Post by mdorman

It's tempting to say something like "I can't believe I haven't mentioned this before…", except the reason I haven't is so very obvious and dumb: I haven't mentioned this before because I've gone months or years at a time without posting. Time to rectify things.

There are five, maybe six, podcasts that I always listen to. That may sound like a lot—I guess it really is—but I listen to them all at double-speed.

The top two

I have two podcasts that immediately brighten my day when they drop. Sometimes I don't listen to them immediately just to savor the wait a bit.

A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs is my absolute favorite, and it is just what it says on the tin. The creator, Andrew Hickey, is very quick to point out that it is a history, not the history—he is creating his narrative about rock music, not anyone else's. It starts in the '30's, and the episode that just dropped was for Song 187, "Space Oddity" by David Bowie. At this pace, am I certain he's going to make it to 500? Nope! But I don't care. Music is the most important thing to me after my wife, my cats and my friends…and it's nipping at their heels. The opportunity to learn more, to be exposed to things I've never heard of, to learn of some of the completely bizarre connections connections that are out there about a subject I love so much…like what do Al Kooper and Barry White have in common? They both wrote songs for The Banana Splits. Yes, those Banana Splits. And those songs were sung by the same guy who sang "Zomby Woof" for Frank Zappa. And Richard Donner directed most of the first season of the show. Highly recommended. Join the Patreon to support it and get the bonus episodes; it's worth it.

You would have thought that Kill James Bond!, having achieved their objective at the end of the last Bond film, might have sunk into senescence or ended entirely. Instead they kept going, branching out into other series and generally taking the piss out of innumerable movies. Where the vibe in "500 Songs" is respectful, but keeping the receipts—there are trigger warnings up front, people are addressed as they have chosen to be addressed, and celebrities misdeeds are not glossed over—KJB is gleefully, in-your-face WOKE! No asshole will go unremarked on, or escape a good point-and-laugh, no sex-pest will go unmocked. But they also endeavor to meet movies where they are—I was shocked at how actually complementary their recent (paywalled, bonus) episode on Mannequin was, but will also do obscure French cinema from the 50's and 60's. It's one of the few podcasts where I will genuinely find myself laughing—often as they riff on a silly turn of phrase ("Sexual Renfield" most recently), sometimes as they fan-cast a film in the one-human-among-Muppets mold. Patreon recommended.

The others

Trashfuture is a moderately comic podcast about the state of the world. It shares one host with KJB which is how I became aware of it. I do laugh from time to time, but it rarely makes me happier. They also have a Patreon. Though at this point I worry that they're going to have to go all Sally Rooney.

Behind the Bastards is from Robert Evans, and is pretty much what it says on the tin, except you might be surprised at who some of the bastards are. They do an interesting mix of present-day and historical bastards—so, say, week before last was about the rise of rage-bait streamers, while a couple of weeks before that was about Heinrich Schliemann, the idiot amateur archaeologist who both found, and destroyed, Troy. They've done a fair number of Nazis and other stripes of war criminals. They do occasionally get in some good laughs, and I learn a lot, but there's definitely a whistling past the graveyard element to it.

Better Offline is the podcast of Ed Zitron, who is my favorite critic of the industry I left behind when I retired. It doesn't make me terribly happy, but somehow it's always fun when guys with British accents go off on profanity-laced rants.

Ones and Tooze is the only fully adult podcast I listen to; broadly economics-focused, but not dogmatic about it, and never boring.