of the best things I've ever heard on radio, but they're all just really really good. They only do a few shows a year, but they try to do shorter interim stuff for the podcast listeners. That stuff's okay, but pales in comparison to the actual radio shows. The Sound of Young America. Jesse Thorn interviews famous people in his apartment in LA. Turns me on to a lot of stuff I wouldn't have known about otherwise. Thorn's a really good interviewer when he's not interrupting his guests to drop a few yuks. This American Life. Not as US-centric as the name implies. They pick a theme and give a number of true and fictional stories that center around that theme. Sounds simple, but it's one of the best things on radio. On the Media. Pretty US-centric, but a very good hour-long weekly look at issues regarding mass media, with special focus on where the ball gets dropped. Only downside: the hosts are old-school journalists who do not get the internet. At all. Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! Really funny news quiz show. The panel's nearly always ROFL-tastic, and they get good guests to come on too. Only downside: MoFi's own moooshy currently directs the show, so I was reluctant to mention it at all here. I boo heartily whenever I hear her name in the credits. Finally, not public radio, but you should know that You Look Nice Today. Merlin Mann, Scott Simpson, and Adam Lisagor drink beer and improv some comedy. When it doesn't work, it falls like a lead dildo, but when it does work, it has me crying. Such is the nature of improv, I guess.
  • If you want to get edumacational, there's Open Yale Courses and M.I.T. Open Courseware.
  • Last spring I drove across the US with a stack of MIT open courseware lectures and a dozen Coverville shows, each of which being a half hour of semi thematically related collections of cover versions of songs. Many of the MIT lectures have a visual component, but there are a bunch that have good audio-only versions. This intro to biology was particularly good.
  • Seconding Radiolab (although the "conversational" structure is annoying, IMO), TSOYA and This American Life ... Savage Lovecast is a hoot ... have you tried CBC's White Coat, Black Art? It's one of my favorites. I can also recommend Widely Ranging Interests. You might also try a MeFi search on "podcast". It's how I found most of mine, including the fascinating 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast. I have more links at home, I'll post them later.
  • p.s. thanks for posting ... I'd love to find me some new podcasts as well.
  • Oh yeah, Car Talk also has a podcast -- like most NPR podcasts, it's subscription or streaming only, BUT you can download this week's episode for free. The humor is corny but they know their shit (kind of like watching "Good Eats"; you cringe while furiously taking notes).
  • Not crazy about White Coat, Black Art -- I've been overexposed to Brian Goldman over the years. And frankly, I'm looking for something a bit lighter.
  • BBC Radio 4 - lots of goodness, especially Friday Night Comedy (The Now Show is brilliant), Analysis, Crossing Continents, In Our Time and From Our Own Correspondent.
  • YOU DO NOT CRINGE AT GOOD EATS IT IS AWESOME ALTON BROWN IS THE BABY OF FOOD JESUS AND FOOD EINSTEIN.
  • He can bake my mac & cheese any day.
  • I love him like an idiot savant brother. He's like a bad-joke-telling-food-Einstein-dumb-jokemaker. He's a good emcee for "Iron Chef America" though.
  • p.s. welding gloves really DO make good oven mitts!
  • I love him like an idiot savant brother. Oooh, you.... *shakes fist*
  • If it makes you feel any better, I love you like an idiot savant brother, too.
  • My suggestions [self link].
  • I just came across this podcast on James Lileks' site, and I haven't listened to it yet, but since it's Lileks it's gotta be good. Archives are downloadable.
  • Thanks, everybody!
  • I listen to a lot of the TWIT podcasts. They started off as techy podcasts (hence, "This Week in Tech," or TWiT), but they have now branched out into food and raising kids and other stuff. They're pretty much uniformly good, if you're interested in the subject matter, and you can get them in a variety of formats to listen or watch. I also like SModcast, the podcast by filmmaker Kevin Smith and Kevin Mosier. When it's good, it's laugh-your-butt-off good, and when it's not, it's... meh. I keep listening for the good weeks.