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.
