The Podcast Thread

Current Best List:

Science

Skeptoid - This isn’t really a great news podcast (I guess Skeptics Guide to the Universe would be best for that), but it IS good if you like paranormal stories. Ten to Fifteen minutes weekly and he mostly avoids a lot of the ridiculous snippy asseded name calling that makes certain other skeptics (Rebeca Watson - I’m looking at you; though Evan can be a bit of a pill himself and they both contribute to make Skeptic’s Guide a little bit hard to sit through when they’re not just hitting the news) hard to stomach.

Television

IGN Channel Surfing - I hate the IGN games podcasts. Hate hate hate. I love this show. It’s full of real news from real people who really know real things (as opposed to rumors from random dumbasses who have too much time on their hands, which is the case for a surprising number of other television podcasts), and it’s good for getting an hour of information about stuff that I would generally be interested in every week or so. They tend to get a little irregular around the big press events (upfronts, Paley, some cons), but when they show up, they’re fantastic.

Comics

iFanboy - I hope hope hope that these guys manage to get Katers to start doing regular appearances, because that would be a murderer’s row of everybody that I like to hear from. I don’t even read most of the books they talk about - I just like hearing from these three guys on a regular basis, and it keeps me up to date on what’s going on in the comic book world.

Games

Idle Thumbs - I have ejaculated all over this podcast before, so I won’t bore you. Suffice it to say that they’re pretty good. GiantBomb is a little more rowdy and more regular if that’s your cup of tea.

Various Interests Not Including This American Life

The Moth Podcast - It’s a lot like This American Life, but only one person talking. Quality of the story varies from week to week with the speaker. The pitch is that it’s people telling real stories without a script in front of a live audience. Some of them have been pretty hilarious.

Comedy

SModcast - They have a network now which I intend to get a broader impression on, but Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier do a pretty great job of being funny about whatever they’re talking about when they’re not being preachy (they went through a period during the whole Too Fat for the Sky thing that strained my tolerance), which is almost all of the time. The guests are generally hilarious, and this is one of those few places where you’ll hear people talk about things that they don’t normally talk about. I feel like I learned more about what it’s like to be gay from Malcolm Ingram and Kev talking about his history in frank and gory detail than I have from any other source, ever.

Those are the biggest in the categories that I currently listen to. I’m planning on adding about ten more entries to the catcher soon, however, so we’ll see how that goes. There’s a lot more that I listen to intermittently, don’t listen to because I hate them, or haven’t included for some other reason if there’s a specific one that you’re looking for an opinion on.

I find my gaming podcast needs are covered pretty well by the GiantBomb crew, and if I have time I’ll listen to Rebel FM. Otherwise, I never miss:

Doug Benson’s I Love Movies

Scott Aukerman’s Comedy Death Ray radio show/podcast. That one’s been really great lately, especially the two-hour one-year anniversary show last week.

The Superego! podcast. Only comes out once a month, but it’s worth it - a densely-packed half-hour of weirdness.

The Best Show on WFMU. That one took over my life for a while, because WFMU is insanely great at keeping their archives alive.

I’ve been enjoying The Blow ParadeThe Chaser’s War on Everything guys’ absurdist mockumentary series on fake landmark albums.

Science & technology podcasts…

ABC Science Show
This Week in Science
Futures in Biotech
CodeCast
Software Engineering Radio
Cranky Geeks
Security Now

…and one gaming podcast that people around here may not know:
bit-tech.net

The lack of Bombcast is disturbing, but I guess it can seem a little juvenile at times. It gets my vote at any rate!

This is (mostly) the non-gaming podcast thread. Giant Bombcast is frequently talked about in the gaming podcast thread.

Lets see, my current podcast list goes:

Non-Gaming Podcasts:
60 Second Science by Scientific American
APM: Marketplace
NYTimes Front Page
NatureWatch
NPR 7 AM ET News Summary
Onion Radio News
Stuff You Missed in History Class

Gaming podcasts:
1UP - Active Time Babble
1UP - Retronauts
PA’s Downloadable Content
Game Face Radio
Gamers With Jobs
Giant Bombcast
Idle Thumbs
Irrational Behavior
The EA Podcast


I’d highly recommend that anyone add NatureWatch: It’s like two minutes of Wild American every day. Stuff You Missed in History Class is also very good and runs about 20 mins.

On the gaming front, Giant Bomb & Idle Thumbs are great general recommendations

Ah! Yes, that certainly explains it. In that case I’ll recommend couple of the movie podcasts I listen to.

Filmjunk podcast
Battleship Pretension

Filmjunk is somewhat low brow with good humor but some good movie discussion does sneak in occasionally.
Battleship Pretension is a great source for constant great discussions.

I’m a fan of Battleship Pretension, as well. It’s one of the only movie podcasts I can listen to as soon as a new episode is released without worrying about spoilers for brand new movies.

My non-gaming podcasts are

IGN Channel Surfing - As Brian mentioned above, you shouldn’t compare it to the other crappy IGN podcasts. It’s very good and full of insider stuff if you like TV news but don’t read the trades. The IGN movie podcast (I can’t remember the name) is ok for movie news, but not great.

Filmspotting - my favorite movie podcast after trying eight or nine.

Left, Right and Center - nice quick political podcast that KCRW does each week. It has representatives from different political sides, but never goes off the deep end with hyperbole.

This Week In Tech/ Macbreak Weekly - both are great or horrible depending on the guests. Some weeks I bail out after ten minutes.

Geek Show podcast - Done by a local DJ, TV reviewer and movie critic. Basically covers all things nerdy from iPads to comics. It’s made by the hosts, they’re all great.

These last few I keep in reserve, usually listening when I run out of episodes from my regular podcasts

This Week In Photography - Informative, but can be a little bland.

Savage Love podcast - sex discussion. I mostly listen because his rants against Republicans and the Moral Police crack me up

Comic Geek Speak - the most prolific podcasters I’ve ever heard. They seem to have a new episode every day or two. Really in depth comic stuff, I usually pick and choose episodes after reading the description. I’m not interested in a three hour discussion about the Justice League.

As for gaming, I’m down to Weekend Confirmed, QT3 and Bombcast. I’m a little burned out on gaming podcasts for some reason, so I miss episodes all the time.

My Brother, My Brother, and Me (MBMBaM) - an “advice” podcast run by 3 brothers (Justin, Griffin, Travis McElroy), two of which are Joystiq editors. They answer some legitimate questions, but a lot of the show are ridiculous questions and ridiculous answers. Weekly, released on Mondays. I think they’re hilarious. Their site is MBMBaM dot com.

Podcasts I listen to and would recommend -
Stuff you should know - really interesting general knowledge podcast, and they have a big back catalogue so at least some of the topics should strike your fancy.
Stuff you missed in history class - Basically the same as the above but for history. They cover some pretty cool stuff like Mary Seacole, the black Florence Nightingale, who is someone I had never heard of before that particular podcast.

A great movie podcast is the Kermode and Mayo radio show that goes up as a podcast too. The two of them have a great chemistry,

I’m surprised it hasn’t been mentioned yet, but I’m a big fan of Coverville, a podcast all about covers. Some really good stuff has come out of it.

WhiskeyMedia launched their movie site headed by Alex Navarro and Matt Rorie, and it looks like they’ll be doing a weekly podcast. The first episode was pretty unstructured, mostly the hosts discussing a tonne of 2009 and 2010 releases to give you an idea of what types of movies they’re into. I’m kind of hoping Davis joins them every week.

There’s a Freakonomics Podcast out now. They don’t have many episodes yet (I think 5 full ones). They are about 30 minutes long and are put together much like the books (or this American Life) – they tie a couple of seemingly disparate things together in interesting ways. It’s hosted by Dubner, but Leavitt makes appearances here and there. I’m impressed so far.

Totally agree - that’s my favorite podcast right now. Some of the recurring characters get old (like Jessie Ventura and John C. Reilly), but he gets stellar guests.

Aukerman is the director of Zach G.'s “Between Two Ferns” videos.

I could listen to Little Gary and El Chupacabra all day long. Clearly, I have some sort of problem.

The HPPodcraft podcast about… HP Lovecraft. It’s way better then I expected. Really great production values and knowledgeable (and entertaining!) commentators on HPL’s works.

I’ve been listening to WTF with Marc Maron lately where Maron (a comedian) interviews other comedians about a wide range of thing. There’s particularly interesting set of two episodes where he confronts Carlos Mencia about the charges that he’s plagiarized from others; the second episode is particularly, uh, strange, and Mencia claims he loves comedy more than his family and is nice enough to prevent a hit squad-of-sorts from being unleashed on rival comics.

Yeah, if anybody wants to hear what narcissistic personality disorder sounds like, listen to the Carlos Mencia episodes of WTF.