Because your ears can’t read, pt. 2

Finally, the rest of my daily podcast list. Though I’ve listed all of the podcasts alphabetically, this list contains many more news podcasts, whereas the previous list was heavy with tech podcasts. 

NBC: Meet the Press – Just the audio of the show. Unfortunately, I didn’t become a fan of MtP until after the death of Tim Russert, but the show was handled well under interim host Tom Brokaw, and current host David Gregory is doing well (though filling Russert’s shoes is certainly a big task).

New Yorker: Fiction – A monthly reading of selected short stories pulled from the New Yorker archives. Includes great pre- and post-discussion of the story.

New Yorker: The Campaign/The Transition/Political Scene – A 15-30 minute podcast, basically a roundtable of The New Yorker’s political writers and editors. As if their names are not obvious enough, The Campaign covered the 2008 Presidential Campaign, and The Transition covered Barack Obama’s transition from President-elect to President. Now that Obama’s transition has been completed, the roundtable covers the goings-on in Washington, with a special focus on the Obama administration.

NEWSWEEK: On Air – A weekly review of top headlines from the magazine.

NPR: Environment – Basically, an aggregate of the environment-related stories from the previous week’s broadcasts of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

NPR: Fresh Air – WHYY’s weekday radio show hosted by Terry Gross, one of the best interviewers in modern journalism. I enjoy this show because not only is it in-depth – one hour on one or two subjects, but it has a great amount of variety. For example, guests this week included Rivers Cuomo of the band Weezer, street artist Shepard Faire, who created the famous tri-color Barack Obama campaign poster, Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis, and P.W. Singer, author of Wired for War, a look at advancing technology on the battlefield. Some of the best shows of recent memory included guests like Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central and Bill Ayers of Presidential Campaign 2008 infamy.

NPR: It’s All Politics – This weekly podcast is, without question, the funniest non-humor podcast on the internet. The bantering and never-ending puns flying between Ken Rudin, NPR’s Washington Political Editor, and Ron Elving, NPR’s Supervising Senior Washington Editor, keeps me laughing. But the humor doesn’t obscure their in-depth analysis of the week’s events in politics. The hosts’ embrace and grasp of political trivia never ceases to amaze me.

NPR: On Science – Similar to the Environment podcast, an aggregation of the week’s science stories.

NPR: Satire from The Unger Report – The audio from humorist Brian Unger’s weekly spot on the soon-to-be-defunct NPR show, Day to Day. Unger’s biting satire is pretty hilarious. His resume includes being a creator, producer and correspondent on The Daily Show, as well as the host of E!’s Talk Soup before Joel McHale took over.

NPR: Talk of the Nation – This two-hour daily talk show is one of my favorites. Like Fresh Air, the discussions are wonderfully in-depth and the guests are even more varied. This isn’t rant-and-yell-as-much-as-I-can talk radio, this is truly talk radio – host Neil Cohnan’s views and opinions are nowhere to be found, it’s all about the guests and the callers.

NPR: Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me! – This is the last NPR podcast, I promise. Wait! Wait! is NPR’s weekly news-quiz show, and probably the funniest show on radio. The show’s been running for more than ten years now, and I really hope it continues for decades more. Imagine The Daily Show or SNL’s Weekend Update as an hour-long quiz show, and you’ve got Wait! Wait!. 

The Official LOST Podcast – See, I told you they weren’t all NPR podcasts. This weekly podcast (at least, while LOST is being broadcast) is hosted by the show’s executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. Lindelof and Cuse are corny, silly and informative all at one time. They take great care to answer viewers’ questions, but they also won’t hesitate to make fun of that viewer’s username on the LOST message board.

Resurgence featured audio – this is audio from the conference’s of the Resurgence Missional Theology Cooperative, a ministry of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Episodes includes interviews with conference speakers like John Piper, Matt Chandler, Jim Gilmore and Scott Knight, as well as conference sessions and theological discussions.

ScreenCasts Online – this is a great screencast tutorial podcast. Host Don McAllister is an excellent teacher, and he covers subjects of software on the Mac, including Apple mainstays like iWork and the iLife suite, as well as third-party software like OmniFocus and Handbrake.

This American Life – If I were only allowed to listen to one podcast from now on, This American Life would most likely be my choice. It’s really hard to describe TAL – it’s everything from feature news-magazine style stories to personal stories to interviews to  found tape to anything else. Each episode has a theme, but the two to four stories featured could be anything. In fact, I’ll let the producers describe the show themselves.

This Week in Photography (TWiP) – A news and tips show about photography from industry professionals. Hosted by Scott Bourne, a wildlife photographer; Alex Lindsay, founder of the Pixel Corps, a sort of digital media guild. Regular contributors include photojournalist Steve Simo; Ron Brinkman, who helped build Apple’s Shake and Aperture; and Fred V. Johnson, who helped build Apple’s iPhoto and spent significant time in Adobe’s Professional Photography department.

This Week in Tech (TWiT) – The flagship podcast of Leo Laporte’s TWiT.tv podcast network, TWiT is basically a bunch of Tech industry celebs and journalists chatting about tech news. Regular contributors include John Dvorak, Patrick Norton, Tom Merrit, and Paul Thurott. Houston Chronicle tech columnist Dwight Silverman has been a guest a few times.

The Village Church Sermon Audio – as the name states, it’s the sermon audio from Matt Chandler’s church in Highland Village, Texas. Chandler is the both dynamic and knowledgeable, piercing and outspoken.

You Look Nice Today – This irreverent podcast, produced pretty irregularly by Merlin Mann, Scott Simpson and Adam Lisagor, has no format. It’s just three guys being stupid. But not three stupid guys being stupid. What’s great about this podcast is that is virtually unscripted and yet I rarely laugh so hard as when I’m listening. 

So that’s my list of podcast subscriptions. It’s almost always changing – I’m adding and removing podcasts on a weekly basis (for example,  the voice of the host from the Typical Mac User Podcast just rubbed me the wrong way. Sorry, Victor, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea to do an Apple-centric podcast if you can’t even pronounce the names of Apple’s products correctly.) So, now that you know the things that fill my ears throughout the week – find some good podcasts of your own!