5 Favorite Podcasts
I have a very long commute every day, which is made slightly more bearable by the vast number of excellent podcasts that are available. A couple of new ones have come out lately, and I thought I would share my current drive-time favorites with you.
Note that the links below go the webpages where direct links that will launch iTunes can be found, or with some of them, you can download the podcast MP3 files directly to your hard drive, the old fashioned way, the way we used to do it when I was kid. Then we’d load the punch cards in the machine and listen while we churned our own butter and painted the cave walls.
My current new favorite podcasts after the jump.
Garrison Keillor’s News From Lake Wobegon: For me, the weekly 15 or 20 minute rundown of the goings on in Keillor’s Lake Wobegon is the highlight of NPR’s Prairie Home Companion. And it is one which I never got to hear, since life these days doesn’t give me the luxury of sitting down in front of the radio for a couple undisturbed hours each week. Lucky for me, they have begun podcasting just the News from Lake Wobegon every week.
Daily Giz Wiz: Leo Laporte and “Mad’s Maddest Writer” Dick DeBartolo put out five 10 minute podcasts each week, where they talk about a gadget of some kind, if they remember to. Dick and Leo have set aside “Turn the Table Tuesday” where Leo finds the gadget (it’s usually Dick’s job) and Friday is reserved for “Dick’s Gadget Warehouse” where Dick locates some forgotten piece of tech from his voluminous warehouse. The moldy oldies include things that might have been popular but are now forgotten, or things that never went anywhere, or never even saw the light of day.
Real Time with Bill Maher: HBO puts the audio track of Bill Maher’s Real Time on podcast one week after the show airs on HBO. I don’t always agree with everything Bill has to say, but that’s not attraction of the show. Bill goes out of his way to get guests from all sides of the political spectrum, and he doesn’t limit himself to just the standard political pundits. Discussions are always lively, to say the least. His season just started up again, and his first panel of guests included Craig Ferguson from late night TV, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, and former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele.
Discovery Channel Features: As I have noted in the past, I don’t have cable. But I love Discovery Channel. This podcast lets me hear the audio portions of a variety of Discovery Channel shows, including I Shouldn’t Be Alive, Unsolved History, Cash Cab, and my kids favorite, Dirty Jobs.
The Onion Radio News: Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, shove over. Doyle Redland of the Onion Radio News has the scoop! A minute a day. More than that and your head explodes.
Finally, this one doesn’t help me on my drive, because it’s a video short, and I only have an iPod shuffle. But I’ve always been a big fan of the unique style of humor that is the New Yorker Cartoon, and now you can get selected animated New Yorker Cartoons downloaded to your computer.
Let me know your favorite podcasts in the comments.
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[…] Original post by Mr. Alex […]
Dear Mr. Alex,
I don’t own an MP3 player, but I do listen to NPR on the way to and back from my morning job. I also listen to NPR on the way to and back from my evening job. And I often miss the beginning or the end off the story. Likewise, I often miss something that they say that they are going to talk about. There are also some shows that, I believe, play on weekends, which I often miss — e,g,, “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!†, “Whad’ya know?†, or “Weekend Edition Sasturday/Sunday.â€
When I miss a story, I don’t fret. I look up the show on NPR’s site
http://www.npr.org/
You can listen to entire shows, or portions thereof, for free, and, for those so inclined, you can download transcripts — $3.95 for a single transcript (which is too expensive) or $12.95 for 10 transcripts within a month (which is more reasonable).
These aren’t podcasts. They play on a real player. If I like them, or if I want to listen to them later, I record them and play the recording on my computer, or I burn ‘em on a disc. I own a Mac, so I use Audio Highjack Pro. I don’t know what software Windows players can use, but there must be a shitload out there.
Once again these aren’t as convenient as podcasts that download themselves every week, or whatever, but they’re good enough for me.
Sincerely,
Mr. Monkey
Mr. Monkey, you raise the question, when is a podcast not a podcast?
Leo Laporte, of TWiT and about a billion other projects… the man must LIVE in front of a microphone… wants people to call them “netcasts” to get away from the idea that you need an iPod to listen to them.
To me, to be called a podcast, something just has to be produced on a regular basis. You can download with a handy right-click, or through iTunes, or whatever. The delivery method is not the point.
Hawaiiwarrior…
great blog, keep it coming….