Podcasts Thread

Super short notice but I’m interviewing former Marvel artist Andrew Wildman for my podcast in about an hour.

If you’ve got any questions for him, let me know!

I’ve been listening to Richard Osman’s Birthday Game lately. A trio of guests (usually comedians) are asked to guess the age of people whose birthday it is that week. Perfect sort of concept that wouldn’t work anywhere but on a podcast really.

My son’s ladyfriend recommended the podcast My Favorite Murders to me yesterday. She says that having it hosted by two women makes the stories seem less creepy and threatening. We’ll probably give it a try during our next long roadtrip.

I recently found a BBC podcast called Shreds. It’s a look into the case of Lynette White, a prostitute that was murdered in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay in 1988. I kind of knew about this case as it appeared on the Welsh news a lot as I was growing up but had honestly forgotten all the details so was never quite sure where it was going next.

Fans of the likes of Serial season 1 would enjoy it. It takes in some very important subjects, institutional racism, police corruption, the value of forensic evidence etc. There’s a lot of twists and turns in a case that carries on in various forms for 24 years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p071cll5

A young woman is murdered in a frenzied knife attack. Outside, a man is crying and covered in blood. What happens next almost defies belief. Yes, this really did happen…

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Rocket, njerry

Not quite so morbid, I started “60 songs that explain the 90s“, which is from the Ringer network and available on Spotify. I’m probably not going to listen to every episode but so far (halfway through the November Rain one) it’s very good. Just one guy talking through the history and importance and impact of a particular track each episode, it would appear.

Yeah this one is just a bit weird because he does stuff like interview a guy who’s entire family (wife and 5 kids) had died and he has this rather ‘matey’ demeanour like he’s presenting Soccer AM on a Saturday morning. It’s not like he says anything at all insensitive really but this kind of podcast tends to be done in hushed tones and ominous music and he’s doing a link while having a drive thru KFC with another journalist so it’s all little jarring.

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Christian

I’ve been listening to Behind the Bastards, a podcast talking in-depth about the worst people in history. There’s a bit of a gossip rag element there because he talks a lot about the private lives of dictators and so on, but it’s actually quite fascinating to hear about the personal habits of the people behind genocides. Also, there is a lot of really important history being driven home here; things like the history of the Congo (everybody knows the Belgians did terrible things there, but it’s nice to hear about the horrible details in an entertaining way).

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Andrew, Todd

Christian wrote:

but it’s nice to hear about the horrible details in an entertaining way).

is this a German thing?

also let me know if the question is too insensitive and my opinion needs adjusting.

I listened to this earlier today, based on a random mention on Twitter:

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx

“A man in California is haunted by the memory of a pop song from his youth. He can remember the lyrics and the melody. But the song itself has vanished, completely scrubbed from the internet.”

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Andrew.

I was wondering too, but even without listening to the cast, it does have this link:

Further Listening:

Christian Lee Hutson’s music : https://open.spotify.com/track/3g8nKpXsQtXv0lcN4UGVGs

I think this might be a hint.

When I listen to a podcast for a while the voices often start to annoy me. I listen to You’re wrong about, which is very good and inisghtful, but man the voices of the two presenters are grating. Dan Carlin in Hardcore history tries to do a George Carlin imitation which is a bit annoying. I think the voices start to be annoying because you only focus on the sound with a pod.

I think my favorite podcast at the moment is BBC’s Moral Maze. The content is great and the main panel of speakers are all very nice to listen to.

Anonymous wrote:

I think the voices start to be annoying because you only focus on the sound with a pod.

This somehow reminds me of Adam Buxtons’ ad for Squarespace on his podcast that is a really accurate parody of the style of ‘This American Life’. It always makes me chuckle, the music and the intonation are spot on.

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Dave

garjones wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I think the voices start to be annoying because you only focus on the sound with a pod.

This somehow reminds me of Adam Buxtons’ ad for Squarespace on his podcast that is a really accurate parody of the style of ‘This American Life’. It always makes me chuckle, the music and the intonation are spot on.

It’s a big problem I have with some podcasts. Odd speech patterns, mumbling, shrieking, people who can’t form proper sentences…I listened to an Australian professor speaking over a crappy mike or who had a bad connection. It was almost impossible for me to make out what he said. I think my English is pretty good, but with podcasts I can have trouble.

Andrew wrote:

I’m not sure I care enough about Muse

Dude!

Nah, can’t say I am. But I do like them. Origin of Symmetry will always be one of my favourite albums, and there are some other songs I really like.

Yeah, I mean they’re fine (I have their first three CDs), and they were impressive live, but there’s a difference between that kind of appreciation and wanting to listen to 2-3 hours of discussion of each album.

It’s also that from my reading there doesn’t seem to be that much to talk about – with the Manics podcast and the Hold Steady one, those are two acts where their song lyrics are often packed with mentions and references to other things (the Manics famously say as a band they’ve probably inspired more youngsters to pursue academia than music), so an audio annotation is worthwhile.

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njerry

I used to be really into Muse when I was in secondary school – partially because most of my friends were musicians and also into Muse – but they started to lose me around United States of Eurasia and The Second Law. I couldn’t tell you how many albums they’ve even released since then (I will freely admit that part of this is just me getting old and generally not paying much attention to music any more).

I’m not a fan, but I always felt like maybe I should be one and wanted to get more into them, so this might be a great opportunity for me!

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Andrew

I listen to a couple of BBC produced podcasts every week and around 4 years ago they added a ‘this podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK’ narration at the start. Which is fair enough, it is illegal for the BBC to advertise in the UK but it’s the same thing they do with the website or their international channels where they include ads overseas.

The only thing is despite the ever present disclaimer there has never been any ads in that 4 years, until today. An ad for some accountancy software appeared, with an Aussie twang on the voice actors so I guess that’s their target market. So congratulations to the BBC podcast advertising manager who has at last managed a sale after 4 years of trying.

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paul f, Martin Smith, Rocket, DavidM

There are a bunch of Podcasts I listen to that have breaks – the hosts actually announcing it, a one second stretch of silence and then the show starts again. I assume there’s meant to be an ad but they don’t show up on the iOS Podcast app or the free Spotify app. The Oasis podcast fed me an ad maybe twice in the 4 years I’ve listened to it, a local ad for an Australian based telco.

I figured there was something along those lines, but to have had a local specific ad insert for the Oasis pod (which isn’t that popular, and surely even less so in Australia), but none when I listen to the Ringer’s shows is surprising. They’ll sometimes include spruiking of products in the show itself though, lately for a beer that isn’t available here.

Rewatchables has been a bit patchy lately, with only 1 of the last five films being one that I’ve seen (The Doors, which did make me want to listen to some Doors music if not rewatch the movie (I recall enjoying it) – the other 4 recent episodes have been on Sleeping with the enemy, Neighbours (Bad Neighbours), Coming to America, and today it’s New Jack City.

I am looking forward to the latest eps of The Watch and The Big Picture, which are both spending a lot of time on the WandaVision finale in their most recent episodes.

Over on 60 songs that explain the 90s their last five have been interesting enough (and the host in engaging enough) that I listened to them even though I wasn’t familiar with all the songs – I know No Doubt’s Just a girl and TLC’s No Scrubs, but was not familiar with Dr. Dre’s Nothin’ but a G-thang, Temple of the Dog’s Hunger Strike, or Notorious BIG’s Juicy.

Quite the juxtaposition on the two most recent “60 songs that explain the 90s” episodes; last week was Shania Twain’s “Man I feel like a woman”. This week is “Stinkfist” by Tool.

A reminder, the very professional show is just one guy talking about the artist’s history, the song’s impact, and then a short interview/discussion with a fan/expert. Apart from the Mariah Christmas song episode it’s not delving into technical stuff like chords and key changes and whatnot, so very easy listening.

I think most people download them in full though, as long as they are using a podcast app that’s pretty much the default option.

I suspect the location thing is the more likely cause. I very rarely get ad inserts but I am in Malaysia mostly listening to podcasts originating from the UK or US. The ad I did get on the BBC with the Aussie accents tends to suggest that, they probably put in Asia-Pacific as their target audience. Maybe if I was listening in a bigger target audience like the US I’d have been getting more ads over the past few years.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been listening to the new Ben Folds podcast, Lightning Bugs, which is loosely themed around the creative process and inspiration (but is less ethereal and pretentious than that makes it sound.)

Each week he speaks to someone in a different creative field – so far we’ve had roles as diverse as sociologists, anthropologists, medical therapists, musicians and animators – to talk about their own creative processes, but also creativity in general and how to get the best out of our creative pursuits in our own lives, as well as encouraging others in theirs.

It’s occasionally a little stilted but some interesting conversations have come out of it. With Folds being a musician, music obviously comes up a lot, but the conversations are often quite universally applicable too and go off on some interesting tangents.

As a fan of his already it’s a nice listen for me.

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Andrew

garjones wrote:

gives you a warning if you try and stream it in case it uses too much of your mobile data

Other way around on the default iOS app – if you try to download a whole episode and it’s over 200MB it’ll ask if you’d rather wait until you’re on WiFi.

Dave wrote:

new Ben Folds podcast

Has he ever revealed just how he managed to become less bald over the past 20 years?

garjones wrote:

a Dutch advert for something involving ‘true crime’,

Are these podcasts designed for Asian listeners? was it a Dutch team the Rugby podcast was discussing?

Interesting thing I saw today, I listen to a comedy podcast where the host is also a media lecturer at Cardiff University. He was giving a talk about chart rigging shenanigans of the past and wanted to see how viable it is with podcasts. The answer is massively.

Using his own podcast he asked the students and his followers on Twitter (of which he only has 13k, he’s the straight man host with two comedians who have 140k between them) to give it a rating on iTunes and subscribe/unsubscribe 3 times but never download it. So basically a lot of activity around the pod but zero extra listeners. Within the day it had gone from 34th in sport in the UK to 6th, from just outside the top 200 in overall podcasts to 50th.

(Yes everyone took the piss on Twitter that his ‘experiment’ was just manipulating people into hyping his podcast but I know the work he does in that field is genuine and specifying nobody download or listen means any boost is going to be pretty transient).

It is an interesting aspect with digital media that it is much harder to actually track genuine popularity with a variety of metrics and categories. Netflix used to give nothing, then include anyone who watched 2 minutes of a show, then changed it to hours watched which is better but still flawed, old sitcoms with hundreds of episodes are always going to win that metric compared to something like Russian Doll which lasts 3 hours in total.

Amazon and Comixology give you incredibly fleeting stats where the bestsellers change several times a day.  It seems somewhat deliberate not to fully reveal what is actually the most read book that week or listened to podcast or watched show.

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DavidM, Andrew, Todd

garjones wrote:

, I always wondered why abortion became such a hot topic for protestant evangelicals and he answers that question.

I seem to remember this as a pretty random cause picked by the Moral Majority that took off?

I mentioned this show back when they had just started their second season (which I skipped, along with season 3), but I’m back on board for the current 4th season where they are covering the entire discography of Radiohead – if you’re a lapsed fan who wants to rekindle the love, or a casual observer who wants to look into what all the fuss is about they have just finished coverage of “OK Computer” and are about to cover the tour film that was released immediately after; they’ll then move on to “Kid A”.

What is music?

Season 1 – Manic Street Preachers
Season 2 – MUSE
Season 3 – Billie Eilish
Season 4 – Radiohead

https://whatismusic.buzzsprout.com/

Three (British, 30ish, male) hosts, very well researched, with the album coverage being track by track – episodes released weekly.

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njerry

garjones wrote:

I just finished listening to The Trojan Horse Affair. It’s a podcast made by Brian Reid (of Serial and S-Town fame) with a young journalism student from the UK. It’s looking into the famous Trojan Horse letter that told of a Muslim extremist plot to take over Birmingham (UK) schools and turn them into training grounds for future terrorists. Pretty much everyone believes the letter is a hoax, the city council, the police, the UK government but it takes on a life of its own and ends up changing policy and attitudes – Reid actually ends up interested in it because it was cited by some anti-immigration activists in Alaska.

Anyway it is brilliant, really fascinating. They start out with the question for some reason nobody else in the press pursued, who wrote the letter? Unlike a lot of podcasts that tease a lot but end up inconclusive, it is very obvious who it was and the reasons are really not what you’d think.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.html

You might find this article an interesting read. I was initially planning to listen to this podcast as it hits quite close to home for me (literally) and addresses something that was a huge topic of conversation here for a long time. But after reading this (and other) criticism of it, I was less sure and it got bumped down my list.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/20/the-trojan-horse-affair-how-serial-podcast-got-it-so-wrong

(This article then prompted its own backlash and then there have been a series of pieces in various publications arguing both sides since.)

Obviously without listening to the podcast I can’t judge it, and it seems as though both sides may have reasons to push their own version of the narrative. I would suspect though that the whole thing is probably more complex overall than either side wants to suggest.

The arguments though do remind me though of how I felt about the first series of Serial, which at some point crossed a line from feeling like solid investigative journalism into cherry-picking facts to fit a narrative that the hosts wanted to pursue. I guess that’s a danger when you approach a subject from a certain perspective.

Dave wrote:

Obviously without listening to the podcast I can’t judge it, and it seems as though both sides may have reasons to push their own version of the narrative. I would suspect though that the whole thing is probably more complex overall than either side wants to suggest.

I actually agree with her main thrust. It does address the issues at the schools, which weren’t terrorism at all (that really was a hoax, everyone asked agrees, they hunt down meeting minutes of council officials meeting with Gove where it’s put on record) but rather Islam impinging too much on the school’s running but felt they gave them too short an amount of time, they aren’t followed up with the same rigour as other aspects.

However pretty much all the points in Sodha’s article do appear on the podcast. The teacher convicted of sexual abuse is the same one that told a class women should give sex to their husbands on demand and is all in there, she leaves out that they held a special assembly to state that was incorrect after it was raised but he should have been sacked. The Whatsapp messages are too, some of them pretty horrid, but Tahir is not questioned about that stuff as he should be. There is little factually in her rebuttal that isn’t in the programme but emphasis is a fair criticism, I felt that listening to it, albeit I think she’s also coming with a specific feminist angle, which is valid too.

The thing about Hamza Syed having bias is actually fully confronted on the podcast, with a debate about impartiality. It’s a large part of why I enjoyed it as there is a lot of back and forth with Reid over that, at one point Syed is close to tears that he’s fucked up by losing all impartiality. It’s not something that isn’t addressed, it makes up almost an entire episode.

My conclusion after listening was those schools needed reform and greater regulation but they rather took a sledgehammer to it in banning large numbers of people from working in education (nearly all those bans later dropped in the courts through no evidence) and restaffing and renaming all the schools which were actually hugely successful academically and Gove’s tough ‘Prevent’ rules.

I did find recognition from my experience that some of the findings were about ‘otherism’, where some behaviour picked up on when looked at through your culture is accepted there. Part of the findings are things like girls and boys being separated for PE lessons, they were in my school, it would be considered part of safeguarding. Some girls being told skirts were too short (this story appears in local newspapers every other week). That they introduced daily prayer but the actual education department advice says daily worship is mandatory, it should be Christian unless it needs to reflect the makeup of the school (which was 93% Muslim and they asked the authorities for exemption and were granted it). Some of the sexist and homophobic  views in the Whatsapp messages I’m sure would be found in a lot of men’s groups – it’s whether they are taught to student which is important.

In summary, it has a major flaw and Sonia Sodha, a journalist I like, is right to call them out, but I would still recommend it as I spotted that flaw myself, however it still raises a lot of good points and the mystery of the origin of the letter is quite fascinating and surprisingly mundane in motive.

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Dave

I think an obvious conclusion is British education should be secular, like it is in France and the USA, albeit the now the latter is into Christian prayer and the SCOTUS supporting it.

Reed (I was spelling his name wrong) as an American and bemused it isn’t and I can’t disagree.

Oh, I wanted to mention that I’ve been listening my way through Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. Maron is a comedian I didn’t know before this – he’s kind of mid-level well known, came up with Oswalt Patton and those guys. He’s also acted in some stuff (small role on Joker, bigger one on Glow apparently, that kind of thing). But apparently, this podcast is now the most successful thing he’s been doing and it’s really very good. He interviews comedians, actors, musicians, writers, and so on – sometimes little-known people, sometimes massive stars. But the conversations are always interesting and sometimes go very deep, as Maron himself has no problem talking about his own issues and the guests sometimes decide to share theirs. (Like a recent one that had Bradley Whitford on it and he somehow ended up talking about how what probably got him into acting was being sexuall abused by a teacher.)

It’s good fun and a good example of how to interview people/just have conversations well, even in cases where I don’t know the interviewees.

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Martin Smith

There’s a guy called Steffan Garrero who does sports podcasts and TV with Elis James and Mike Bubbins but his dayjob is a media lecturer at Cardiff Uni. He’s doing a project with his students where they’ve found it ludicrously easy to manipulate the podcast charts without downloading a single episode. They’ve recorded a brand new pod, got the students and twitter followers to leave a 5 star review and subscribe and it’s gone from outside the Top 200 up to 28 globally in ‘Education’ in 2 hours with zero downloads or listens.

So if you know anyone who has a podcast, there’s your cheat code to get on the front page of Apple Podcasts.

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Todd, Martin Smith

It’s been running for a long time but I just recently started listening to Blank Check (a movie podcast; they work through directors’ filmographies in order) – interesting, sometimes funny – nice people, well produced. I don’t ask for much, and they deliver.

Another one I started recently that is a much newer show – Unclear and Present Danger; another movie podcast where they re-examine 90s films through a political/geopolitical lens. Not so funny, but very interesting and engaging.

The What is Music? pod is still on their Radiohead season and just about up to In Rainbows which should be good (that’s their last great album, right?).

Sounds good, I have way more podcast time nowadays and end up running out – downloading the first ep now.

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garjones

An interesting new podcast is My Perfect Console by (high end) video games journo Simon Parkin. It’s basically Desert Island Discs for video games and while it suffers a little from awkward gear shifts between talking about their five game choices and general interview, it’s insightful. Helped by the calibre of guests – so far Ashly Burch, Dara O’Briain and Josh Wardle. The latter is particularly interesting in that he is eventually asked about Wordle and talks frankly about the situation around the sale to the NYT. Worth a listen.

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Dave

I’ve been listening to The Dollop a lot recently.

History buff and comedian Dave Anthony was considering starting a new podcast in 2014. His idea was to write up an unknown story from American history and read it to a different comedian each week. Having not heard of the story before, Dave hoped the comedian’s reaction would be hilarious. He gave it a go and his first guest was comedian Gareth Reynolds. They immediately clicked and fans flooded social media telling Dave to never change the co-host. And he didn’t.

Sticking to the formula of Dave reading Gareth a story he has never heard, The Dollop quickly shot up the charts. Fans of both comedy and history were drawn to the wild stories and quick improv skills of Gareth. With millions of downloads, The Dollop has become a regular presence on top of the podcast charts, as well as selling out shows in both the US and Australia.

A lot of Reynold’s contribution is doing improv scenes based on what Anthony has been telling him, and that works very nicely. The Dollop is a lot of fun. Between this and Behind the Bastards, it feels like I’m learning an incredible lot about history (and promptly forgetting 95% of it).

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Andrew

Some other podcasts I’ve been into lately.

You’re Dead To Me

A BBC history podcast presented by Greg Jenner (who describes himself as a “public historian” and “former chief nerd on Horrible Histories” but, weirdly, has also been doing VO on adverts and stuff lately), who is joined every episode by a comedian and a historian to discuss a single topic. That gives a good mix of information and comedy (although episodes can live and die by the guests – a couple of the comedians they’ve had on have just been tiresome and dragged things down while some of the historians they get are really boring, clearly just reading pre-written notes rather than managing to discuss/teach things conversationally). What really elevates it though is the wide range of topics, which are far beyond the usual topics you’d have learnt at school, most likely. The show’s done everything from Nell Gwyn to Mansa Musa to the history of ice cream to Hatshepsut to the Harlem Renaissance to Grainne O’Malley to everyday life in ancient Sumeria.

Sliced Bread

Another BBC show, this is a consumer one that “looks into wonder products that claim to make your life better and determine if they’re the best thing since sliced bread or just marketing BS”. It’s covered stuff like heat pumps, expensive trainers, knock off perfumes, low odour paints, ceramic heaters and air-fryers. It started in 2019 by having the host, Greg Foot, in studio with a minor celeb guest (Kelly Sotherton, Scroobius Pip), a couple of experts and then hands-on tests of the types of products in question (the pre-covid anti-bacterial hand sanitiser one was particularly interesting). Then Covid hit and it had to retool into its current format, where Foot has a Zoom talk with a listener who has suggested that episode’s topic and gets the criteria of what they’re interesting in knowing about it, then talks to an expert or two, some times does a practical test or experiment and then wraps it up by talking to the original called again with conclusions.

As you might expect, most of the time, the “SB or BS” test ends up being more nuanced than that boolean choice, except for one episode about “blue light filtering glasses” which just absolutely destroyed the entire concept of them. They spoke to the CEO of a company that sells them, who spouted a load of marketing stuff, then to an expert who just dismissed all of that, point by point, as nonsense and misinterpreted science then back to the CEO who struggled to come up with any kind of coherent defence and basically ended up saying “I’m paying more attention to this topic than the experts you spoke to”. It was brutal.

GladPod

Only a few episodes into this and there’s a chance it might get a tad repetitive at length, but it’s interesting so far. It’s hosted by a guy who I think works for This Morning and Diane Youdale, who was Jet on Gladiators in the 90s, and is about Gladiators, mainly through interviews with other people that worked on it – the Gladiators themselves, the commentator John Sax, the guy who did all the designs for the Gladiator costumes (I’ve not got to that one yet but I’m curious to hear from that guy). I’m not an obsessive Gladiators fan but I have fond memories of it from the 90s and this complements those.

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Bruce

Sounds like a pretty crazy story. And like an impressive woman if she was able to get the better of this guy to that extent.

Other pods I’ve been enjoying lately (I get through a lot while walking my dog)

Paper Cuts – a weekdaily UK news comedy pod, mainly through the lens of looking at the papers, hunting for the best headlines and talking about some of the stories. Has a good variety of journos and comedians, although it can tack a bit centrist for me at times. But it’s not massively political while talking about politics, if that makes sense.

Hell Or High Rollers – this is a D&D podcast by some of the people from Mischief Theatre (the company that did The Goes Wrong Show et al) and is about four not-quite-heroes who all find themselves in Hell and have to work together to ascend (descend?) through its layers to escape. It is hilarious, especially Ellie Morris’ character Ghould, a little mushroom guy.

Under Consoletation – The Games Master pod I mentioned above. It’s an episode by episode recap and weirdly I’m not really bothering to watch the show alongside it. But it’s a nice general 90s nostalgia exploration, as they talk about what’s top of the charts and box office the same week as each episode and there’s lots of tangential discussions about video games of the era generally from what comes up. Weirdly, as the series went along, one of the hosts kept mentioning things relatively local to me and it turns out he’s originally from my hometown and was possibly at school with my brother briefly.

The Back Page – another video games podcast by Matthew Castle, the former editor of Nintendo Gamer, Official Nintendo Mag, Official Xbox Mag and Samuel Roberts, the former editor of PC Gamer. Every episode has a different topic, sometimes it’s a draft competition between them, sometimes an interview with an old mags colleague, just talking about what they’ve been playing recently, a deep dive into a particular series, the best games of a particular year. My favourite type is Bad Games Court, which started with Matthew passing judgment on games Samuel had bought off eBay during lockdown and has expanded into them passing judgment on listeners’ second hand games purchases, with elaborate, crazy court room settings. Only downside is that some of the episodes are really long, pushing three hours, which can be a bit of struggle at times.