Am through with the teams, and currently attacking the rivals.

Kithan, I didn't say yesterday, but it's nice to have you in here.

mmmm... bacon. There can never be enough bacon. :)

Oooo podcasts! I started listening to them at work to keep my brain engaged while doing truly tedious and mind-numbing things. I've found some good ones, too!

I've basically got three categories of podcasts that I listen to - the first one is fiction.

- Welcome to Nightvale is charming and weird (ok, maybe mostly weird) slice-of-life from a small town which doesn't exist.
- The Strange Horizons Podcast features really strong speculative fiction stories and is put out frequently
- EscapePod is another way to get my fix of short and weird fiction through my ears

The second category is factual stuff. I like learning! Learning is neat.

- Stuff You Should Know tackles something new each week, from dark money to freak shows to jackhammers. Each show is a little less than an hour, and they go fairly in depth in history and technical details if they can. The hosts are personable and don't meander too much, and I've learned a lot about a rather bizarre and eclectic collection of things. My trivia game has gotten stronger after listening to this one.
- Stuff You Missed in History Class is from the same network of podcasts as Stuff You Should Know, but more directly focused on history, and each show is usually a little shorter. The hosts are good, the stuff is often tragic (mining disasters! floods! riots!) but there's a lot of light stuff in there too - the history of crayola crayons and Denmark's early royalty were both really charming and surprisingly interesting recent episodes.

The third (and largest) category is what I think of as Real True Stories Yo. When I started listening to podcasts, I kind of shied away from fiction - I wasn't writing as much, and I was actually worried about listening to fiction and getting all sad at the brilliant stories I would never be able to blah blah blah (I got over it). So I began listening to true stories instead, figuring I could at least learn a little about storytelling, while avoiding making myself into a mope monster. I got into Serial this way (hey neat!) and found that I actually really love this kind of thing. Learning about people is great. So! Here we go.

- Strangers is my absolute favorite of this category. Strangers is based on the idea of Radical Empathy. We are a community of strangers, and learning each other's stories brings us together and makes the world a better place. The host, Lea Thau, doesn't keep herself out of the stories she brings to us, and it's wonderful having her perspective on these things. There was recently a four part series on a woman who decided to donate a kidney to a stranger - and the last episode tackled the reactions to this, and how some people really felt threatened by the concept itself and made some nasty comments about the donor. Fabulous stuff. Can't recommend highly enough.
- Radiolab is eclectic and human and makes me happy. They're sort of an intersection between exploring a broad topic and getting down into people stories - they've looked into k-pop and paparazzi, college debate, what 'normal' is... all kinds of things. And each of these stories is really fascinating, moving, and personal the way the Radiolab team tells it. Good stuff.
- The Moth. The Moth puts on storytelling shows all over, and the podcast is taken from the live stage shows where people get up and tell true stories to an audience. Really good stuff here, too, and the stories are bitesized.
- The Memory Palace is a weird blend of fiction, fact, and real true stories yo. Each episode is a short and personal story from someone in history, as told by the narrator of the series Nate DiMeo. There's research involved, but the stories themselves are a tiny bit more like historical fiction. They're good and interesting, but hard to classify.

And that's what I got! Hope there's something there you like!

You're welcome! I, uh, didn't realize what a monster comment that was until after I posted it. Whoops!

Another note - Nightvale is a fairly cohesive story told in parts, and should be listened to in order. Starting at the beginning is recommended. :)

Ha! I honestly thought mine wouldn't either, but there is an IMPRESSIVE backlog of both of the "stuff" podcasts - they've changed hosts, been going for years and years, and their list goes on and on. With those I honestly think it's better to just pick a topic they cover that sounds vaguely interesting to you, and start from that point.

Oh hooray! I hope you like Strange Horizons. It's all short fiction, read by a really good narrator (confession: I may be biased. Anaea Lay, who does the fiction podcast, is a close friend of mine. I'm going to be seeing her in Seattle next week, actually!). The fiction is always high quality - you can read each story online if you'd rather (Strange Horizons is a GREAT source for free weird fiction and poetry) but I like hearing these things, too. :)

Heh! Yeah, I got that too when I went on my podcast spree. :)

There's only one episode of Alice Isn't Dead out so far, and I'm.... I dunno. Not sure about it yet. It sure does feel a lot like Night Vale (but maybe a tad bit darker). Worth checking out, for sure, but I wasn't quite up to recommending something barely started. It feels like recommending a book series which could end up being eight or nine books and isn't written yet based on a prologue. Heh.

I listened to nearly fifty episodes of a post-apocalyptic zombie podcast called We're Alive and eventually gave up on it (mostly because I was tired of listening to stupid people do stupid things. I can handle a little of that, but not over and over and over again. If that's all a character has, then I'm bored with them. I like competence). What I'm sayin' is, despite what it looks like, I'm picky. ;)

Hey, since Gary's not here, we should say nice things about him behind his back. :)

Ah, that's why it's behind his back. Diabolical niceness. :)

Hey, everyone. Sorry about missing the deadline. I have some health complications that got me distracted. And then, on top of that, my kid also got an ear infection and bronchitis (because of course he did because Murphy's Law, right?) I was actually at the clinic last night and texted ellison to ask if newbies or rivals are able to use a 'bye', and Ellison was like '.... er.... sorry, that was yesterday!' So, you know, that's disappointing because I really liked having something special to look forward to! But thank you for letting me play while I did and maybe I can keep talking to you all sometimes because it's nice having the opportunity to meet new people and get to know you all better!

It would be nice to keep coming around. I really liked having something to look forward to, so I'm sorry I missed the deadline too. Getting rest, for me, isn't really a choice, so much as almost the only thing I'm capable of! Ha... I thought that with all the laying down I've been having to do that maybe I'd have plenty of time to write but it was the perfect storm of bad brain power forgetting what day it was (showed up at the doctor a week early! XD Oops?) and sick kids and being dead to the world in bed. I guess that's life sometimes. I'll have to try to figure out where the topics are and see if I can write anything for a home game or whatever. (Still trying to learn the ropes! x...x)

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FOR KITHAN & all meat lovers everywhereeeeeeeeee
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http://www.bacon.rocks/bacon1.jpg
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Edited at 2016-03-19 06:32 pm (UTC)

Second Radiolab! If you've never heard it before, start with Colors - it's a great way to see how they use sound to show the most amazing things.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/

I love Reply All, too - they talk about stuff on the internet, but also about the larger social ramifications of stuff on the internet. Taking Power is a good episode to start with:

https://gimletmedia.com/episode/37-taking-power/

Good Job Brain is a fun quiz and trivia podcast, with a lot of talking enthusiastically about facts. They're just so nice! A recent episode:

http://www.goodjobbrain.com/blog/2016/2/14/174-whoops.html


If you want serious bizness trivia, Podquiz is about 13-17 minutes per episode and it's a motherfucking hard quiz, but the right mix - like there will be a category where you get every one and another category where you're like "is that even a thing?"

http://podquiz.com/

And this is my favorite-est episode of a podcast ever. I don't even like this podcast as a series. The sound is often not well-recorded. The stories are just weird. But this episode...well, you have to stick with it through the first 5-6 minutes or so, but it is mind-blowing, and one of the strangest and most compelling stories I've ever heard, ever. To tell you anything about it would be to spoil it, and don't even read the brief intro on the site. Just listen, when you're in the car or somewhere you can give it your full attention.

http://loveandradio.org/2013/02/jack-and-ellen/




Edited at 2016-03-19 09:50 pm (UTC)