Audiobooks and Podcasts - what are you listening to?

Cafe Society
1

Per the title, what podcasts and audiobook are people currently listening to?

I’m working my way through the following podcasts:

*The Last Podcast on the Left - *Serial killers, supernatural, conspiracies and horror movies. Lots of fun.

This is Actually Happening - Short (15 -30 minute) interviews with people who have experienced ‘something’ A few episode titles: “What if you lost a high-speed chase?”, “What if you survived a shipwreck?”, “What if you work up in the morgue?”, “What if you lost your sense of smell?” can be funny, sad and intense.

**The Magus Archives: **A fictional story - imagine someone reading through the X-Files and recording them on tape with some commentary and an overarching story to connect them together.

Audiobooks: The first book in the Malazan series Gardens of the Moon.

I’ve also just ripped the audio from my DVD set of Ken Burn’s *The Civil War *and I’m listening to that like it’s a podcast series. Still a fantastic experience and you don’t really lose anything without the visuals.

2

For podcasts, I’m listening to:

Hardcore History - Dramatic discussion of historical warfare. Dan Carlin is amazing.

Welcome to Night Vale - Surreal comedy involving a city where aliens, demons, angels, and ghosts regularly interact

For audiobooks, I’m listening to a Teaching Company course called Masters of War. Discusses military thinkers from Sun Tzu to von Clausewitz to Mao Tze-Tung. Fascinating.

3

Podcasts: My Favorite Murder. Two friends with a shared interest in true crime tell murder stories. Very unstructured and informal, and accuracy isn’t always front and center, but it’s a great show that feels like talking with friends, and it’s very quotable (tagline: “Stay sexy, don’t get murdered.”). The show is slowly changing as a result of its success, and I don’t know if it’s all for the best, but for now, it’s still fun.

The Dollop. Working through their back catalog. Awesomely fun and funny American history podcast, where one comedian relates the story to another, who has no idea what the topic that week will be. Very thoroughly researched. Some of the stories of forgotten history are downright fascinating, like the crazy war between drivers and pedestrians when cars came along. The hosts, Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds, are apparently very popular in Australia, too, and some of the episodes are recordings of live shows on tour.

The Moth. Always interesting, shows are just people on stage telling a ten-minute or so story from their lives. This story cracked me up recently: A Ph.D. math student decides to use his off-hours to reverse-engineer OKCupid’s match algorithm.

4

StarTalk and The Nerdist. I don’t have any audiobooks.

5

I’m currently listening to book 6 of the Hellequin Chronicles on my phone, also on Audible. As for podcast I usually listen to Star Talk Radio or Skeptics Guide, though I haven’t done much with podcasts in a while. After I finish the current book series I’ll probably go back to my queue, maybe switching to scifi next or maybe re-listen to something I have in my library.

6

Seconded. I just finished listening to the 3-part “Kings of Kings” series about the Persian Empire. Loved it.

7

This afternoon I just picked up the audiobook of Bruce Campbell’s book If Chins Could Kill, read by Bruce Campbell. Looking forward to the commute next week!

8

I’ve actually restructured my life so that I can listen to books/podcasts more.

Been taking advantage of my local library’s collection of audiobooks. You download them (using OverDrive) as basic mp3’s so no problems. And no cost!

Best lately is a series of “tough detective with perky assistant” books by Robert Galbraith (really J.K. Rowling… she can write!). First book is The Cuckoo’s Caling.

Still sticking with the first podcasts I ever found: *Stuff You Should Know *and Radiolab and The Moth.

9

Soon I Will be Invincible by Austin Grossman.

10

No Such Thing As A Fish - the QI elves who do their research have a show where they share 4 fun facts they learned each week. Love it. There is a TV show called No Such Thing As The News as well and the upload their episodes to youtube free of charge. Very nice.

Museum of Curiosity - Really the greatest radio panel kind of show ever. Bring on 3 fascinating people and have each contribute something to the virtual/imaginary museum. Jo Brand donated “childhood” and discussed the value of childhood. One guy donated a drinks cabinet in the shape of the solar system and discussed it. It’s endlessly fascinating. Available on audible.com, I think. BBBC Radio 4 streams it free for the most part. My favorite radio/podcast show.

How did this get made? - Funny people watch a bad movie, then discuss it. Really a lot of fun. I’ve stopped lately, but it is a blast. Find the one with Cool as Ice. They got Vanilla Ice to come on and he was a lot of fun.

11

I’m working my way through old episodes of Welcome to Night Vale, mentioned upthread, and loving it.

A podcast I expected to like more than I actually did but that I suspect will appeal to many Dopers is Hello from the Magic Tavern. The basic premise is that a regular guy has fallen through a portal into a fantasy realm and each week does an interview with one of the locals (a prince in disguise, a witch, various magical creatures, and so on). His regular companions are a foul-mouthed shapeshifter and a wizard hoping to defeat the Dark Lord. It’s largely improvised and most of the cast is from the Chicago comedy scene.

12

I’m an NPR junkie. These are the podcasts I listen to:

NPR’s Politics Podcast
Fresh Air
Planet Money
This American Life
From The Top

Audiobook: The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power.

13

Hello from the Magic Tavern is what I’ve got queued up right now! I’m trying to catch up, and I’m getting there. Since it’s improv, they of course have some misses, but when they’re hitting, it’s GOLD. Plus I’m actually kind of concerned about Chunt (Chuntttttt?) right now. And I never tire of hearing Usidore’s full name.

I also listen to a lot of **Scathing Atheist **and God Awful Movies lately. Their unique brand of totally inappropriate, deliberately offensive humor combined with hearts of gold is helping me survive a really obnoxious year.

And of course, if I had to chose one podcast alone, it would be my beloved HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast. The guys dissect weird fiction with a lot of wit and humor, and basically they feel like old friends by now.

My current audiobook is Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. It’s a reading that lives up to the classic material. Definitely in my top 5 audio books ever.

14

I listen to the podcasts associated with Slate magazine. Basically, all of the except for the one about sports. I also follow the two news broadcasts in Latin Nuntiī Latīnī andRadio Bremen now that I can understand the language by ear. Also, there’s a Latin chit-chat podcast called Quōmodo Dīcitur, which is three guys just shooting the breeze in Latin. Also the Cracked podcast and Nerdist.

As for Audiobooks, I have been taking advantage of the fact that Amazon now does a reasonable upcharge for adding accompanying audio when you buy the kindle version of a book. I’ve been going through the Witcher series that way. I can’t say what the prose was like in the original Polish, but the English translation is excellent, and the reader has a great range of voices and dramatic chops and can even do female characters without making me cringe.

15

Is that the final part? I was waiting to listen to it all at once.

16

Tried and true: WTF with Marc Maron. Encouraged to listen to this by another Doper, I pick out the interviews that interest me. Love the long form, and Maron’s ability to engage the folks he talks with, from comedians, to Keith Richards, to Obama.

Imaginary Worlds - explores the world of sci-fi/fantasy tropes and what it says about us humans. When uniforms get changed, why the canon is important, how different books and movies have affected pop culture. Good stuff.

Various guitar podcasts, but mostly The Fretboard Journal’s stuff. High-end guitar geekery. :wink:

17

I also like Imaginary Worlds and Hardcore History. Both are really great.

I drive a lot for work so I listen to a ton of podcasts. Here are my other favorites

**99% invisible **-exploration of how designband architecture effects our everyday lives. Roman Mars is on of the best storytellers in audio. It’s fantastic.
reply all - talks about the Internet… Sort of. It’s more about life in the modern Internet age and how that makes things weird. Also amazing.

**Start Up ** - documentary series about starting a business. Follows individual startups for several weeks. Right now they are doing a series on Dov Charney starting his new business after American Apperal kicked him out.

**the Allusionist ** a short show about words. Usually funny.

**Judge John Hodgman ** - John Hodgman settles personal disputes and is wrong about hotdogs not being sandwiches

Effectively Wild the best general baseball podcast there is

**The Poscast ** Joe Posnansky and Michael Shure talking sports and also nonsense. If you enjoy sports humor in the vein of Fire Joe Morgan or like things like Parks and Rec and care even a little about sports.

unorthodox kinda a talk show podcast about being Jewish and secular. More just current events and culture. It’s good even if you are not Jewish (I think).

**oh no Ross and Carrie ** two skeptics go out and experience things like Tarrot Cards, hypnotism, Kaballa, converting to Mormonism and joining the church of scientology so you don’t have to.

the sporkfull a show about food. The tag line “its not for foodies it’s for eaters” says it all.

**the gist with Mike pesca ** politics and current events

**Planet Money ** economics for everyone. Reported in they style of This american life

**freakonomics podcast ** in case Planet money does not dive deep enough for you

in our time with Melvin Bragg from BBC radio. Melvin gets a panel of experts to discuss a single topic in arts, science, history or culture. Fascinating.

**dummy by Howler Magazine ** and **the double pivot ** the two best soccer podcasts out there.

I also listen to several less general interest podcasts like Dodgers Baseball podcasts or Tottenham Soccer. Etc. And a handful I’m not sure about yet. homecoming which is a radio play. **crime town ** about the mafia in Providence Rhode Island. Science Vs and others.

18

Hardcore History’s Prophets of Doom is magnificent. Carlin makes post Luther Munster sound like Mad Max meets David Koresh meets Jim Jones.

19

** Frankenstein** from libravox. The best source for Public domain audiobooks.

20

The podcasts I actually listen to regularly are
[ul]
[li]Hello Internet: educational YouTube creators CGP Grey and Brady Haran (Numberphile, Computerphile, etc.) discuss stuff: YouTube, their body of work, Apple, TV shows, their odd couple dynamic (Grey is spartan and “robotic,” Brady is gregarious), and philosophical stuff, [/li][li]Cortex (semiregular): Spawned from the previous CGP Grey and podcaster Myke Hurley discuss being Internet entrepreneurs and the tactics Grey does to keep it from consuming his entire life. Also, his unusual, robotic ways to make him productive.[/li][/ul]

[ul]
[li]Word Funk (YouTube only): Three guys I like formerly from Channel Awesome and Blistered Thumbs (but don’t discuss video games). Austin Yorski, Johnny Malone, and Leon Thomas. First guy is the gregarious guy who actually runs the show, the second the homebody but still funny, and the third the intelligent stick in the mud who thinks he runs the show. Favorite section right now is Austin’s legal corner where he presents a legal case and gets his friends to guess what happened. (He’s currently in law school.) Feels like hanging out with friends.[/li][li]Game Crunk (on hiatus): the show where Johnny and Austin do discuss video games with a third guest, with hilarious tangents, and a new title evey week.[/li][li]Dice Funk: the game where all the guys plus a couple friends play modified (for broadcasting) fifth edition D&D. Originally they were a wacky but lethal human thief, a lovable but deadly hafling, and an orphan rangwith a hidden past who can turn into a dire wolf, solving the mystery of a dark town and seemingly immortal king, and possibly a Lovecraftian god. Now they are a depressed/cursed monk, an Elf from the Fey Wilds, a human reincarnated as a Druid bard, and a barbarian fighter Unicorn from Unicornicopia (in the Fey Wild) on a ship trying to prevent the world from being destroyed by mysteriously rising water.[/li][/ul]

Also in my podcast app (but no autodownloads) are

[ul]
[li]The Cracked Podcast: The guys on Cracked.com discuss stuff. Mostly just watch the live shows now on YouTube.[/li][li]How Did This Get Made: Bad movie reviews, sometimes with famous guests. Only listen if the movie is something I know about. [/li][li]We Hate Movies: Comedic honestly negative movie reviews. Also do some old cartoon episodes. Only listen if I’m interested in the movie/cartoon, and then often shut it off because they say something angeringly stupid.[/li][/ul]