Showing posts with label Podcasts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Podcasts. Show all posts

Friday, July 7, 2023

What are you listening to?



Quite awhile pack I posted one of our "trailing threads" on the topic of what you are reading, titling it that, i.e. What Are You Reading?

It occurred to me the other day that I should post another one about what you may be listening to, and by that I mean in the form of podcasts and other audio data.  This occurred to me as I just completed listening to an excellent BBC podcast series called The Hurricane Tapes, which I highly recommend.

In posting this, I have to note that it seems to me that podcasts fall into two basic types, one of which are continual, and therefore like magazines.  I.e., you don't expect them to end.  And others that are a distinct series, like a mini series.  The Hurricane Tapes, for example, are more like the latter.  I'll note what's what in my list, as well as why listen to them.  If you listen to some, let us know what they are.

One thing that may be noted is that this list will seem rather long, and it is.  But I don't listen to every episode of most of these podcasts.  And they enormously in length.  I also tend to listen to them in certain settings, which is normally when I'm doing something else, such as driving, mowing the law, etc.  One thing I never couple with listening to podcasts with, however, is walking or riding a bicycle  I don't like to be distracted doing either and think it sad when I see somebody walking with earphones pasted to their head.

I'll also note that these are the podcasts that have sort of passed the test of time.  I try out other podcasts and discard them if I don't like them.

So here's what we're currently listening to.  Well, sort of.

ABA Journal Podcast

This is a podcast I download, but I frequently don't listen to.  I should be better about it.

It's a serialized podcast on legal topics from the ABA. Some are quite interesting, others not so much, but that's typical of podcasts.

Type:  Serial

Catholic Answers

Catholic Answers is a weekday radio show committed to podcast which I've fairly frequently mentioned on this blog.  I don't listen to every episode but rather to certain guests and hosts.  The topics are extremely wide ranging and often highly intellectual.  They are, of course, from a Catholic prospective, but the show deals with an incredible range of topics and issues.  Usually they are presented in an question and answer format with calls from the radio audience, or even the electronic audience.  The diversity and depth of the show is perhaps demonstrated by the large number of non Catholic callers and the occasional non Catholic guest.

Type:  Serial

Catholic Answers Focus

Catholic Answers Focus is an offshoot of Catholic Answers with specific guests and a single topic.  It does not have the question and answer format.

As with Catholic Answers, I pick and choose on this one, probably listening to less than half of the topics.

Type:  Serial

Catholic Stuff You Should Know

One of the greatest podcast on the net, Catholic Stuff You Should Know is a podcast done by a collection of young priest. The topics are nearly always good and have an incredible range.  The strong, and sometimes quirky, personalities of the hosts really come through.

Like certain hosts on Catholic Answers, this podcast tends to have a really strong impact on its listeners, not all of whom are Catholic.

Type:  Serial

English Catholic History Association Podcast

This is an oddly English podcast featuring lectures delivered to the English Catholic History Association.  It's very typically English.  I listen to only a fraction of these which are always delivered on a slice of English Catholic history.

Type: Slow serial.

BBC History Extra Podcast

Perhaps the best history podcast on the net, the BBC History Extra Podcast is the podcast offshoot of the history magazine put out by the BBC.  It's simply excellent and features topics of a very wide nature.  I listen to most to the episodes.

Type:  Serial

Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World

Jimmy Akin is a polymath host of Catholic Answers and this podcast done by a different entity is on all kinds of mysterious topics.  I don't listen to all of them, but do to most of them.

I like Akin in general and this is a good podcast.  It says a lot that I listen to them because a podcast of this type isn't something I'd typically listen to.

Type: Serial

Mass Backwards

Mass Backwards is a collection of radio broadcasts by the late Gene Shepard. They very from inspired to awful.  A lot more are awful than inspired, but the good ones are great.

Shepard was a writer as well as a radio personality (and later a television personality) and is best remembered today for the script of A Christmas Story.  Some of the radio broadcast featured the same characters, of which he is one, but they often have a much darker theme.  His broadcasts on his time in the Army are absolute classics.

I don't know how to really characterize these as there's a limited, if large, number of Shepard radio tapes in existence.  These were released in a podcast form by a New York public radio station that often seems to be ignoring copyright laws, or maybe not.  Ironically, in at least one Shepard broadcast he makes fun, very briefly, of the same radio station.

Type:  Series.

Meet the Press

Meet the Press is the classic weekly television news program on politics.  They commit it to podcast form that very day, which is how I hear it.

Type:  Serial

Pritzer Military History Podcast

The Pritzer Military History Podcast is an excellent military history themed show put on by the Pritzer Museum of Military History in Chicago.  Many well known and excellent authors are featured in the show which focuses mostly, but not exclusively, on military history books.  As noted, it isn't always on a recent book, and some of the direct interviews on other topics I skip.

The show features questions from the audience and after you listen to it for awhile you get to where you recognize quite a few of the voices, so the audience must contain a high percentage of regular attendees.

Type: Serial

Right to Roam

This Wyoming based podcast is on outdoors topics.

I really wish this podcast was better than it is.  I have it on my phone but I'm often disappointed with it.

Type: Serial

ScotusCast

This is a podcast synopsis of United States Supreme Court opinions by eminent legal scholars.  It's excellent. All the episodes are brief and concentrate on recent Supreme Court arguments and decisions.  Our local bar will accept it as self study CLE, and for good reason.

Type: Serial

The History of England

This is a private podcast on what it says its on, the history of England dating back to antiquity.

I used to listen to The English History podcast by Jamie Jeffers and this podcast replaced it.  Jeffers podcast was at one time excellent but after he lost his job as a lawyer and became a full time podcaster the quality of the podcast declined and its pace became intolerably slow.  As that occurred,  he began to engage in rather broad speculation to where the answer to many things was "we just don't know".   The "battle cattle" hypothesis was flat out ignorant and after he went into the "we just don't know" routine on female Viking warriors (didn't exist) it was too much.

This podcast replaced that one.

Type:  Serial

History of English

This is an excellent history of the English language.  It's extremely well done.

Type:  Serial.

The Hurricane Tapes

I mentioned this one in our introduction.  It's a BBC podcast by two English sports journalist and is absolutely excellent.

This follows the two trials and ultimate release of Ruben Hurricane Carter and John Artis for the 1966 murder of three patrons in a bar in Patterson, New Jersey.  The events are famous as it came to be widely believed that Carter and Artis were wrongfully convicted and they did ultimately obtain release.  The sports journalist dig in and discover all sorts of new information that they set out in a thirteen part series.

I don't usually enjoy murder or crime mysteries, but I saw the film The Hurricane recently, which apparently other people are aware of but I'm was not.  In the film Carter is portrayed by Denzel Washington. That lead me to look up Carter, which lead me to The Hurricane Tapes, which was only done recently.  It's a great series.

Type:  Series.

This is That

Like Mass Backwards, this series is complete.

This is That was a brilliant Canadian Broadcasting Corporation comedy production in the form of a fake radio news journal.  It was always presented as being straight new and is absolutely hilarious.  The show featured a telephone number for caller feed back and always drew a large number of callers who had heard a broadcast and believed they were true, to additionally hilarious results.

The show concluded last year, which isn't surprising as it must have been the case by that time that too many people were in on the joke to make it work.  It's a classic.

Type:  Series.

This Week

This Week is the other weekend television news show that I listen to in the form of a podcast.

This Week was originally This Week With David Brinkley, which was better.  Both This Week and Meet the Press have suffered over the years by being hosted by lessors than originally, but they are still good. The panel on Meet the Press is frankly better than This Week's, and has been ever since George F. Will ceased being on the panel. It's still worth listing too however.

Type:  Serial.

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July 17, 2019

This excellent podcast, fwiw, was mentioned recently in an article in the electronic ABA weekly listserve:

The Hurricane Tapes

I mentioned this one in our introduction.  It's a BBC podcast by two English sports journalist and is absolutely excellent.

This follows the two trials and ultimate release of Ruben Hurricane Carter and John Artis for the 1966 murder of three patrons in a bar in Patterson, New Jersey.  The events are famous as it came to be widely believed that Carter and Artis were wrongfully convicted and they did ultimately obtain release.  The sports journalist dig in and discover all sorts of new information that they set out in a thirteen part series.

I don't usually enjoy murder or crime mysteries, but I saw the film The Hurricane recently, which apparently other people are aware of but I'm was not.  In the film Carter is portrayed by Denzel Washington. That lead me to look up Carter, which lead me to The Hurricane Tapes, which was only done recently.  It's a great series.

Type:  Series.

On a completely different topic, I just heard listed to a long podcast episode in Farm To Taber taking a, well I guess revisionist, view of European and American family farms and their history that was quite interesting.  I'd like to disagree with it, but frankly much of it is really insightful.

A major theme of the podcaster, an ag professor in that episode Grappling With Our Ghosts:  The American Farm Legacy, was that a of of American family farming was done badly, with bad technology, deficient compared to the rests of the world, and that it still is.  For somebody with agrarian sympathies, that's a sad thought.

The episode is too varied in topic to really summarize here, so people who are interested should download it and listen to it themselves.

Type:  Serial

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November 24, 2019

I've already mentioned the Pritzer podcasts above, but a recent episode is well worth listening to for students of World War Two.

Stephen Bourque: Beyond the Beach: The Allied War Against France | Pritzker Military Museum & Library | Chicago

I'm probably an exception to the rule, as I was aware of a lot of the data presented in this podcast in a very loose way. But the facts and figures presented are, quite frankly, horrifying and deal wit a topic that the Western Allies rarely do, the vast damage inflicted on France during World War Two by the Allies prior to June 6, 1944.

Indeed, to expand out more, and as an example, I suppose, of how our Seventh Law of History, the degree to which the Western Allies became comfortable with inflicting civilian causalities from the air during the war is something that we generally don't address much.  Americans are somewhat comfortable in addressing casualties inflicted by the British, but not the USAAC.  It's a topic that we really need to examine.

Another interesting Pritzer one I just heard was  Michael Neiberg: The Treaty of Versailles | Pritzker Military Museum & Library | Chicago

Very interesting on the background to the Versailles Treaty.

Has anyone here read the book?

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December 6, 2019

I added NPR Politics, a daily podcast of about 15 minutes in length, as I like politics and I wasn't able to keep up with the impeachment hearings, etc., like most folks.

It's a good short podcast and, contrary to the way people sometimes assert about NPR, it's pretty balanced and insightful.  NPR usually is.

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October 1, 2020

I haven't been keeping up with this thread which I realized when I went to update it.

Since I last updated this I listened to the excellent podcast The Clearing which details the story of the hunt for a serial killer and his daughters realization that her father was not only one, and her effort to bring him to justice, but also that he was responsible for some deaths close to the family.

Normally I don't like crime stories, but this podcast is an exception.  It's excellent.

Likewise, another one in this category that I listed to just recently is season 1 of the CBC's Somebody Out There Knows Something, which is on a decades old disappearance.  I haven't listened to any of the other seasons and I likely won't, but season 1 was compelling.

The podcast that caused me to come in and update this is one I'm listening to now, that being Bunga Bunga, a series on long serving and highly creepy Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.  Irreverent and witty, it's a stunning history of how Italy's politics descended into the muck under a prime minister who was engaged in numerous icky activities while in and out of office.  This one is also highly recommended, but as a warning, the language can be crude and Berlusconi's activities, which are detailed in the series, are not suitable for a non mature audience.

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February 23, 2022

Wow, been a long time since I updated this one.

The Pritzer podcast has sadly ended, a victim seemingly of COVID 19.  The series started interviews, with bad audio quality, at that time, and then just ended.  As it originally was principally made up of recordings of its talks at the library, I thought it would resume, but it never did.

And I've quit listening to Mass Backwards, I like Gene Shepherd, but I seemed to have listed to the ones I wanted to listen to.  

The same is true of Right To Roam. It just never picked up and I gave up on it.  I added the very good Hunt Gather Talk podcast, however, featuring the interviews of Hank Shaw, who 

I added Face The Nation to the political pods.  It's actually better than its two weekend competitors, although I oddly still prefer This Week.  I also added NPR's State of Ukraine, on the ongoing Russo Ukrainian War.  It's quite good.

I added Wyoming My 307, which is by a Wyoming podcaster, more or less, but not quite, a history podcast.

A recent add is the excellent Fighting On Film, a British podcast that takes a look, in a really unique fashion, at war movies.

And, what causes me to update this, I just started the eight part series The Coldest Case In Laramie. We'll see how I like it.  It's about an unsolved murder in Laramie during the early 1980s, by a New York Times reporter and author who lived there in her early teens, which has left her with a whiney view of the town.

July 7, 2023

I recently added Dead and Gone In Wyoming, an excellent series on crimes and missing person's in Wyoming.

Thursday, July 6, 2023

Dead & Gone in Wyoming: Indigenous.

 Interesting and horrifying to listen to.

    Dead & Gone in Wyoming: Indigenous

    Dead & Gone in Wyoming: Indigenous

    This month’s episode focuses on the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Native women are killed at a rate up to 10 times higher than the national average, and 84% will experience violence in their lifetime. Cases from this episode come from Wyoming’s only Indian Reservation, one of the largest in the country, along with some hopeful commentary that this issue might be resolved. Dead & Gone in Wyoming is written, produced, and narrated by Scott Fuller. Fuller is also the host of the Frozen Truth Podcast. Dead & Gone in Wyoming is made possible by the Hampton Inn and Suites in Riverton, Wyoming. For more Wyoming podcasts, follow 10Cast. To support Dead & Gone in Wyoming on Patreon, click here.
    • 34 min
    Dead & Gone in Wyoming: Indigenous

    Dead & Gone in Wyoming: Indigenous

    This month’s episode focuses on the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Native women are killed at a rate up to 10 times higher than the national average, and 84% will experience violence in their lifetime. Cases from this episode come from Wyoming’s only Indian Reservation, one of the largest in the country, along with some hopeful commentary that this issue might be resolved. Dead & Gone in Wyoming is written, produced, and narrated by Scott Fuller. Fuller is also the host of the Frozen Truth Podcast. Dead & Gone in Wyoming is made possible by the Hampton Inn and Suites in Riverton, Wyoming. For more Wyoming podcasts, follow 10Cast. To support Dead & Gone in Wyoming on Patreon, click here.
    • 34 min

Friday, February 17, 2023

Today In Wyoming's History: Buckle your seatbelts Laramie, it's going to be a bumpy ride. The Coldest Case In Laramie.

Today In Wyoming's History: Buckle your seatbelts Laramie, it's going to be a ...:

Buckle your seatbelts Laramie, it's going to be a bumpy ride. The Coldest Case In Laramie.

Laramie, Spring 1986.

Kim Barker, a journalist who is best known for her book on Afghanistan, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, is coming out with a podcast on a 1985 unsolved murder in Laramie.  Moreover, Barker was apparently a high school student at the time.

And she doesn't like the city of her alma mater at all.  Of it, in the promotions for this podcast, she's stated:

"I've always remembered it as a mean town. Uncommonly mean. A place of jagged edges and cold people. Where the wind blew so hard it actually whipped pebbles at you." 

Wow.

And there's more:

I don't like crime books, but oddly I do like some crime/mystery podcasts.  I'm not sure why the difference, and as I'm a Wyomingite and a former resident of Laramie, I'll listen to the podcast.

But frankly, I’m already jaded, and it's due to statements like this:

It was an emblem of her time in Laramie, a town that stood out as the meanest place she’d ever lived in. 

Really, you've been to Afghanistan, and Laramie is the meanest place you've lived in?

Hmmm. . . .  This is, shall we say, uncommonly crappy.  And frankly, this discredits this writer.

I've lived in Laramie twice.

All together, I guess, I've lived in Casper, Laramie, and Lawton (Ft. Sill) Oklahoma.  I've been to nearly every town and city in Wyoming, and I've ranged as far as Port Arthur, Texas to Central Alaska, Seoul, South Korea to Montreal.

The author may recall it that way, but if she does, it says more about her life at the time than Laramie.

And indeed, I suspect that's it.

If you listen to the trailer, you hear a string. . . dare I say it, of teenage girl complaints, preserved for decades, probably because she exited the state soon after high school, like so many Wyomingites do.  I can't verify that, as her biography is hard to find.  Her biography on her website starts with her being a reporter, as if she was born into the South East Asian news bureau she first worked for.  A little digging brings up a source from Central Asia, which her reporting is associated with, and it notes that its very difficult to find information on her.  It does say, however, that she grew up in Billings, Montana and grew up with her father.  Nothing seems to be known about her mother.  She's a graduate of Norwestern University, which supports that she probably graduated from high school in Laramie and then took off, never to look back.  How long did she live there is an open question, and what brought her father there is another.  Having said all of that, teenage girls being relocated isn't something they're generally keen on, and Billings is a bigger city than Laramie.  I have yet to meet anyone who didn't like Billings.

Now, I didn't go to high school in Laramie, but I was in Laramie at the time that Barker was, and these events occurred.  1985 is apparently the critical date, and I was at UW at the time.  I very vaguely recall this event occurring, and didn't at first.  I vaguely recall one of the things about Laramie that Barker mentions in her introduction, which was the male athlete branding.  What I recall is that there was a local scandal regarding that, and it certainly wasn't approved by anyone.

A lot of her miscellaneous complaints, however, are really petty and any high school anywhere in the United States, save perhaps for private ones, might be able to have similar stories said about it.  Boys being sent out to fight if they engaged in fighting within the school wasn't that uncommon in the 80s.  I don't recall it happening at my high school, outside of the C Club Fights, but I do recall it from junior high, in the 1970s, and experienced it myself.  I don't regard it as an act of barbarism, although I woudln't approve of it.  As noted, I recall this branding story, which was a scandal and not approved of, but today an equally appalling thing goes on all over the United States with the tattooing of children for various reasons, including minors, in spite of its illegality.  Certainly college sports teams feature this frequently, and I'd wager many high school athletes experience a similar example of tribalism.

What's really upsetting, however, is the assertion that Laramie was, and is, "mean".

When I went to Laramie in 1983 for the first time, I didn't look forward to it.  I found the town alien at first and strange.  I probably would have found any place I went to under those circumstances to be like that.  I was from Central Wyoming and had lived there my entire life, save for a short stint at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.  But by the time I graduated in 1986, I had acclimated to it and there were parts of living in Albany County I really liked.  I was back down there a year later, this time not dreading it, and as a graduate student I was pretty comfortable in the town.

I also wasn't a teenager being dislocated from the place I grew up in.

In my last couple of years of undergraduate studies, and in all of my graduate years, I was pretty comfortable with the city.  I knew the places and things there, and had friends there.  In the summers, and I spent a couple there, it was a really nice place in particular to live.

And let's be honest.  Just as the land of high school angst might seem awful, the land you are in when you are young usually isn't.

If I had any complaints, at that time, it was about housing and prices.  Housing was always a crisis for a student, and a lot of the places I lived were not very nice.  Some were pretty bad.  And prices locally were really high, it seemed to us.  Local merchants complained about students shopping in Ft. Collins, but we did that as it was cheaper than shopping in Laramie.

The weather in Laramie is another thing.  It's 7,000 feet high, in the Rockies, and therefore it can be cold and snowy. The highway closes a lot.  In the early 1980s, it was really cold and snowy, with temperatures down below 0 quite regular.  Interestingly, by the late 1980s this was less the case.  And it does have wind, but ten everyplace from El Paso to the Arctic Circle is pretty windy.  Wyoming weather can be a trial for some people, particularly those who are not from here.

Which gets, I guess, to this.  A Colorado colleague notes that you have to be tougher just to live in the state.  You do.  Being from here makes you that way.  As the line in the film Wind River puts it, in an exchange between the characters:

Jane Banner: Shouldn't we wait for back up?

Ben: This isn't the land of waiting for back up. This is the land of you're on your own.

And that can be true.  If you aren't at least somewhat self-reliant, this may not be the place for you.

The further you get away from Laramie, the more this can be true.  Laramie is the most "liberal" city in regular Wyoming, surpassed in that regard only by Jackson.  Albany County nearly always sends at least one Democrat to the legislature.  If there's left wing social legislation pending, there's a good chance it comes out of Albany County.  Albany County is the only county in the state, outside of Teton, where all the things that drive the social right nuts are openly exhibited, due to the University of Wyoming.  In real terms, about 1/3d of the city's population are students at any one time, and a lot of those who are not students are employed by the University of Wyoming.

When I graduated from law school, I noted that a lot of students who passed through the College of Law stayed there if they could.  That says something about the town. Several good friends of mine over the years who are lawyers stayed there, including ones that had come there from other Wyoming locations.  Even a few of my non law school friends worked and lived there for a time, although none of them do any longer.

And in the years since I lived there the influence of Ft. Collins has come in, with downtown establishments mimicking those that are fifty miles to the south.  I've known people who retired and left the town, but I also have known people who retired to it.

It's not mean.

But the whole world is mean to some teenagers, with their limited experience and exaggerated sensibilities.  Some people keep that perception for the rest of their lives.

Monday, January 4, 2021

Resolute Progress. Culling the podcast herd

The other day, I posted this item:

Resolute Progress. Weeding the Cyber Garden.

I've done the same on podcasts.

I like podcasts a lot, and started listening them some time ago.  Indeed, they're the reason I gave up on XM Radio.  I had taken them up to the extent I wasn't listening to it much anymore.

When I traveled around a fair amount by road, they were fairly easy to keep up with. . . sort of.  Well, that wasn't every fully true, but I did keep up on them more than I do now.  COVID 19 is the reason why.  Fewer road trips.

So I've culled some.  And some really needed to go.

One that I tried to repeatedly cull but stuck around due to the oddity of how podcast upload on the iPhone was the Patrick Coffin Show.  Coffin was the host for years of Catholic Answers Live, which I really like and still listen to, although I've never listened to every episode.  Coffin, who has an acting background, was a great hosts.  The current host, however, Cy Kellett, is leagues superior in every sense.  Coffin's departure turned out to be a boon for Catholic Answers.

But not for Coffin .

I wasn't sure why Coffin was leaving but he set up his own podcast and apparently that project was part of it.  Right away Coffin strayed into the Rad Trad fields, something that the very orthodox Catholic Answers, which is conservative, but not Rad Trad, doesn't.

When Coffin's show would pop back onto my podcast feed, I'd often leave it there to see if there was anything interesting. That ended when he had an episode that features some whackadoodle boosting a Bill Gates is responsible for the pandemic theory.

Not that there weren't warning signs before.  Soem of Coffin's guests were really extreme.  Dr. Taylor Marshall is one and he was one the lesser ones.  

Well, no more. Coffin is gone.  Indeed, in my view Coffin is one of the people who is presented with a delimma of the nature expressed here the other day in that he's now expressed views that he knows or should know, at least in regard to the absurdity of the pandemic episode, are false.  As he has a media company of some sort, he needs to recant that, in my view.

This isn't the only podcast I've excised recently.  There's just too many to keep track of and too many of them are good. At some point, some have to go.

Simplify. 



Sunday, November 1, 2020

Blog Mirror: Catholic Stuff You Should Know; Political Spin Class.

The Catholic Stuff You Should Know podcast did two recently, highly timely, excellent episodes on the times and voting from a Christian perspective. 

The are:

POLITICAL SPIN CLASS, PT. 1

POLITICAL SPIN CLASS, PT. 2

Well worth listening to.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Blog Mirror: OLOBEDIENCE, and thoughts on sacrifice.

Catholic Stuff You Should Know ran this episode back in August:

OLOBEDIENCE*


The topic is the departure of Father Michael O'Laughlin, then of Holy Protection Byzantine Catholic Church in Denver, for a new parish in California, to which he'd been assigned by his Bishop.

The discussion is the radical nature of obedience which Priests are heir to, and quite frankly, while in the modern world they seem not to realize it, to which Catholics in general are also heir to.  In the podcast, and in our minds in general, Priests are necessarily the topic of this to a greater degree, as they give up so much for their vocations.

But then, in pondering it, it struck me.  This may be a real difference between those who retain fealty to their faiths in general and the modern secular world, and it may moreover be a marked difference between the world today and the way the world once was, not all that long ago.  And in that, as scriptures note, we gained in what we lost, in former days, and in the modern world, through our secular concepts of gain, we're massively losing a lot.

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*That's not a typo, it's sort of pun.  Father O'Laughlin is called "Olo" by his companions.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Being Consumed - Catholic Stuff You Should Know

Being Consumed - Catholic Stuff You Should Know

In one of the occasional examples of synchronicity that pops up, the other day I posted on National Small Business Saturday and mentioned Distributism, the economic theory applying the principal of subsidiarity in my post. Then I ran across this podcast entry on Consumerism.

This is posted on Catholic Stuff You Should Know, and therefore it does address some religious themes, but only barely really, mostly focusing on Consumerism through a Distributist lens.  To a slightly aggravating degree, early in the podcast the speakers excuse of their comments by noting Communism when in fact those comments that they feel might be controversial aren't Communist or Socialist at all, but rather purely Distributist.  That they'd discuss Distributism isn't too surprising on one hand, as the economic philosophy was developed by Catholic thinkers, but to hear it discussed is fairly surprising as so few people know what it is.

Anyhow, for a really Distributist discussion of Consumerism, here's one.