Podcasts! Podcasts!

I’m going out to shovel snow, and a podcast is a lot better choice than a music playlist, because my hands are too busy to skip songs.

Listening to The Projection Booth episode on the movie F/X.

Just curious-what is the longest running podcast out there?

I’m listening to “Finding Drago” a podcast about the search for the mysterious author of an Ivan Drago (Rocky 4) fanfic from the 90s. It’s pretty funny.

Possibly Never Not Funny, which began in 2006 and is still running.

I started listening to podcasts mostly because I cannot make the perfect music playlist. If I’m exercising, I just want to go and not be like “oh I heard this song yesterday, skip skip skip skip.” It took me out of my movement. Put on a podcast and I can just listen for long periods without touching a control.

Right now I love doing read-along podcasts. The Legendarium is fun. Read a book or some sections of a book, listen to the episode, move to the next book or section. I’m catching up on a lot of stuff I’ve missed, like the most recent episode was for Dune the book. It’s mostly sci-fi/fantasy so not for everyone. Pratchat does all Terry Pratchett books, not just Discworld. I’m doing two Wheel of Time ones also (WOT Spoilers and Everybody Hates Rand). It fills a lot of time, reading stuff then listening to a discussion about it. Kind of like coming here but I’m just listening, not typing.

Sure, I do a lot of news and creepy fiction stories and pop culture and history ones, but sometimes I like my book ones best because they’re kind of timeless, not relevant to anything going on IRL, can do it at my leisure without getting worried about being behind on new episodes. There are lots of tv and book and movie watch/read alongs that I plan on doing when I get through my current get-through-the-archives one.

NNF is definitely up there, but Keith & The Girl has them beat by a year or so. NNF have cited both K&TG and The Ricky Gervais Show (started on radio but offered as a podcast by late 2005) as influences when they started.

For my money, NNF is the longest-running podcast that’s still worth listening to even for a new listener. The crew have a really good style and rapport. I always describe NNF as being like a “morning zoo” show for people who can’t stand morning zoo shows. It’s goofy and conversational and meandering, but the jokes are rarely crude, the tone is fairly smart, and it’s generally pretty good-natured.

I had written a thoughtful and lengthy reply to the podcast thread yesterday and when I hit the “post” button it disappeared because the thread was closed. So, that sucked. But I do enjoy podcasts.

My favorite right now is Conan O’Brien. His last two episodes with Stephen Colbert and Tim Olyphant were, for different reasons, phenomenal.
I like a couple true crime podcasts. “Crime Junkie” for traditional true crime, “Swindled” is really good for white collar crime stories.
Dr. Phil has a new podcast that is surprisingly good. Really good guests so far.
Dax Shepard and Marc Maron are OK sometimes, just depends on their guest.

I listed my favorites on the other thread too that was “locked up”.

Conan O’Brien (I love Timothy Olyphant but didn’t much care for his episode)
Arm Chair Expert (Dax Shepherd)
Stuff You Should Know
Mobituaries
Family Ghosts
Happy Face
Ridiculous History
Garage Logic
WTF with Marc Maron
This American Life
Stuff You Missed in History Class
Stuff to Blow Your Mind

Practically every day I find another one that’s interesting. It’s a bit overwhelming.

I just listened to the Drop the Mike podcast with Lara Logan. The host doesn’t do anything for me, but wow does Lara have an amazing story. She became a reporter at age 17, snuck into Afghanistan days after 9-11, was embedded with the Northern Alliance, regularly got drunk with the Taliban, was in Baghdad right before the war, smuggled herself back into Baghdad after it fell, interviewed and cursed at Iranian militia leaders, and covered the Arab Spring protests in Egypt. She is brave to the point of foolhardy, and a great storyteller. The podcast is almost three hours long and she curses like a wounded pirate, but I can’t recommend it enough. Trigger warning in that she is very frank and descriptive about her gang rape and the aftermath.

I commute in the SF Bay area, so I listen to a lot of pod casts. I tend to jump around between genres.

For history buff’s:
For a super detailed analysis with multipart, multi-hour analysis Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. He did about 20 hours over 6 podcasts on the fall of the Roman Republic a few years ago. Most recent is a deep dive in the lead up to Pearl Harbor from the Japanese side.

For more humorous takes on specific absurd parts of U.S. history the Dallop with Dave Anthony. Dave researches some part of U.S. history and explains to another comedian, who never heard of it before. He has done things like the 18th century competitive walking craze, or the most successful stage coach robber in the old west.

To get your rage hate on Behind the Bastards with Robert Evans. From Hitler’s farting and drug problems, to Roger Stone he examines terrible people and how they were able to be that way. This week it is the antivax movement from the 17th century to Wakefield and Sears.

For Science:
The Science Magazine podcast is good for an overview of what is new in research.

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe is a fun look at pseudoscience and science news.

For bad movies/media:
How Did This Get Made and the Flophouse are great.
Read it and Weep started as bad books (started with Twilight) and moved to any media. Currently will review anything. They are doing a does it hold up theme right now that has covered movies, an album, and last week it was candy.

For unscripted fictional podcasts:
Hello From the Magic tavern is about a guy from Chicago who ended up in a fantasy world

Womp it Up is a spin off of Comedy Bang Bang about never graduating highschool student and her off the grid teacher

The thing about podcasts is that you rarely jump on one just as it starts. So find a new one and have hours of content that you can catch up on. If I am looking for something new, I will listen to the current episode, then decide if I want to listen to more going forward (news and science podcasts) or start at the beginning (history and entertainment podcasts).

I’ve just discovered, based on a comment I saw here on the Dope, a podcast called The Dollop. The premise is there are two guys in a studio: one discusses a historical event while the other gives a running commentary, usually about how stupid the participants were and how ridiculous the entire situation was. The Rajneesh cult, the story of Rainbow Man, and the life of Hugh Glass are ones I’ve listened to already. The commentator is a comedian, obviously. It’s somewhat sophomoric and very much R-rated. I’ve only listened to a few episodes so far. It’s entertaining if you’re into history and find sophomoric humor funny (I’m on the fence with that, and I think I might tire with the series before I go through their entire library).

Edit: ninja’d by Stassia, so consider this another vote for their first mention.

Another one I listened to for a bit was Hello from the Magic Tavern. The premise is the host is a human trapped in this Narnia-like magic world with wizards and talking animals and the like, but he’s broadcasting from a dive bar called the Vermilion Minotaur, so he gets to know the underworld instead of the nobility. Mr Tumnus meets the neighborhood meth dealer. It’s an improv show. It’s pretty good, although I only listened to the first dozen or so episodes.

Ok, question from the floor. Warning: I’m a luddite and this will probably sound like a question from a pre-schooler.

I have just recently—and I mean just recently—discovered podcasts and am slowly but surely expanding my horizons. The two I noted are the only ones that I’ve listened to.

However, I’m getting frustrated as each one seems to require something different to be able to listen to them. What I mean is, some are streaming, some (like the Dollop) I can download as an .mp3 file, which means I have to fiddle with my music app and find the damn thing before I can listen to it. HftMT I streamed.

Is there an easy way to 1) find all these podcasts in one place, and 2) listen to them without necessitating being connected to wifi or a streaming data?

I used to listen to podcasts while I walked the track at the gym. I had a little collection of 30-minute episodes from all of the How Stuff Works Podcasts which were totally fascinating to me.

Unfortunately I got out of the Podcast thing when I decided I needed music to pump me up to do other exercises. So I haven’t listened to any regularly in a long time.

Oddly enough, this week I blew through an 11-part series called The Dream which goes over the history of MLM schemes in America. I’ve become obsessed with the topic of late and this was a good overview. Some parts in the episodes did get a little wonky for me (I loathe host inter-play…ugh, just get on with it!) but it was packed full of great info and interviews.

Right now I’m following:

Stuff You Should Know: A humorous general information podcast about a random topic each episode.
American Innovations, American Scandal: Two related podcasts that go into the story behind a topic over 4-6 episodes, with dramatic recreations.
Morbid Curiosity Podcast: Ghosts, legends, killers, weird medical stuff, those sort of things.
Sawbones: A medical history show, though lately they’ve drifted more into debunking the latest pseudomedical quackery and ranting about anti-vaxxers than talk about history. They ran out of that, I guess. I’m kind of losing interest in this one because of that.

Besides these, I also listen to old-time radio shows I’ve downloaded from Archive.org. My favorites are “Have Gun, Will Travel”, “X Minus One”, and “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar”.

I don’t know what kind of phone you’re using, but I use the Beyondpod app for Android (though I’m sure there are other apps with the same features). It can search for and subscribe to any podcast (at least I haven’t come across a podcast it doesn’t support), and has a scheduler for updates. I have mine to check all my subscribed shows every morning at 5 am and download new episodes for offline listening.

There are any number of apps that manage podcasts. I use Podcast Republic, but there are lots of others. Nearly all of them let you search for podcasts, by title and (usually) by category, and subscribe to individual podcasts. Once you’re subscribed, you get a list of all the episodes of that podcast that are available, and you’ll usually get some kind of notification when new episodes drop.

You can then download episodes to your device. You’ll probably want to be online when downloading, but once an episode has been downloaded, you can listen to it anywhere, whether you’re connected to wifi or not.

I just did a quick search on Podcast Republic, and both of the podcasts you mentioned are available there. I think most of these apps have pretty good coverage.

I have to third The Dollop. I have to turn it off sometimes, I’m laughing so hard and can’t drive or walk or even sit. The end of the James Otis episode? I had to replay it like three times because I couldn’t breathe. If you like Drunk History, you’d probably like this; it does some of the same stories (and guests!), but it’s a different, longer format. You get a whole hour usually instead of 10 minutes. And generally everyone’s sober. You know it’s going to be a good one when Wil Anderson shows up. He’s my favorite guest.

If more dry, factual history is your thing, I’m also doing The History of English’s entire archives slowly. It just makes the whole complicated, weird language we use FINALLY make some semblance of sense. There are weird rules we never learn about in school that when you hear how they came from this era because of this vowel shift or this war with the Vikings or the French, it makes sense. Oh, that’s why that word means that. It’s almost too nerdy even for me, but it’s just so factual and inoffensive it’s a welcome break from all the blood and gore or politics of almost everything else I listen to.

My current favorite is Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast. He and his co-host Frank Santopadre interview character actors and talk old Hollywood. Frank really seems to do deep research on the guests and both of them have prodigious knowledge of old Hollywood through now.

Due to several recent discussions, I found a Cabin Pressure done as a podcast. And then from that moved over to John Finnemore’s other work which is just as good. I found the podcast links on fourble.co.uk.

Cabin Pressure
John Finnemore’s SOuvenir Shorts
John Finnemore’s Double Acts (not comedic, but still on the slightly absurd amusing direction. I love it as the pace and patter of the dialog is just like his other shows.)

Latest binge for me is Ear Hustle, produced by inmates and volunteers at San Quentin State Prison.