Soooo many podcast recommendations

Some housekeeping: I changed all these random feminism/articles/race/other stuff posts to a new “Life” category and un-“Math” tagged them, so that everything tagged with Math is now actual math.  I also put anything that has to do with cooking into “Baking” because that’s the name of the blog even if it’s not factually accurate.  New page for “Life” posts to follow.

Now that I live in Austin, I drive instead of bike to campus.  In total I spend about an hour to an hour and a half per day in my car, so I thought I’d start listening to podcasts.  I highly recommend theget podcast from my friend Ivy, which only has three episodes so far.  Here’s a list of recommendations from my facebook friends so you don’t have to ask your facebook friends for recommendations.  I put the words I didn’t write into italics.  I also feel like this list really reflects the makeup of my facebook friends (sorry E, I cut your classical music podcasts).  Also, I binge-listened to podcasts over the past two weeks to try to put in as many of my own comments as I could.

Instructions for those of us new to podcasts: i-World step by step instructions, Android go find a third party app

Storylines:

• Welcome to Night Vale — “Prairie Home Companion meets Stephen King”, a very weird existentialist scifi podcast with really great indie music, 30 min episodes twice a month. Make sure you start at the beginning so you can follow all of the relevant storylines and have some hope of understanding the in-jokes.  Also there’s now a book.
  
• Serial — enough said.  This incredibly popular podcast flew past me when it was being made, but maybe I’ll catch up.  But maybe not because I don’t like tension (I told this to a friend of mine when he asked what TV shows I watch.  I only watch comedies because I get really sweaty and can’t sleep if there’s any tension.  Somehow I make it through Sherlock, but only if I’m holding my husband’s hand, and then he complains about the sweat).
• Undisclosed —goes more into details about problems with the States case against Adnan Syed. They sometimes pretend that they are unbiased, when they very clearly aren’t, which is a little annoying, but it’s still interesting.

Stories:

• The Moth— funny story, I had tickets to see this live and was about to get on my bike to head to the bar, but then ended up biking to the ER for a kidney infection instead.  Worst bike ride I’ve ever had (stabbing pain each time I pedaled). So I haven’t heard this live.  But I’ve heard it on the radio and loved it (if you live in Chicago, NYC, or SF, go see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind; she’s the storyteller I heard on the Moth).
• Harmontown–by the creator of Community.  I wikipedia’d this and it seems like an asburd, improv-y short show.  I listened to a single 4 minute joke and loved it.
• Mystery Show- every episode the host solves a new mystery that cannot be solved by googling. For example, one guy found a very unique belt on the ground when he was 10 and wanted to track down the owner after 25 years. Interesting stories but there is only one season so far.  I actually listened to one of the episodes of this and LOVED IT.  I laughed out loud and unexpectedly choked up in the middle of her meandering conversations with strangers.  This was one of the best things I’ve ever heard.
• Thrilling Adventure Hour– an old-timey radio show that ran for a decade.  A decade!
• Limetown—a fictional narrative in the style of Serial
• Criminal — stories about crime
• Strangers-– about meeting strangers (I think this is non-professional people tell stories to the hosts, but I’m not sure)
• StoryCorps— non-professional people tell stories to/with family members.  I’ve read the transcripts of this and agree with my husband’s analysis-the stories are disappointingly, infuriatingly short.  They’re so interesting and you want it to go deeper, but then it abruptly stops.
• This American Life — the most popular podcast in ever everyday; everyone loves Ira Glass.  (I tried to link to the website but got a weird error).

Quiz shows:

• Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me — weekly NPR news quiz show, absolutely hilarious, good way to keep up with American news.  This is recorded in Chicago and we watched it live, which was so fun.  We’ve listened whenever we can catch it on Saturdays/Thursdays.  I recommend this one a lot.
• Ask Me Another — this is another weekly NPR quiz show, with word games and general silliness.  My friend was on this!  Also a fun one (though not as good as WWDTM)
• You’re the Expert — Possibly about science- comedians trying to guess what professors study.

News/History/Linguistics:

• The Rachel Maddow Show — they always have the audio available, for free, of the most recent show. Only if you’re into liberal political news, obviously, but Rachel Maddow’s really super smart, does a really good job of explaining the background of current issues in the news, and her interviews are both really fair and really skilled.  Honestly I doubt I’ll ever listen to this; I’m not into political news.
  
• History of English —a bit dry sometimes, but I’ve learned a lot.
• The Allusionist–and anything else in the Radiotopia network because they explore everyday things in a very interesting way.  This seems to be about linguistics.  I am intrigued.
• A Way WIth Words— seriously it’s all about words!
• Backstory Podcast —really great American history podcast
• Stuff You Missed In History Class — Years ago I used to listen… and I really liked it for awhile (but then got tired of it).
• You Must Remember This —I can’t personally vouch, but my boss tells me (focusing on secret/forgotten histories of 20th century Hollywood) is really good
• Revolutions— about revolutions throughout history.  Basically this entire category is a “doubtful” for me to ever listen.

(Science) Nerds:

• No Such Thing As A Fish — 30-45 minutes each week, the researchers for a popular British quiz show called “QI” come together and talk about the most awesomely random stuff they learned doing research that week. Most of these researchers, by design or by chance I don’t know, also double as professional stand-up comedians, so the podcast is both super interesting and absolutely hilarious.  We listened to part of this, but it wasn’t as snappy as WWDTM or the podcasts in the next category.  I’ll try again some other time.
• Meanwhile in the Future: from Gizmodo and one of my favorite science writers Rose Eveleth, it starts with a fictional account of a potential future scenario (what if we started genetically engineering humans to combat climate change, what if we didn’t care about gender any more, what if wind turbines took enough energy from wind that it affected global wind patterns) and then talks to experts about whether it could happen and what would have to lead up to it and happen as a result of it… also Rush Limbaugh thought Meanwhile in the Future was real policy suggestions instead of interesting thought experiments.  I found this one really interesting!  I really liked it and it’s quite well done and I recommend it!  And it’s quite short; 15 minutes or so. 
• The Story Collider: like the Moth but for stories/storytellers with a connection to science…some really interesting science related stories.
• Stuff You Should Know: By the HowStuffWorks people- they explain stuff!
• RadioLab— I should note here that lots of people love RadioLab, but I do not.  This podcast sort of scared me off podcasts a few years ago because there were too many sound effects and I got overwhelmed.
• TED Radio Hour— TED but in radio format
• Invisibilia- about the invisible forces than change human nature.  Also has just one season so far, of six hour-long episodes.  I’m listening to it right now.  It’s awesome.  Very well-researched.
• Hidden Brain— essentially psych experiments/studies on the brain.  I’m interested, haven’t listened yet.