Podcasts

Another case of the Kraken being behind the times.

Something valuable came to my attention recently almost by accident that I thought I would pass on to anyone who might find utility in it. I think I was vaguely aware of podcasts before but it took a jolt to actually look into it.

I was a fan of Bob Cesca's work on Huffpo and started following him on a new site called The Daily Banter. Then found out he did a podcast with Chez Pazienza and stumbled onto it through Google. All of a sudden a new world opened on the ITunes store, there are podcasts for just about every subject and most of them are free to subscribe to. So, The Bubble Genius Bob and Chez Show features the two hosts bantering (pun intended) back and forth about the news of the day. No guests, no phone-ins but I guess the thing that caught my attention is their left-realist perspective reminiscent of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr. It is a strand sorely lacking in American media today, tough and pragmatic, and unwilling to play the weasel-word "both sides" meme of corporate media. Niebuhr himself would have found the irony in a committed atheist in 2013 regularly quoting him, as Chez does, especially since he Chez expressed no knowledge of Niebuhr's work when I contacted him about it. Bob is as idealistic and pure as Schlesinger ever was, but neither man was ever naïve about the real world. Cesca also has a keen interest in history, particularly the American Civil War, further strengthening the comparison with Arthur Schlesinger. Someday I will dedicate more analysis to this inquiry.

Other podcasts I have found to keep me occupied during all the time I spend in the car include: The Talking Dead, two incredibly polite and nice Canadian fellows who spend their time talking about death and apocalypse on AMC's The Walking Dead; Full of Sith, Star Wars and comics; Rachel Maddow's audio highlights from her MSNBC show since I no longer have cable; and the intriguing My History can beat up your politics, more or less a lecture formatted 'cast comparing contemporary events to historical ones. Then I just discovered The Alton Browncast, anyone who ever watched AB's show Good Eats or his other appearances on Food Network knows that he is very well-spoken and knowledgeable. I learned how to cook from him and a heck of a lot about cultures and food history over the years. Mr. Brown is from Atlanta and trained himself to speak without a Southern Accent for television, he records the 'cast from his garage which is very punk rock. The first episode he was speaking really fast at times, which is easy to do in this format but slowed down in the second so there is definitely a lot of promise here.

 So if you spend too much of your time in a car or doing work that requires your hands and eyes but not necessarily your ears, podcasts might be a good (and often free) investment. This does not mean I have lessened my support of audiobooks but let's be honest, not everyone can stay focused during a long time recitation of a book. 'Casts are usually 45 minutes to an hour, so about the same as a music album.