Podcasts

As I make my own podcast, I thought it might be useful to share a few of the podcasts I listen to - podcasts that inspire me, or entertain me. This is by no means a complete list, but rather a handful of the ones I've been listening to the longest.

The first podcast I got into was Stuff You Should Know, and I've since listened to every one of their back-catalogue (Actually, that's something I'm picky about; I'll always start at #1 and work up to the present day, rather than starting with the most recent stuff!). Several of my podcast stories have been inspired by articles and podcasts from Josh and Chuck on the SYSK podcast, and the sheer fact that they've been putting out content for as long as they have is a standard I would love to hold myself to. Beyond anything else, their content is always interesting, and I can happily put on a podcast and count the time as 'research'. Beyond anything else, I learned a lot about American history and culture that I've missed out on, being from the UK; most of my history lessons involved specifically UK-related stuff. There is a sister podcast that I haven't tried yet, called 'Stuff You Missed In History Class', and I should probably give that a go too. It's worth pointing out, with this one, that the iTunes store apparently only shows the most recent 300 podcasts they've out out. That said, I've never had a problem using the manual feed in my podcasting app, so I've listened back as far as 'How Grassoline Works' without issue.

At the other extreme is the second podcast I happened upon, Critical Hit from the Major Spoilers Podcast Network. It's a Dungeons and Dragons longplay podcast, with episodes averaging well over an hour each week. The adventure is DM'd by the incredible Rodrigo Lopez, whose ideas have invaded my own D&D sessions, and whose articles about D&D in general are really interesting. I've been following the show since about their first year, and I've loved every minute of it. Now well into its fourth/fifth season, depending on how you count it, the show has dived into yet another different aspect of the varied world that Rodrigo has created, and it's every-bit as fun as previous series. For me, I'm not sure they're every going to beat 'The Celestial Crusade' season, which was without doubt one of the best D&D games I've ever seen or heard of.

The only problem was, for the longest time, I would completely zone out while listening because someone would say something, and I'd think, 'Oh, that would be awesome in my campaign, and then this could happen, and then...' and basically miss a few minutes. Very inspiring stuff! Thank goodness for the 'Skip back 15 minutes' button!

Radiotopia is a podcast network that claims a lot of my listening time at the moment. Primary among them is 99% Invisible, a podcast about architecture and design. Again, I feel like I'm actively learning something, and Roman Mars is one of those people in whose voice I could happily take a bath (along with Sir Patrick Stewart, Charles Dance, and one or two others). Love and Radio and The Heart are both story-based podcasts, each with a definite NSFW twist to them. Both of them are working up to new seasons, and there are plenty of back-catalogue episodes to chew through while you wait. I've also heard really good things about The Allusionist, so I've got that queued and ready to go.

Song Exploder is a podcast I discovered more recently, and it's just plain clever. Each fortnight, a guest breaks down one of their songs into different tracks and talks about the various inspirations and development of parts of the music, from the inception through to specific drum patterns or musical riffs. The episode that got me hooked is Tune-Yards: Water Fountain, and it is awesome.