Yeah, I can't imagine using podcasts for "learning something". They're great for casual stuff, kinda like watching Cosmos. Nobody expects to have PhD-level (or even BS-level) knowledge after watching that. Perfect for when you're stuck in the car or plane.

Music bumpers are generally pretty terrible in podcasts because I'm always listening at 2x speed. I'm generally opposed to podcasts that are just some dude talking to himself (Revolutions is one exception to that, the guy is hyperelite).

Podcasts are somewhere in the region between pure entertainment and also gaining new views/opinions/perspectives. They aren't useless as far as expanding your knowledge. But you certainly aren't going to learn any hard skills or anything you could use in a career setting or whatever. It all kind of depends on what you define "learning something" as.

Radiolab actually has some of the worst production values IMO. They have too many sound effects, mostly of no actual value, and while Krulwich has a great radio voice, the other people on there have that terrible habit of dropping consonants and whispering a lot and generally just not ****ing enunciating their words, which makes the show basically unlistenable. Then try speeding it up to 2x and you can't make out anything.

I dunno. I binge listened to Serial season 1 with my gf on a long car trip and ultimately it was like "well, I guess that's interesting, but he still probably did it" and got home and read The Intercept's interview with Jay and then it's like "oh yeah, he totally did it". So I guess I now know more about the details of a weird Baltimore murder case, but the utility of that knowledge is pretty questionable.

Dan Carlin does a fantastic job mixing entertainment and education. His WW 1 is superb.

Biggest problem with podcasting is that too many of hem just meander on or take too long to get to the point. It's a genre badly in need of copy editing.

What are good podcasts as far as political ones go?

My political/history podcasts right now:

- Hardcore History (Can not recommend these enough, especially the WW1 and Mongol Shows)
- Common Sense with Dan Carlin (same guy as HH, just more modern events/politics)
- Revolutions (again, amazing set of podcasts... especially the french revolution)
- History of Rome (same guy as Revolutions, but I didn't finish this one after the death of caesar)
- 10 american presidents

Need some new ones though, would like some recs and I'll be living in butt**** louisiana for 6 weeks. I'll have some spare time.

You're complaining about Radiolab for all the reasons that make it unique and loved. I think you just don't get the show.

Man I dunno, color me skeptical. This is how they select their points of comparison:

I'm not going to dig into that literature but I would want some pretty ironclad methodology demonstrating that paragraph 2 there is really true. Because on the face of it, heavy spending on lottery tickets and bankruptcy due to overspending on big-ticket items are both just indicators of poor financial management within that cohort. Furthermore, that's a much more plausible explanation to me than supposing that some guy three houses down who you don't even know influences your buying decisions to a significant degree.

A 2.4% increase per $1,000 lottery prize sounds impressive, but since absolute risk of bankruptcy is presumably low, 2.4% probably represents a very small effect in absolute terms. There are definitely suburbs where some regions within a 200 house area are rich and some poor, in fact I live in such a suburb.

Harry Shearer's Le Show is a weekly current affairs effort that's better than the name suggests. Less focused on the big issues than on interesting (genuinely interesting for the most part, rather than Lenoesque small-town headlines) events you wouldn't hear on CNN. Skews pretty liberal so maybe not your cup of tea. Has a lot of setpiece jokes where the fact that they're always the same is part of the charm.

tbh i'm digging the history stuff right now more than anything.

I really like Mike Duncan too. You might try 12 Byzantine Emperors and Philosophize This! They are a step below your list but not bad.

iTunes for desktop really is awful. Not McAfee bad, but bad.

The Energy Gang by greentech media is a decent podcast if you are into all that stuff about the sea rising and we're all going to die. Talks about new technology and gov't policy relating to it. Good podcast for energy policy in general.

Clearly I wasn't referring to just Serial. I was talking about podcasts in general, and some are clearly much more useful than others.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of podcasts I listen to, in no particular order

Hardcore History - Dan Carlin
Common Sense - Dan Carlin
This American Life
Radiolab
Serial
Backstory
Freakonomics
Planet Money
The Memory Palace
99% Invisible
Criminal
Revolutions
Reply All
Surprisingly Awesome
Theory of Everything
TED Radio Hour


And a whole bunch of random sports **** and various other podcasts on an occasional basis

Do you spend a lot of time in your car?

I have random 2 or 3-hour chunks at work where I'm doing data analysis stuff that can be tedious

people love listening to millennials gasp for air and whisper? well I'll be dipped in **** and rolled in bread crumbs. I mean, if that's what they like, it seems that they could let someone who can actually speak in an intelligible manner handle the content they have.

Nobody is forcing you to listen dude

I don't have any problem with it

Just watched (T)error on Independent Lens. Absolutely fascinating. The whole thing is an absurd, hilarious farce. Except that it's, you know, real.



http://terrordocumentary.org/

The McElroy brothers do a whole bunch of comedy podcasts, mostly aimed at a nerdy audience. You guys might like them.

http://mcelroyshows.com/

I absolutely cannot stand all the gimmicky patter and sound editing they do on Radiolab. The topics are usually interesting, but the sound effects make it unlistenable for me.

If you're listening to podcasts at double speed you're obviously only interested in the dry facts and not the entire production as a cohesive work. Radiolab is not for you.

that's cool, glad you like it. Honestly, I was really interested in the content, just couldn't put up with the audio. I think you may have missed the point of my post, I find it hard to believe that the things I don't like are the actual things other people enjoy about the show. I can believe large numbers of people aren't bothered by them, that's not surprising.