Podcasts That Aren't Shit

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Fri Nov 27, 2015 1:47 pm

So a lot of my workday(night) is spent passively waiting around with my metaphoric dick in proverbial hand. I like to spend this time filling my earholes with delightful audio entertainment in the form of podcasts.

My current favorites:

Welcome to Nightvale: Imagine the Twilight Zone as narrated by Garrison Keillor.

Smartest Man In The World: Comedian Greg Proops ranty left-wing soapbox creates a nice, warm, comforting echo-chamber for my liberal views; a sanctuary from the right-wing, gun-fellating nutjobs that I work with. He often has obituaries for deceased artists that contain a lot of interesting factoids.

Lore: Novelist Aaron Mahnke curates historical accounts and legends of paranormal phenomena. I don't personally believe in the paranormal, but I love weird, spooky stories.

The Black Tapes: Imagine if Serial had a drunken one night stand with the X-Files, and they decided to keep the baby.

The Dollop: Each week, comedian Dave Anthony reads a shit-eating insane story from US history to friend Gareth Reynolds, who has no idea what the story is about. Hilarity ensues. Stories of note: Jack Parsons: founder of the JPL, The Newport Sex Scandal, 4 part series on the history of the LAPD.

Competitive Erotic Fan-Fiction: Exactly what it sounds like.

The Thrilling Adventure Hour: Live stage plays in the style of old-timey radio serials, but hilarious. Now defunct as the live show has ended, but all of the back episodes are on itunes.

The Dana Gould Hour: Typical panel style chat podcast, but Dana Gould is one of my favorite comedians and every episode has a story segment about this piece of old-timey Hollywood lore, or the making of that classic B-movie.

Tales to Terrify: New discovery. Features reviews of horror fiction, and a reading of a short story every episode. I'm a ludite when it comes to audiobooks or e-books because I like the feel of turning pages in my hands, but I like to listen to short fictions.

What else is good in podcastistan?

Fwib · Post by **Fwib** » Fri Nov 27, 2015 3:22 pm

I can't guarantee you won't hate it, but I quite like Hello Internet - http://www.hellointernet.fm/podcast?format=rss - if you do like it, then there are 51 episodes so far, which should be over 100 hours of Two Guys Talking about stuff...

I just download it from that page and listen to it on my computer, but you can get it from iTunes and probably other places - and even YouTube (delayed a bunch of episodes)

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Nov 27, 2015 4:41 pm

I enjoy Pseudopod, which is a more standard horror podcast. A friend of mine also listens to a straight sci-fi podcast, Escape Pod, made by the same people.

I personally listen to that, Welcome to Night Vale, Skeptics Guide to the Universe, & Rationally Speaking.

Pixels · Post by **Pixels** » Fri Nov 27, 2015 6:04 pm

Hiram McDaniels wrote:The Thrilling Adventure Hour: Live stage plays in the style of old-timey radio serials, but hilarious. Now defunct as the live show has ended, but all of the back episodes are on itunes.

I'll also put in a good way for TAH. Double for the Beyond Belief episodes, which follow the supernatural/horror adventures of a perpetually drunk (but genre savvy) couple.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Nov 27, 2015 6:17 pm

Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap is pretty entertaining. It's Ursula Vernon (of Biting Pear of Salamanca and Digger [relative] fame) and her husband, who is a 40-something goth dork who works in IT eating and rating cheap convenience food, but the tangents are the real reason to listen.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:12 pm

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is my favorite. I also enjoyed Decode DC for a long time, but ever since Andrea Seabrook left I've noticed a decline in quality. I do wonder if the decline started a while ago and it was just Seabrook's departure that made me notice. Also, CGP Grey does another podcast that you might like if you like Hello Internet.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:50 pm

I don't really listen podcasts a lot but if I did I'd say co-optional seems pretty good from what I've seen and heard in the little animated excerpts they put on YouTube. It might also be that I subscribe to half of their YouTube channels.

Shady314 · Post by **Shady314** » Sun Nov 29, 2015 12:40 am

Do you enjoy accounts of tabletop roleplaying sessions?
If so try Fandible. They record as they play a tabletop roleplaying game. Usually the game is very comedic no matter what system/setting they are doing that week which are wide and varied.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Sun Nov 29, 2015 11:10 pm

I'm a fan of history podcasts, having studied far too much at uni.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is the best thing since sliced bread. He occasionally touches on subjects I know about, and I'm pretty happy with the way he presents varying views and gets in depth in weird and unpredictable events. It's a very human-focused view, too which is really interesting.

Mike Duncan's History of Rome and its sequel Revolutions are also good value.
More high level and smashing through dates and facts and people, but entertaining and amusing.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Tue Dec 01, 2015 10:01 pm

The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast is pretty good, although some of the early episodes are bit rough. All of the Lovecraft episodes are free, and one-fourth of the later episodes are as well. If you like discussing horror and weird fiction, it's pretty good. They have several Lovecraft stories read aloud in their entirety, for free.

Conlangery, the podcast about constructed languages and the people who make them is very interesting and informative if you're interested in conlangs or linguistics.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, wherein Kenneth Hite and Robin D. Laws, legendary game designers, talk about stuff.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Sat Dec 05, 2015 4:30 pm

Chamomile wrote:History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is my favorite. I also enjoyed Decode DC for a long time, but ever since Andrea Seabrook left I've noticed a decline in quality. I do wonder if the decline started a while ago and it was just Seabrook's departure that made me notice. Also, CGP Grey does another podcast that you might like if you like Hello Internet.

Those both sound pretty interesting. I wonder though: is Decode DC palatable if you're not a hardcore policy wonk?

Blasted wrote:I'm a fan of history podcasts, having studied far too much at uni.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is the best thing since sliced bread. He occasionally touches on subjects I know about, and I'm pretty happy with the way he presents varying views and gets in depth in weird and unpredictable events. It's a very human-focused view, too which is really interesting.

Mike Duncan's History of Rome and its sequel Revolutions are also good value.
More high level and smashing through dates and facts and people, but entertaining and amusing.

I like any kind of podcast where I get to learn interesting stuff. I've listened to a couple of episodes of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History.

I used to listen to comedian Moshe Kasher's Hound Tall podcast, which is a discussion podcast featuring one expert on the topic du jour plus a handful of comedians. It was fun at first, but after a while I just want the insecure comedians to shut the fuck up and stop riffing for 5 goddamn seconds so I can hear actual information from the expert guest. Now I know how my classmates in high school felt.

Shady314 wrote:Do you enjoy accounts of tabletop roleplaying sessions?
If so try Fandible. They record as they play a tabletop roleplaying game. Usually the game is very comedic no matter what system/setting they are doing that week which are wide and varied.

Ahhh I just can't do it. I can't do D&D anecdotes, play session reports or actual play podcasts. I tried listening to Nerd Poker for a while, but I couldn't get over how terrible the DM was. Or maybe he's actually decent, but my natural aversion to critical fumble charts (because you know, 5% of the time Batman hits himself in the nuts with his own batarang) biased me.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Dec 05, 2015 5:15 pm

I liked me some radiolab for interesting discussions on a myriad of topics, earlier episodes more than the newest ones though.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Dec 05, 2015 7:26 pm

Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Chamomile wrote:History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is my favorite. I also enjoyed Decode DC for a long time, but ever since Andrea Seabrook left I've noticed a decline in quality. I do wonder if the decline started a while ago and it was just Seabrook's departure that made me notice. Also, CGP Grey does another podcast that you might like if you like Hello Internet.
Those both sound pretty interesting. I wonder though: is Decode DC palatable if you're not a hardcore policy wonk?

Very yes. The premise of multiple episodes is taking things that are common knowledge to hardcore policy wonks and saying "hey, you, layman, did you know about this?" Usually with "it's completely fucked up!" appended.

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Sat Dec 05, 2015 8:45 pm

Blasted wrote:I'm a fan of history podcasts, having studied far too much at uni.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is the best thing since sliced bread. He occasionally touches on subjects I know about, and I'm pretty happy with the way he presents varying views and gets in depth in weird and unpredictable events. It's a very human-focused view, too which is really interesting.

Mike Duncan's History of Rome and its sequel Revolutions are also good value.
More high level and smashing through dates and facts and people, but entertaining and amusing.

I second both of those.

I recently finished the entire back catalogues of both of those, so I've been looking for a new podcast. I found System Mastery to be pretty entertaining. It's a bit fluffy as compared to what Denners might expect from a show about TTRPGs, but it's basically OSSR: The Podcast, though it's exclusively about terrible games.

shinimasu · Post by **shinimasu** » Sun Dec 06, 2015 11:15 pm

RISK is a podcast about "true stories you never thought you'd dare to share" and it's people and performers share stories from their lives about taboo subjects. A lot of it is sex focused (and kink focused specifically) so heavy R rating but it covers everything from stories from abuse survivors, first crushes, setting a dumpster on fire on new years and it's genuinely entertaining if kind of heavy and occasionally really gross sometimes. It's certainly never boring.

Snap Judgement is like RISK's clean cut NPR older sibling. It's also a true to life storytelling show but without the BDSM stories and graphic descriptions of...well everything. For people who want cool history stories or funny family anecdotes with a more PG-13 rating. Also the host's voice is super sexy and it has better production values.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Fri Dec 25, 2015 5:10 pm

shinimasu wrote:RISK is a podcast about "true stories you never thought you'd dare to share" and it's people and performers share stories from their lives about taboo subjects. A lot of it is sex focused (and kink focused specifically) so heavy R rating but it covers everything from stories from abuse survivors, first crushes, setting a dumpster on fire on new years and it's genuinely entertaining if kind of heavy and occasionally really gross sometimes. It's certainly never boring.

Snap Judgement is like RISK's clean cut NPR older sibling. It's also a true to life storytelling show but without the BDSM stories and graphic descriptions of...well everything. For people who want cool history stories or funny family anecdotes with a more PG-13 rating. Also the host's voice is super sexy and it has better production values.

Oh yeah! Risk is one of my regular listens. Risk is how I discovered that I'm not actually a misanthrope like I'd thought.

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