2006 was the pinnacle of podcasting. I don’t listen to Slice of Scifi anymore, Jack Mangan’s Deadpan community is alive, but no longer produces a show. I still listen to Nerdist on occation. Some I still listen to include:
The Kessel Run: A Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures game podcast.
The Drabblecast: Audio fiction
Pseudopod: Horror podcast
I agree with the You Must Remember this and In the Dark podcasts, both are great.
I wouldn’t call We Hate Movies a review podcast, I think the guys would agree with the description “four indistinctive white guys all trying to get their yucks”. Even when they talk about current movies, it’s not a review as much as making fun/picking apart a movie. I love it and would be glad if they went even longer, but I can understand it not being for everyone.
The Sword and Scale guy is a fascist creep IMHO. My favorites are:
The Dollop - two comedians riffing on American history, it can be hilarious or enraging and often both.
The F-Plus - a side project of the old Portal Of Evil site, it’s been around for a while. They do readings of some of the Web’s weirdest fora. “Terrible things, read with enthusiasm!”
Point Vs. Point - a really good comedy podcast about a really terrible news podcast, it features Gareth Reynolds, who is one of the guys in The Dollop.
Chapo Trap House - three Weird Twitter alums who have one of the sharpest political podcasts around.
Leo Laporte’s podcasts. He has become pretty much unlistenable to me. His network took a huge dive in quality when he lost Tom Merrit, and Laporte’s personal life and personality have become distracting and grating. Plus, his shows are supposed to be all about tech, but seem to be about 80% news and commentary about the cellphone industry. Yawn.
I used to listen to a number of Leo Laporte’s podcasts as well. They started to decline in quality a long time ago but they were still good from time to time. I agree that Tom Merrit leaving was about the time they really took a nose-dive.
I love the information in Radio Lab. Unfortunately the editing drives me up the wall. They take interesting information and cut it up into irritatingly twitchy stories. It seems like they have a rule: Nobody is allowed to finish a sentence. They say two words, then someone else is edited in to complete the thought, then sometimes a third person says something like “Neat” or a similarly unnecessary response. Their editor needs to take her or his Ritalin.
The podcasts I’ve listened to for the longest is still going strong: “The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe”. It’s been produced for over a decade and I still look forward to it each week.