What Do I Listen To?

In the latest instalment to the continuing series Shit No One Cares About Except Mike, I thought I’d bring you all up to speed on precisely what podcasts I’m listening to. I’m not going to go into a lot of depth here, just a brief description of what the podcast is about and why I listen to it. Enjoy.

ABC Insiders

http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/podcast/insiderspodcast.xml

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Insiders is a weekly political chat show where a panel of guests, usually journalists, talk about the preceding week’s political news. I find it a good way to keep up to speed with political events in Australia while getting some analysis at the same time. The show is broadcast on Sunday mornings on ABC Television but is, thankfully, podcast in audio form. For those of you with funky new iPods video podcasts are not a barrier to entry but for the vast majority of us I say ‘thank you, ABC’ for letting us all listen in.

Background Briefing

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/bbing.xml

Another program from the ABC, this time their radio division. Radio National’s Background Briefing is a weekly, approximately 45-minute in-depth look into a particular issue. Sometimes the issue is of particular relevance to the news stories of that week but more often than not it’s just something important you should know more about.

Backstory

http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/backstory.xml

Backstory is one of the many New York Times podcasts I subscribe to and features reporters from the Times discussing the back story to a particular issue that’s in the news. It’s especially good for putting things like financial stories into context for those of us who aren’t university-educated economists. There’s supposed to be a new one every day but I find it’s more like a few a week.

Downloadable Content

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/padlc/

The web comic Penny Arcade is a staple of my browsing and is highly recommended for fans of video games and watchers of the video games industry. Downloadable Content is usually the recorded conversation of creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins developing their latest strip. This is reason enough for me to listen to it but the fact Krahulik and Holkins are hilarious makes it a must-listen. Although their release schedule is sporadic it’s probably for the best. I can only laugh out loud so often on the train before the Hankyu Corporation bans me from travelling with them forever.

EGM Live*

http://www.1up.com/flat/Podcasts/egmpodcasts.xml

EGM styles itself as the premier video game magazine out there and who am I to argue? EGM Live* involves some of its editorial staff coming together each Monday (US time) to discuss the latest in the video game industry. There’s often an interview thrown in and a question of the week competition at the end for good measure. It’s not the best podcast from the 1UP network and now that they’ve stopped their review roundup I’d say it’s really one for the die-hards.

Front Page

http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/frontpage.xml

I started listening to Front Page after searching for a good daily news podcast to listen to. Using the front page of The New York Times as its starting point this 5-minute show features a reporter essentially summarising the contents of the newspaper for that day. As you’d imagine you don’t get a lot of depth but if you want to quickly know what’s a big deal today (or yesterday since because of the North American time zone it comes out a day late for those of us in the Far East) I highly recommend it.

GFW Radio

http://www.1up.com/flat/Podcasts/cgwpodcasts.xml

Yes, you do detect a pattern. I listen to a lot of video game-related podcasts and a lot of news-related podcasts. This one is in the former category and has the editorial staff of Games For Windows: The Official Magazine coming together every Tuesday (or Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday… they’re not very punctual) to talk about, well almost never video games. GFW Radio is renowned for its rambling discussions that rarely involve much more than a tangential relationship to video games. Still, somehow it works.

The Japan Considered Podcast

http://feeds.feedburner.com/JapanConsideredPodcast

Are you interested in Japanese politics but can’t read Japanese? Right, just me, then. Well for me, the Japan Considered Podcast is a godsend. For half an hour every week Dr Robert C Angel gives us the benefit of his understanding of Japan’s domestic political scene. It’s always over far too soon and the delay between when the podcast is recorded and when it goes up sometimes makes it a week late. However, neither of those factors stop it from being the best podcast about Japanese politics out there.

KCRW’s The Treatment

http://media.kcrw.com/podcast/show/tt

Movie critic Elvis Mitchell has seen every film ever made so that makes him uniquely suited to discussing films with any actor, director or writer who strolls into his studio. Mitchell records an interview every week and spends 30 minutes going into the kind of depth most interviewers can never attain. If you ever wish those 5-minute US talk show ‘chats’ were a bit longer, give it a listen.

New Yorker: Comment

http://feeds.newyorker.com/services/rssfeeds/comment_podcast.xml

A piece from the comment section of the New Yorker magazine is read to you by one of those professionally-trained voiceover people. Politically-oriented, they usually raise or discuss issues in a way you haven’t heard yet.

Newsmaker

http://feeds.feedburner.com/reuters/audio/newsmakerus/rss/mp3/

Released several times a week from the Reuters news agency, Newsmaker gives you a brief overview of a particular issue that’s in the news. Like Backstory above it normally puts the topic into a broader context. Very short, I kind of wish they went on for a bit longer.

OpCast

http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/oped.xml

A weekly interview with one of the contributors to Op-Ed pages that week. Often the contribution is political but that’s not always the case and in fact sometimes the best ones are those that come right out of left field. My favourite from last year was probably the reading of a short story commissioned by the Times for Christmas.

Slate’s Spoiler Specials

http://www.slate.com/podcast/id/2144834/

Are you ever frustrated by how movie reviews always have to dance around the plot for fear of giving it away? Then the Spoiler Special is for you. Slate’s film critic, Dana Stevens, typically leads a discussion about a recent film. It’s not the best podcast ever made but I find it enjoyable listening.

Slate Explainer Podcasts

http://www.slate.com/podcast/id/2129874/

The Slate Explainer Podcast is released every weekday that tries to answer a question related to the news of the past couple of days. The question is selected from amongst those written to the Explainer so if you’ve got a burning question don’t just listen, write in. Awesome resource for those preparing for the weekly trivia contest down at their local pub.

Slate Magazine Daily Podcast

http://www.slate.com/podcast/

My final Slate podcast and my favourite one. The Daily Podcast is usually a reading of one of the popular stories from the pages of Slate. I say usually because sometimes instead of a story, it’s Slate’s Audio Book Club and sometimes it’s Slate’s Political Gabfest. The Book Club is what it sounds like and is recommended but the Gabfest is what I really look forward to. A 30-minute roundtable discussion of the political issues that week in the US, it features great analysis from Slate’s political correspondent, John Dickerson, and insightful commentary from editors David Plotz and Emily Bazelon. Despite the heavy subject matter it’s always delivered in a light hearted tone and the camaraderie between all three is probably my favourite part.

The Gabfest and the Audio Book Club are also podcast separately if that’s all you’re looking for.

The Talk Show

http://thetalkshow.net/index.xml

I’ve blogged about The Talk Show before and most of what I complained about is still a part of it, although the last few episodes haven’t involved the same degree of navel-gazing (thank God). Oh, but what is The Talk Show? It’s two Mac nerds talking about stuff (typically, but not always, Mac-related). Does that sound like something you want to listen to? I guess that’s what makes us different. Or the same. Depending on how you answered. If you didn’t answer, congratulations, it was rhetorical and shouldn’t have really been responded to.

TalkCrunch

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Talkcrunch

Once upon a time there was a podcast and it was called TalkCrunch. And it was good. It featured TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington interviewing important figures in the tech community. And then the feed broke and in spite of the fact that keen observers pointed it out nothing was ever done to fix it and no more podcasts were ever heard again.

Please fix your feed, Michael!

This Week in Law

http://leo.am/podcasts/twil/

Despite what the name might suggest this is a twice monthly podcast involving lawyers discussing issues involving the intersection of law and technology. It sounds like it should be awesome but to be honest I find it so-so most of the time. The discussion isn’t particularly structured, the participants rarely seem prepared to go into much detail and there’s usually too many people involved when you consider they’re all hooked up by Skype (there’s a lot of ‘Oh, um, was that to me?’).

1UP Yours

http://www.1up.com/flat/Podcasts/podcasts.xml

My last podcast and usually the longest one I listen to. Every Friday an assortment of 1UP staffers come together to chat about video games. It often runs over 2 hours so I wouldn’t recommend listening to it unless you really have nothing better to do. The banter between the speakers is what keeps me listening even though I regularly want to reach out and strangle Shane Bettenhausen whenever he makes some idiotic defence of Sony.

 

Well that’s it for this instalment. Stay tuned for my next exciting adventure wherein I’ll look at the different socks I own and rate them based on their comfort level and aesthetic appeal.