Podcasts

 I listen to a lot of podcasts, mostly to avoid being alone with my own thoughts which is probably not healthy. But we cope in the ways we can.

I generally think of the podcasts I subscribe to in four groups. First, and what I've been mostly listening to today, are the RPGs: How We Roll Podcast, which I am still working my way through from the beginning, Nerd Therapy and Dead Ghost Productions, who are also behind the amazing Kill Every Monster which has definitely influenced my thinking on running several D&D monsters. 

Then we have the fiction. Aside from the obvious Welcome to Night Value, I also like Within the Wires, the first season of which may be one of my favourite stories ever, in any format. I also listen to three of Escape Artists' podcasts, namely Escape Pod, PseudoPod and PodCastle as well as Tales of Britain and Ireland and Red Valley 

As for non-fiction, if you haven't heard of 99 Percent Invisible, where have you even been? That and Radiolab are probably what got me hooked on podcasts to start with, and I don't think there's ever been a duff episode. I quite liked Articles of Interest, too, despite not really having a pre-existing interest in clothes, and Lingthusiasm got me interested in linguistics rather than the other way round. Media Storm is a hard listen almost always, but an important one. This Day in Esoteric Political History has really helped understand American history and present more, and Stuff the British Stole filled in some embarassing gaps in my knowledge of my own country's past. From the BBC, I like The Life Scientific and More or Less. I'm also still persisting with Freakanomics Radio and History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps but my interest is waning, and they often just end up being background noise. And about the only good thing I can think of about recent international political events is that we might get a lot more of What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law.

Finally, there's the "miscellaneous" category. If you've read some of my other posts, you won't be surprised that the big one is Dear Hank and John, but there's also Lateral with Tom Scott, Uncanny and, definitely the most random, The Podcast at Dawn's House - a podcast about the Baby-Sitters Club books which I have never read and never will, but am now strangely familiar with thanks to deciding to listen to a friend's pandemic project and getting hooked.