This show is just amazing. A new theme each week, with tons of new stories. They range from funny to heart-wrenching. (There was one about a woman and her child that were going to be deported because her husband died before they were married 2 years, and because the government took to long to have a spousal meeting, they didn’t qualify as “married”) Another one of my favorites was the story of the Cryogenics company that horrifically failed. They got stories from all sides of the debate, very interesting. I am surprised I never heard about any of this. I never thought they had frozen anyone, much less the tragedy occured because of it.
No love for Penny Arcade? It’s my first one that I listen to regularly and I’m find it oddly compelling, both because they’re really funny (Gabe slightly more so than Tycho, interestingly) and for the insight on the creative process, particularly as I have always seen the final result first. Interesting to hear them honing in on the final result.
I couldn’t agree more, every interview with Ira Glass has made me like the show more and more. He totally understands the concept that the way the story is told is as important as what the story is about. Some days I personally have no interest in the subject topic but just the way the stories are structured and presented pulls me right in. I don’t have Showtime but the few tv episodes I’ve seen have also been great.
I’m going to join in on that love fest. Out of all the 1up podcasts the Brodeo is my favorite. I enjoy the looseness and spontaneity of the show. The show has a “just a bunch of friends bullshitting at the bar” feel to it. Even when they wander off topic and they do a lot, most of the stories are very funny, especially Jeff Green’s old journalism stories and Shawn Elliott’s Second Life and AOC griefing stories. In the gaming world, I’m as old as dirt and those stories still make me laugh. I’m actually kind of glad Shawn is only on the Brodeo now.
I posted that a long time ago. I got used to Shawn, and even find him funny at times. The first couple of CGW podcasts I listened to seemed to be >50% Shawn humor, so it was a bad intro.
I come back to the GFW podcast from time to time. There are brief periods of excellence then the podcast falls back into its Elliott lead rut. Without a magazine to guide them, it seems like the podcast has finally lost its way and I will not return.
However that said, I’m pretty much done with podcasts in general. I listen to pc gamer once a month… maybe. Most of my non gaming podcast either stop being made or I got tired of them going on for hours upon hours. I probably listen to more if they manage to keep their shows under an hour.
Video:
[ul]
[li]CrankyGeeks[/li][li]DL.tv (on notice - Heron needs a consistent co-host)[/li][li]Tekzilla[/li][li]iFanboy[/li][li]TikiBar TV[/li][li]Review Crew[/li][li]The 1Up Show[/li][li]X-Play Review stuff (minimizes my contact with the rest of the show)[/li][li]Zero Punctuation, for as long as the feed keeps working[/ul][/li]Must Listen:
[ul]
[li]GFW Radio[/li][li]GWJ Conference Call[/li][li]NPR: Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me![/li][li]CBC Vinyl Cafe[/li][li]Maximum PC No BS Podcast[/li][li]Retronauts[/li][li]IGN Channel Surfing[/li][li]IGN Keepin’ It Reel[/li][li]Gaming Steve (when it shows up)[/li][li]Game Theory[/li][li]Skeptoid[/li][li]The Onion Radio News[/li][li]The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe[/li][li]Battlestar Galactica (Moore Commentary)[/li][li]The Official Lost Podcast[/li][li]iFanboy (audio)[/li][li]Woot! Podcast[/ul][/li]Background Noise:
[ul]
[li]This Week in Tech[/li][li]No Agenda (listening to Adam Curry and John Dvorak be insane is hilarious)[/li][li]Skepticality[/li][li]OXM Podcast (contests, yo - finally won a drawing last week)[/li][li]PC Gamer Podcast (despite the fact that they didn’t elect me their next freelancer)[/li][li]Slice of SciFi (plus voicemail show, which is rapidly becoming too annoying to sit through)[/li][li]IGN Game Scoop![/li][li]IGN Playstation Beyond[/li][li]IGN Nintendo Voice Chat[/li][li]IGN Three Red Lights[/li][li]IGN Command Prompt, or whatever they call themselves[/li][li]Major Nelson[/li][li]Penny Arcade Downloadable Content[/li][li]IGN Digigods (DVD)[/li][li]IGN Comics Smash[/li][li]The Word Nerds[/li][li]Giant Bombcast[/li][li]EGM Live[/li][li]Legendary Thread[/ul][/li]Why Am I Here?:
[ul]
[li]CAGCast (meh)[/li][li]CAG Foreplay (even more meh, but an actual complete release list)[/ul][/li]Audition Status:
[ul]
[li]Squadron of Shame Squadcast (they’ve been improving their audio quality)[/li][li]Evil Avatar Radio (added today)[/li][li]One Life Left (only caught one show before last season end)[/li][li]This Week in Law[/li][li]Dungeons and Dragons Podcast[/ul][/li]I have a lot of listening time. I’m actually still looking to expand my selection - I’ll probably pick up a couple more from this thread.
This looks like the right thread for a podcast newb: how long are they, on average? Is there an average?
I never got in the habit of listening to the radio while I work so I’d have to carve out time in my sched to start listening, but don’t want to lose hours to it…
I’ve noticed, in my experience, that there are around three lengths you need to worry about and two outliers: short (approximately 30 minutes, that’s Cranky Geeks), medium (one hour format - a lot of stuff that gets recorded in Garage Band ends up here because it crashes on some folks when they go over an hour; the vast majority of my personal selections fall into this category), and long (one hour plus, running up to two - most of the BEST ones that I listen to are actually in this category). You’ll also have your incredibly short stuff, like Woot, The Onion, The Skeptic’s Guide 5X5, and Skeptology, which don’t run more than ten to fifteen minutes at a maximum, and are usually shorter, and some extremely long characters, like where Gaming Steve can end up or the current Evil Avatar.
If you’re just looking to get in, a lot of the suggestions here are good. The most important thing for me is that I like the guys who are actually talking, which is why I like a lot of the 1Up shows (by contrast, the IGN games crew seem like clones sometimes) and MaxPC. Best way to get started is probably just picking one to listen to on your way in to work - I started out that way and now I pretty much run dudes talking the entire time that I’m at my desk.
Looks like I listen to a lot more fiction than you guys:
Short story podcasts:[ul]
[li]Escape Pod (sci-fi)[/li][li]PseudoPod (horror)[/li][li]Hall of Mirrors (horror)[/li][li]Diabetic in Candyland (“Humor” I’ll probably unsubscribe from this soon… it’s pretty meh.)[/ul]Novels / Novellas:[ul][/li][li]One Among the Sleepless (general fiction)[/li][li]Scott Sigler’s stuff (horror, mostly)[/li][li]Singularity, the 7th Son series, and How to Disappear Completely (No idea – I just downloaded them the other day)[/ul]Super-short Podcasts[ul][/li][li]Ask A Ninja[/li][li]60-Second Science/Psych (by Scientific American. They have other shows that have longer formats which are pretty good, but I found I was falling behind on listening to those)[/li][li]Onion Radio News[/li][li]Skeptic’s Guide 5x5[/li][li]NPR Story of the Day[/ul]NPR[ul][/li][li]Pretty much anything/everything. I haven’t liked Radio Lab as much as I had hoped, but it’s pretty good.[/ul]Random Crap[ul][/li][li]Smodcast (Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier are consistently very, very funny. If you’re using iTunes, though, you have to wait a week to get it. Boo!)[/li][li]You Look Nice today (A cheap knock-off of Smodcast by some people who are pretty funny on twitter. Can’t say the humor always translates, but sometimes it’s amusing)[/li][li]MPR Song of the Day (A tremendously mixed bag, but it’s just one song every day with no intro or other random bullshit. I’ve found a few good bands this way.)[/li][*]Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe (Fun, but they sometimes come off as tremendous douches. Just because you’re a skeptic doesn’t mean you have to be a dick.)[/ul]
Couple of reasons. For one thing, I don’t generally cotton to the atmosphere at NPR - feels like walking into that bakery down by the St. Mary’s campus on Montrose (as close as Houston gets to The Village), so I didn’t really know it existed. I’ve picked it up on recommendation from this thread and I’ll give it a couple of episodes to impress me. More importantly, my slate’s near full right now and I’m still looking for a reasonable general music podcast (NOT independent music, which increases the challenge), so I haven’t been picking up a lot of podcasts that don’t deliver some variety of practical information (I started with podcasts back when I thought I could make money doing writing about games, or anything I enjoy casually, which is why so many of those in my lists are concerned with things-you-can-review - I’ve only been adding on other items for the past couple of months).
IGN has a podcast called Retrocity, though it’s not much like Retronauts at all. Instead of a panel of people talking, it’s a single guy sort of mellowly recounting some past game or set of games. It does have music interludes like Retronauts though. The whole tone of Retrocity is different though.
With regard to the podcasts I like:
Retronauts
1upYours
GFW Radio
Gaming Steve (which hasn’t published in FOR-EV-ER)
Game Scoop!
