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4

Moonside wrote

  1. My favorite podcast at the moment is BBC Radio 4's In Our Time hosted by Melvyn Bragg. It basically makes most infotainment look bad. Its self-described focus is on ideas, which in practice means that the topics include history, arts, science, philosophy and religion and they are discussed by relevant experts as guests in the studio. Melvyn is very no-nonsense type of a host who gently guides the discussion for the benefits of the listeners. I've given a chance to a lots of podcasts and honestly it's professional stuff like this that demonstrates how much dead air they can contain.
  2. Finding Drago - a podcast about discovering the origins of a fan fiction novel about the iconic, though criminally underdeveloped, Soviet boxer character Ivan Drago from Rocky IV.
  3. Kubrick's Universe - The Stanley Kubrick podcast. I've listened to four episodes so far, which have featured really knowledgeable guests, my favorite so far being the one on Kubrick as a New York jewish intellectual. The hosts are not ridiculously enthusiastic, which is good for a fannish podcasting.
  4. Talking Simpsons is the best pop culture podcast I've listened to, though I can understand why someone could have a difficult time listening to a 2 hour episode on a 22 minute cartoon episode. It's frequently hilarious and the hosts actually do their job in contextualizing the episodes. The episode on The Simpsons Spin-off Showcase is a good entry point.
  5. Heidi Matthews on Demand Podcast. She's a law professor who occasionally drops a podcast on whatever she's fancying from a leftist perspective. Leftist online content often has the problem of turning their energies into campaigns, taking potshots at current events or discussing praxis and strategy like the revolution was coming any second now.
4

Moonside wrote

Honorary mentions:

  1. Citations Needed. A leftist debunking show. It's generally good stuff, but the debunking angle is inherently limiting imho.
  2. History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. The last three words are the central gimmick, really. It's quite common to skip from Aristotle to Descartes in popular treatments of the topic so the treatment here is an ambitious corrective. The reason I hesitate to recommend it so strongly is that listeners who really want to learn should probably spend the time studying a paper history of philosophy instead. But it is still the best educational podcast I've listened to. There are also similar shows on Africana and Indian philosophy, which I can recommend with less hesitations as there is a lack good quality introductory material on those topics.
4

Moonside wrote

Offtopic suggestions:

  1. More "podcasts" - turn Youtube videos into mp3s and listen to the files. Lots of talking head content really is that.
  2. Audio books are in practice like tightly edited and narrated multihour single episode podcasts. Many are freely available on Youtube (piracy or not) and libraries have more you can loan (or stream). There's only so much time I want to or get to spend sitting at home which is how I read paper books so I'm glad to steal some commute back to me.