Podcasts I've known and loved
I read a blog post elsewhere on Write.as mentioning podcasts the other day and realised I had got out of the habit of listening to them. I started while I lived in the US. My commute to work was one and a quarter hours each way, a mix of walking, train (the BART – Bay Area Rapid Transit) and shuttle bus. This left me plenty of time to delve headlong into an immersive world of podcasts spanning serious to comedy, daily to weekly to bingeing on serials. It was a great way to transition to and from the working day.
Fast forward to my current job. It has a 20 min or so walk to work, not something I'd normally complain about but this has squeezed out most of my podcasts, leaving behind only Nature once a week. In lockdown I've dropped even that, partly because the walk to work (a.k.a. my living room) is less time than it takes to start a podcast, partly because in the early days of the pandemic the virus dominated took the content and I needed a refuge away from it.
Reading the blog post got me thinking though and soon I found myself subscribing to Brian Posehn's Nerd Poker on AntennaPod, my podcast app. I'd listened to an earlier version of this podcast before they took a break for a bit. Since lockdown started, I've been mainly taking my walks with my wife but this time myself and the Nerd Poker gang went for a longer evening wander alone. It was like returning to old friends. They sit around playing D&D, going on adventures, using their imagination and enjoying each other's company. I could count the number of times I've played D&D in real life on one hand but listening to this podcast is escapist fun.
I'm not sure how I'll fit podcasts into my new life with baby but I'm gonna try! For the record, below are some I've enjoyed down the years and recommend – check them out wherever you go for podcasts if they sound like your kind of thing!
- Marketplace and Make Me Smart – have fun with Kai and Molly and learn about the US economy.
- The Bugle – satirical look at the news with Andy Zaltzman and his comedian guests – used to be co-hosted by John Oliver but sadly the success of his TV show means he can now only drop in from time to time.
- Stuff You Should Know – soooo many episodes from Josh and Chuck and they're still going!
- We're Alive – zombies!
- Anything from The Brewing Network – these podcasts were great when I was learning how to homebrew in the US – not something I've done since being back in the UK but I still have the kit so maybe someday. Also, while I was living in the Bay Area, they started The Hop Grenade, a fantastic craft beer pub in Concord with a dedicated recording studio attached to it; plus one of the long term contributors, Jamil Zainasheff, quit his day job in IT and turned his prize-winning homebrew hobby into Heretic Brewing. This podcast was a really special combination of topic, time and place for me!
- For music, KEXP radio station have a podcast they now call The Weekly Mix. I mainly used it for the excellent “Runcast” episodes by John Richards (another hobby to get back to one day!).
- ...and of course Nature for a weekly dose of science news, and Nerd Poker for the joy of it.
Entry 16 of my participation in the “100 days to offload” challenge. Find out more and join in!
2020-06-25 #100DaysToOffload #Podcasts #BayArea #beer #homebrew #running