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[Asherdan]

[Carlos del Vaca]

My podcast list:

• The Nerdist (I listen to maybe half the episodes. There's just too many and they're too long to keep up.)
• 99% Invisible
• KEXP Song of the Day and Music That Matters (the former is one song per day M-F; the latter is a longer weekly show, 45 minutes to an hour or more. There's some overlap--most of the daily songs end up on the MTM podcast sooner or later.)
• NPR All Songs Considered
• Song Exploder (artists talk about the process for writing and recording specific songs. I tend to only listen if I know the artist, which is probably to my detriment but there's only so many podcast listening hours per day.)
• Pitch (trying to be 99% PI for music. Kind of hit and miss but by and large I like it, and the episodes are short enough that even if it's not so good it's OK.)
• The Alton Browncast (unless he's moved providers again and I haven't heard about it, no new episodes so far this year.)
• The Will Leitch Experience (sports podcast with media people, mostly writers. I only listen if I'm interested in the subject matter--i.e. if it's a baseball writer I almost certainly will; college football guy, skip it. He also does a weekly trivia game with his guests which is pretty fun regardless of the guest's area of expertise.)
• Tales From the Jungle Cruise (this was mentioned on the Nerdist's new weekly "community bulletin board." It's a guy who used to work on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland, loves the shit out of it, and has other former Jungle Cruise skippers on for interviews. Given my recent trip and Disney parks infatuation, it's been interesting, but I'm about four episodes in and it's getting a tad repetitive, so I'll probably drop this soon.)

[wombat]

I never knew about that Alton Brown podcast. Even if there aren't any new ones, that's a lot of stuff to catch up with.

I love 99% Invisible but lately I feel like they seem to have forgotten that the thing that really sets them above everyone else is Roman Mars' voice. They have all sorts of other people doing narration for no reason that I can see.

One that I feel like is along those lines but about history is The Memory Palace.
http://thememorypalace.us/
Infrequently updated, but we're used to that sort of thing here.

Is there anyone left who doesn't listen to Welcome to Night Vale? It's like if HP Lovecraft wrote Prairie Home Companion.

Penn of Penn and Teller has a podcast called Penn's Sunday School that is sometimes amusing if you find Penn amusing.

[theinevitable]

My Main Man is back on the air with his show, The Best Show. Formerly a real radio show on WFMU, Tom Scharpling decided to retire the show about a year ago. WFMU is a non-commercial station and he said he had reached the point where doing it for free just didn't make sense anymore.

History: This show had been on the air since the 90s as a call-in show. But the show's secret weapon is the dynamic duo, Tom Scharpling (writer for the series Monk, Tom goes to the Mayor, voice of Mr. Universe on Steven Universe, director of lots of cool music videos) and John Wurster (of Superchunk, Mountain Goats, et al). Tom has an encyclopedic knowledge of music, extreme grumpiness with a heart of gold, and limitless ability to play the straight man. John is completely off-the-wall, does some great voices.... you just have to hear it.

Anyway, the show has now been on long enough that it has a huge following. It broadcasts over the internet from 9-12am every Tuesday, but it also available as a podcast. There are lots of celebrity friends of the show, but they're the good kind of celebrity-- Patton Oswalt, John Oliver, John Hodgman, H. John Benjamin, Ted Leo, Aimee Mann, Kurt Vile, lots of really great musicians and comedians have been on the show. So these days typically the show will be a few hours of random callers, at least one Scharpling/Wurster bit, and maybe an interview. The last one I listened to had Greg Turkington from On Cinema on, and Tim Heidekker called in halfway through the show to cuss him out and they had a huge (fake) fight on the air.

Your best bet is to listen to some of the Best Show Gems first. Those are on iTunes as a podcast, they're old skits and will give you a sense of whether to listen to the whole show.

There is a long list of inside-joke type things going on in the skits, but most of them don't really have an explanation. For example, Wurster callers often ask Tom if he's using a voice modulator. There isn't any funny backstory here, it just happens... and after a while, you anticipate it coming and it's so good.

Also when people call in with boring stories he hangs up on them. I have grown to love that.

Listen. I love it.

[jaydub]

You can feed your sickness with The RTFP.

[pmcd9]

I'm not really a podcast guy, but I have recently started to listen to WTF with Marc Maron. He's a stand up comic and actor and he has mostly other stand up comics as his guests.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Is there anyone left who doesn't listen to Welcome to Night Vale? It's like if HP Lovecraft wrote Prairie Home Companion.

<raises hand> I listed to three or four episodes and found it mildly amusing, but not enough so to continue to invest time in it. (See Carlos' treatise on the excess of pop culture stuff and the impossibility of ingesting it all.)

[wombat]

That's how I felt about the first three or four as well, or so I thought, but now I listen every time.

[pmcd9]

(See Carlos' treatise on the excess of pop culture stuff and the impossibility of ingesting it all.)

Yeah. For instance, for the past week I've been listening to the Austin 100 I mentioned above. 100 songs by 100 artists, none of which I've ever heard before. In addition to that I've been listening to the Fluxblog 2014 Survey which is just shy of 200 songs by 200 artists, maybe half I've heard before, almost none I know well. On my birthday a friend gave me a thumb drive with about 40 albums on it. I am familiar with most of the artists, but had never heard any of these particular albums. So right now, my phone is filled with approx. 700 songs that I have for the most part never heard before.

It's impossible for me, at my age, to commit so many different names to long term memory.

[theinevitable]

Just got the Best Show on WFMU box set. This thing is incredible. Shaped basically like a stack of LPs 3 inches thick so it fits on my shelf with all my music. Inside are 16 CDs, a book about the history of the show, a USB drive with all the stuff that's on the CDs (shaped like a mix tape, the USB part pops out of the side), and an envelope full of stickers and postcards and stuff. So cool.

3 hours a week for the show is already too much for me to listen to, so I don't know when I'll listen to 16 hours worth. But it will happen.

[pmcd9]

That's a lot to listen to. You must really enjoy this show.

[theinevitable]

It's great. Lots of weird music references and goofy humor. I called in once and told a boring story... I should figure out which episode that was before I forget the general timeframe. Maybe because it's a call-in show, maybe because the host (tom) reminds me of my old roommate, or maybe because he talks a lot about his life, but listening to the show somehow feels like hanging out with friends. It has cheered me up on bad/lonely days many times.

[pmcd9]

That does sound like a really good show. I would listen to it now, but I'm kinda going through a T-Rex binge at the moment.

[theinevitable]

If you are ever interested I could point out some old ones to listen to or something. It's kind of daunting to get into since the episodes are so long. I started listening because my old roommate would listen to it while he cooked. At first I thought it was kind of annoying (especially because he didn't explain any of it to me, so I just heard hours and hours of this grumpy guy hanging up on people) but it really grew on me.

[pmcd9]

Naw, I'll find my way.