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To throw in some fresh podcasts for consideration: * I find Caustic Soda has got a bit too much wisecracking for my tastes, almost as if they're afraid to admit the subject is interesting or serious. Useless Information, while being incredibly no-frills, is a bit more serious and tries to tell more of a coherent story rather than a set of tidbits. The presenter is a bit stiff, but it's interesting. * Robert M Price was mentioned above in connection with Bible studies. Some years back he appeared a few time on Truth Driven Thinking. TDT has since died multiple deaths, but in its heyday it had a lot of interesting content. It wasn't a sceptics / debunkers broadcast but more of a "what's surprisingly true / untrue?" - Should prostitution be illegal? Is drink-driving that bad? - featuring interviews with informed (and non-crazy) people. It eventually foundered and became dominated by the hosts search for faith/meaning but there was good stuff at the beginning. * The Memory Palace is heavy on atmospherics but has high productions values and each episode makes a story out of some historical event or character. Perhaps too heavy on tone than information for some people, but I like it a lot. * Unruly, irregular and unpredictable, Tank Riot is just three guys from Wisconsin picking some topic and running with it, ranging from Gilligan's Island through China to Open Source Software. Sometimes they get led astray by asides, sometimes they just grapple with the topic, the schedule and length of the program is uncertain, but it has a rambunctious charm to it.
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Feb 1, 2014 21:33
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The latest Dan Carlin on WW1 is beginning to try my patience. The guy has his quirks - everyone does - and I largely don't mind. But 3 hours of him thinking out loud on "how do I tell this story?", "how could we ever understand what they went through", "it's like (long and very thin analogy)", with copious amounts of misery porn. However, part of it is probably the subject material. Listening to and watching other sources, there's no escaping that the middle of WW1 is basically 2-3 years of unremitting misery.
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Oct 26, 2014 21:01
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Zeta Taskforce posted:I'm the opposite. I came to the podcast late so I have a backlog of episodes I can listen to, and sometimes its nice to have something 10 minutes long if you aren't in the mood for an in depth thing. It's not like I agree with pseudo science, but I find Brian Dunning smug and annoying. Agreed. For me, he unfortunately falls into the flavour of scepticism that explains away odd events and looks down upon their opposition (i.e. anyone who disagrees with them) as idiots. Two other mystery / mildly sceptical podcasts to consider (with some caveats) are: * Thinking Sideways: three friends get together to discuss and "solve" mysteries. Can be a bit unstructured but refreshing in that they'll sometimes shrug and confess something is unsolvable. * Generation Y: production quality and delivery is adequate at best but covers some interesting topics and the hosts seem to be genuinely discussing the topic.
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Dec 24, 2014 05:05
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bad day posted:his episode on "true" conspiracy theories was sort of insulting - by his definition nothing even qualifies as a conspiracy unless extremely specific conditions are met. That's a familiar debate trick: start arguing definitions. I've seen it used a few times in sceptic circles, and it's one of the least interesting or useful counter-arguments one could use.
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Dec 26, 2014 09:03
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Back To 99 posted:For all his talk of doing massive research I keep getting annoyed by Carlin attributing "One death is a tragedy, a million a statistic" to Stalin. It's really not important, but he's said it in at least 2 different episodes of HH and I think his cold war mentality is hindering his critical thinking at times. That's interesting because I was slightly taken back by his depiction of the tsar in the latest episode, whom he paints as disinterested in ruling, at least relative to his devotion to his family. I'm reading Orlando Figes "A Peoples Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution" at the moment, and it seems to tell an entirely different story: an ill-prepared ruler who nonetheless is over-fascinated with administration and wedded to the idea of the tsar as an autocratic ruler, over-confident of his expertise and although eager to think of himself as protector of the peasantry, completely disconnected from the realities of what is going on. Carlin is trying to tell the story of WW1 and not the Russian Revolution of course, but it seemed like a strange emphasis to take, eliding the role the the tsar's incompetence played in igniting the revolution.
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Jan 20, 2015 15:55
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Jack Gladney posted:The thing that makes him poo poo is that he stole millions that he still has and has the audacity to beg like there are huge costs associated with making his podcast "full-time." Yeah, I can google for 20 minutes and write e-mail too, and I can do it for free and still keep a job. It does seem especially incongruous for a sceptics podcast - where credibility and truth are supposed to be valued traits. Smugness is another thing that drives me away from sceptical podcasts. I always wonder if what would happen if I ended up on the opposite side of an argument to those guys, and if they'd be just as condescending and snarky.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:36
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ATP_Power posted:Oh boy, basically no mention of the Southern Strategy and he even finishes with "Nixon wasn't so bad, really was a liberal and a tragic genius" Christ Carlin, way to go. Carlin occasionally does this. I've commented earlier on his oddly sympathetic treatment of Tsar Nicholas (i.e. mention how he loved his family and just wanted to be with them, skate over the military incompetence, micromanaging, love for pomp and authority, and blindness to his own weaknesses). But maybe that's a Carlin thing - he's very big on the lurid , over-the-top events, but he doesn't like to outright condemn people or paint them as evil?
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May 13, 2015 13:53
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I want to give a recommendation to the Stuff They Don't Want You To Know podcast. Which by name and appearance would appear to be a conspiracy / fortean / wingnut vehicle, but actually is more focuses more on uncommon or little discussed knowledge. I've just listened to two good ones: "North Korea: Fact or Fiction" and "Are Diamonds a Scam". Well presented, not too long, decently researched. EDIT: listened to a few more of their episodes and they do get a bit more out there. But even those are well done. While I'm here, I may as well give a boost to the long departed but still available Truth-Driven Thinking, which was a sceptical podcast that was genuinely open-minded and looked at things like the effectiveness of speed limits, whether prostitution should be illegal, the historical evidence for Jesus etc. (With the massive caveat that TDT changes and arguably derails towards the end of its run with the host talking about his "personal journey", a novel being written and a whole lot of meta-discussion taking place.) nonathlon fucked around with this message at 18:01 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 13:53
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Post Serial, I though I could listen to some more true crime, so gave Criminal a go. Honestly not feeling it. I appreciate they've gone for broad remit, not everything has to be a big dramatic case, and so they do smaller stories. But a "romance scam" that the victim doesn't fall for long before any scam element is even raised? The sound is strange too - the announcers flat modulated lead-in voice is exactly the same as she uses when talking to people, so it sounds like it was all assembled in postproduction.
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Jun 9, 2015 11:47
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Just listened to a recent "How Stuff Works". It was weird to hear income tax described as this strange and mysterious thing, with the hosts being openly derisive and cynical about it. But then, I'm Australian, and there may be a fundamental worldview difference here.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:58
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head58 posted:Can anyone recommend any UFO/Forteana/Weird poo poo podcasts? The batshit loonier the better. Stuff They Don't Want You To Know is cool but perhaps not wingnut enough for you - they actually have sensible takes on the weird. An old-style thing that might interest is Tales of the Afternow, which was a podcast / serial Internet drama before there were such things. It's a strange SF story about a dystopian future that bleeds over into the authors obsession with survivalist and dissident culture, which might be partly a parody, it's not clear. The Fortean Times really needs to start doing a podcast.
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Jun 17, 2015 19:18
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jng2058 posted:I'm a fan of BBC's More or Less. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd It's a good podcast, but more about stats than finance (although the two intersect often). One out of left field for the economy might be the CATO Institute podcasts. It is what it is - single-minded, hawkish with a market-fetish - but you can pick and choose the episodes you want to listen to and ignore those that are just manufactured libertarian outrage ("Episode 356: Why this minor planning decision in an out of the way town signifies the end of law, our country, our way of life, clearly being a sign of the End Days, my god people are you crazy. (45min)")
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Jul 7, 2015 10:44
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stealie72 posted:Ignoring this prissy slapfight, any fans of Tank Riot ( http://www.tankriot.com) in here? Its a weird blend of history, current events, culture, and three nerds sperging, but its pretty awesome. I'm a big Tank Riot fan. There's the occasional episode that goes awry (they forget they have an audience or get too drunk), but it picks interesting topics and the insight on Wisconsin politics is interesting.
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Jul 22, 2015 06:24
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hiddenmovement posted:I think Longworth is a great presenter and she does an excellent podcast but some of the voicework is diabolically bad. The voice of the female presenter (is there more than one?) on the Criminal podcast weirds me out. Or maybe it's the mix: she uses the same tone for voice over & intros as she does for interviewing people, so it always feels like it's done in one take. As if she's talking to someone and then suddenly turns away to commentate the action and the interviewee is left standing there, awkwardly trying to be silent and ignore her as she does a monologue about what they just spoke about. But as a voice, hers is actually pretty good.
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Sep 11, 2015 16:00
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Back To 99 posted:That's very interesting what you are about to say, but we're out of time. Thanks for listening to In Our Time Scarily realistic. On the less educational and more interesting trivia front, I'm quite enjoying Lore, which had been suggested by others here. It takes a curious historical subject and provides a bit of colourful commentary and some ambient music to tell a short story. It seems obviously inspired by The Memory Palace, which tends to be a little shorter, more sentimental and poetic. I've also enjoyed Useless Information, which despite having next to no production budget, manages to pull oddities out of history (chiefly American mid-20th century). They also do an old radio ad every episode, which some might like. The Futility Closet has somewhat higher production values, although it's oddly a little less authoritative and has a slight obsession with lateral thinking puzzles.
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Jan 2, 2016 23:36
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Pomplamoose posted:I was just listening to episode 3.30 of Revolutions where he does the Q&A and I was kind of surprised and disappointed by how he talked about Marxism. I mean I know he's not a Marxist, he said as much in the first episode, but he said something like "even as a teenager I wasn't that dumb" when he talked about how his interest in the Russian Revolution wasn't motivated by a love of Marx or communist theory. Which implies that only dumb people could possibly be Marxists or communists, putting in doubt his ability to understand the Russian Revolution. "So this bunch of dumb people wanted to get rid of the Tsar ..."
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Nov 9, 2017 10:36
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So here's my "recommend podcasts on X" where my X is infectious disease and biomedicine. I'm not so interested in the family / GP type medicine ("what's it like to live with irritable bowel disorder?" ) like you'd find on BBC Radio 4, nor at the other end of the scale in the breathless boosterism of pop sci shows ("Scientists are in the verge of curing ..." ). Something in between about research, pharma, medical history maybe, some biology?
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Jul 13, 2018 21:44
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Seriously, I have been subscribed to each of these at some point, and later unsubscribed. Other examples? * Comedians talk in long solipsistic detail about the darkness and personal trauma behind their fart jokes * Fans explain in excruciating detail about why a popular movie is "bad". Extra points if they veer into alt-right talking points * "Bad movie" podcast in which hosts repeatedly assert that a merely mediocre film is "absolutely insane"
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Feb 3, 2019 10:09
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Arrhythmia posted:Knowing Mike Duncan's past success rate with this kind of thing, it's going to take him until 2024 It would be interesting to do the Russian Revolution in real-time. This week: the Tsar vacillates, Gorky writes a poem, while Lenin catches a train.
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Apr 25, 2019 11:00
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Mantis42 posted:Well, to understand the Communist Revolution in China you must first understand the abortive liberal revolution and the fall of the Qing Dynasty in the early 20th century. Of course, Japan plays a pretty central role in this narrative as their invasion during the 1930s is one of the biggest events during this whole story, and to understand that you must go back to the first Sino-Japanese War in the 1890s. Of course, along the way you'll probably cover the Boxer Rebellion and might as well give a background to what all these foreigners are doing in China anyways, so let's go back to the Opium Wars. You don't need to spend a lot of time on those, but they're still important context and uh, oh wait I forgot that during the 2nd Opium War China was already undergoing the Taiping Rebellion. poo poo, maybe that should be it's own series... I can sympathize. A lot of history is like that where you try to unravel an event and it just keeps going back and back and back. I once tried reading up on the Irish troubles. Pre-reading spawned even more pre-reading until I hit the 1700s and gave up.
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Apr 25, 2019 11:05
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:If anyone's looking for a decent overview of The Whole drat Thing With Ireland, I quite enjoyed this book, which is very much in the "okay these guys were fighting, let's learn about them, they blew it, then things were pretty quiet for a hundred years or so until these other guys showed up, let's learn about them, then..." vein. I haven't heard anything bad about Terry Golway's scholarship, either. It's a book and not a podcast, but hey, c'est la vie. Appreciated - I'll chase that book up. (And, of course, any period of history depends on the periods before it. But Irish history is one of those hairballs where it's so drat difficult to pick a point and say "we're starting here".)
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Apr 29, 2019 10:39
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Jon Ronson's The Butterfly Effect morphed into The Last Days of August, concerning the (apparent) suicide of porn star August Ames. It certainly kept me hooked and it's punchy (there's only 7 medium length episodes), but left me with mixed feelings. The whole thing is fairly sad, and almost everyone interviewed is messed up and/or a massive liar. Multiple interviewees ask Ronson why he's so interested in the story and while they're mostly trying to push him off the case, it's still a good question. It feels a little like a grubby shock expose. However, fair dues to Ronson, early on he tells you that it's not a murder mystery and avoids going the true crime way.
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May 2, 2019 22:05
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kanonvandekempen posted:Does it come up with anything interesting? There were quite a few suicides of porn actresses at that time if i recall correctly. Did they unveil any crime or factor linking the deaths: In short, no. * As you point out, there were a few other deaths. Several people challenge Ronson as to why he's not looking at those. * In fact, there's a lot of people that seem incredibly invested in getting him to go away and stop asking questions. Which seems like it should lead to a cover-up or conspiracy but ... * More mundanely, the people they talk to are messed up, liars, afraid for their livelihoods, don't want to anger important colleagues, etc. The deceased stars husband is a prime example. * As far as anyone can tell, the suicide is a suicide.
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May 6, 2019 19:39
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kanonvandekempen posted:Thanks, sounds like I can skip it. I think so. It's interesting (I listened to the last three episodes in a row) but in a sense reveals or educates you as to nothing, like a true crime mystery that in the end concludes everything is as it appears. Which leaves it as some sort of prurient soap opera.
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May 7, 2019 11:40
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It's that slow schedule and the release of large indigestible lumps of story that's driven me away from Carlin. Even hour-long chunks would be a lot better but I have to listen to part of it, fall asleep during it or forget where I got to, restart or work out where I got to, realise I've lost track of what was happening ... then 4-6 months later a new episode appears and I've forgotten what happened before. Basically, Carlin is the George RR Martin of history podcasts.
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Jun 6, 2020 19:53
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Used to listen to the Generation Why podcast which, although it has poor sound and so-so hosting, had some decent mystery episodes. I listened to a few episodes last night and it's now basically a true crime podcast: detailed recounting of gruesome crimes with little mystery or unknowns, moralising, pearl-clutching ... Which is disappointing, but the true crime market is so huge, it was perhaps inevitable. It's crazy how many of these nearly identical podcasts there are.
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Jul 1, 2020 07:17
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Cockblocktopus posted:The Facebook group for The Weeds is absolutely terrible, regardless of your feelings on the podcast and its hosts. It's almost a law that the supporting community for any podcast is terrible, taking any faults of the source and magnifying then up into a lifestyle. See My Favourite Murder, etc.
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Jul 18, 2020 01:59
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I don't resent the slow pace of Carlin's releases. But the individual length makes them really difficult to consume, especially when these huge, indigestible lumps of content land months apart. What was he talking about again? Where am I up to in this episode? Man really needs an editor.
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Jan 27, 2021 13:43
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fuf posted:Yeah wondery loving sucks and really ruined Tides for me. So many very obnoxious and loud ads. As someone who listens to podcasts to fall asleep I had to stop listening All of those big podcast providers (families?) come on big with promoting their other random and generic shows. I think it's IHeartRadio that always leads out with a set of aggravating ads that all sound like: * "Hi, I'm CELEBRITY. Haven't you always wanted to know what it was like to be CELEBRITY? Well, on my new podcast ..." * "What up people, here we're going to be giving you the _real_ news, the news that matters, the only news that you need" * "I'm Sascha! And I'm Antonia! We're just two girls and we're going to be talking about dating! And murder!" Like, it seems part of the economic recovery plan is to give everyone their own podcast
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May 6, 2021 11:51
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Acebuckeye13 posted:This thread goes pretty in-depth with specific criticisms: That thread is a bit difficult to read since many of the objections amount to an expert saying "this is patently false / ridiculous". Still damning
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Jul 12, 2021 22:44
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Thwomp posted:Oh yeah, Duncan is totally done making any kind of contextual excuses for the Tsar at this point and it’s glorious how much contempt he has for him now. I think Dan Carlin is good for what he does (or used to do) and people can say things I disagree with, and I might reconsider my views. But when he described the Tsar as a good man who loved his family and just wanted the best for his country? My eyes just about rolled out back out of my head. There's a great book called "The Russian Revolution: A People's Tragedy" and it makes obvious at excruciating length that the country was a powder keg and the Tsar just handwaved it all away.
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Aug 2, 2021 21:54
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No, I get it. Nicholas isn't some sort of monster or evil plotter or a villian. He's just fundamentally wrongheaded, oblivious to the the world around him, operating on a model that doesn't hold.
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Aug 2, 2021 23:36
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GodFish posted:The iheartradio suite of ads is unbearable and they go to breaks way too often. I didn't want to listen to a true crime podcast the first time you suggested it and by the 8th in one 1 hour segment you could not pay me to check it out. What part of "listening to a politics podcast" makes you think I really really want to hear about movie star gossip and fashion? Truth. There's a crazy similarity to the other podcasts they choose to advertise, as well as doing it in a way that assumes you'll be interested in minor celebrity's opinions, two girls talking about y'know stuff, a serious newscrew telling you just the news you need to know, etc. Like people are desperate to listen to any podcast. nonathlon fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Aug 28, 2021 |
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Aug 28, 2021 08:03
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The Jada Pinkett Smith podcast seemed to be entirely predicated and advertised on the idea that anything a member of the Smith clan does is AMAZINGLY interesting
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Aug 28, 2021 18:34
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CommonShore posted:Nothing worse than a podcast that's 2 hours of people "riffing" and laughing at their in-jokes to pad up a 30 minute talk on a topic that you find interesting. Like FMGuru said. I've dropped a few podcasts that I once enjoyed when the hosts got lazy and seemingly started to think that they were fascinating in their own right and could just ramble on, promoting their side projects (look at you Flop House). Why shouldn't I just listen to local radio rather than hearing how you're going to be signing comics in Fishkill next Friday?
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Aug 29, 2021 19:51
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a pipe smoking dog posted:It had already started to slip after Elliott moved to LA but I think covid finished it for me. What happened with COVID? They were all remote from each other? Elliot's self-promotion and self-aggrandization was what started to wear on me first. Like when he said his child would be reading comic books and watching cartoons because that was all he consumed when he was a kid, and look how things turned out for him.
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Sep 1, 2021 15:11
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Dunning is very much in that class of sceptic / debunker whose explanations involve labelling other people as stupid and who think they're too smart to be fooled. The whole fraud thing is a natural extension of that.
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Oct 28, 2021 13:12
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