I do some think like 1.1 or 1.2, 2x is too fast for me

I went an embarrassingly long time before discovering that 1.5x is optimal.

I use overcast, which is best app in my opinion. It offers 3x! It is very hard to understand.

I forgot about Ear Hustle, a podcast from within the walls of San Quentin. Great if you have any interest in wondering what things are like on the inside. I work in prisons quite a bit so this one might just be if interest to me.

Axe Files is one of the most hit or miss podcasts out there, when it's good it's really good but man he gets a lot of guests I just can't possibly give a **** about, and given the number of podcasts I subscribe to I can't possibly listen to all of them, probably 80% of these get deleted.

The Ronan Farrow episode was really good, though. Farrow is amazing in a lot of ways but he said a few things here that really remind you that he's only 30 and still a kid in some ways. Great listen.


Rationally Speaking - wide range of guests, but most are worth a listen. very rarely regret spending time on an episode.

The Observatory - very design-nerdy (if you're hardcore into 99pi this is like level-2 stuff) plus a wild mix of pop culture topics sprinkled in. Audio production values could use a boost IMO

The Allusionist - ins and outs of the english language.

I use overcast as well, it's the best app I've tried so far on iOS, though it's not perfect. I love the fact that it will remember speed settings on a per-subscription basis.

Sam Harris does have some interesting episodes when he's not wading into thinly-veiled racism, and yes, the fact that he has no ads is amazingly refreshing, but I stopped listening because he spends way too much time on dumb navel-gazing nitpick tangents and he records his podcast in like 9 billion kbps, his file sizes are absolutely absurdly huge.

it depends. If you're listening to some piker who talks to people on the phone, even 1.5 can be hard to understand. If you have some old-school broadcaster who knows how to enunciate, 2x or more can be comprehensible (it gets easier with practice).

There are some podcasts that use a lot of dumb fluffy sound effects, they can be brutally ear-shattering at 2x. Radiolab is a prime offender here (plus most of the hosts have that annoying affectation where they kinda trail off into a whisper at the end of their words, which is utterly incomprehensible at speed).

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has a podcast that's a good listen if you want to hear interesting science news.

http://www.sciencemag.org/podcasts


And of course Grand Sumo Breakdown is essential listening for all the latest sumo news.

https://player.fm/series/grand-sumo-breakdown

A couple favorites:

ReplyAll. Deep dives into all sorts of weird goings on throughout the internet, like a guy whose blog post got picked up as one of the click-baity links at the bottom of articles, a recurring segment where they explain indecipherable internet jokes, and an amazing mini-series where they tracked down and sort of befriended a tech support scammer.

99% Invisible. A podcast about design, which is a broad enough topic that you're bound to find an episode you are fascinated by, whether its moving a lighthouse, the historic ambitions of airships in Africa, or Henry Ford's failed attempt to build a utopian village in the Amazon.

Uncivil. Two guys who are trying way too hard to sound cool nevertheless manage to tell some interesting stories about the Civil War, like the guy who got so good at counterfeiting Confederate money he almost single-handedly killed their currency, or the women and trans men fighting as soldiers for the Union.

Thanks for the weeds and citations needed recommendations. Listened to the populism episode of citations today and it was awesome.

If you like Ken Jennings, his Omnibus podcast is pretty decent, it's basically just him and whatshisname yammering about stuff, each episode in theory has a topic but they only talk about the topic about 5% of each episode, the rest of the time is a bunch of tangents that are all over the place.

the gimmick (they're cataloging obscure knowledge in case human civilization fails) is annoying but if you just skip the first two minutes it's fine.

I had recently told my kids about the tylenol murders, and a week later they had an episode about it.

Speaking of tylenol murders, ice cream is the only packaged food I can think of that doesn't have some sort of safety seal, what's the deal with that? The plus side is that you can peek and see the ratio of flavors in the neapolitan carton

In Canada ice cream always has a plastic safety seal.

Presumably the product is going to be kept frozen so there isn't much risk of it spoiling after exposure to air. My local brand of ice cream does have the seal.

wat

I tried a couple new podcasts today based on the recs in this thread and the other one.

All The President's Lawyers with Popehat: Thought this was boring but maybe I just got a bad episode (the most recent one), it was like mythbusters for boring legal things like "is Paul Manafort really going to be sentenced to 305 years?" (probably not) and "what makes speech defamatory?" I'll try another one because a 30 minute podcast is much more listenable than an hour long one, but watch out buddy, that's strike one.

Current Affairs: Liked this one a lot. The people are smart and it seems to have a goofy whimsical structure that actually winds up generating some interesting discussions (i.e. "lefty Shark Tank", in which someone proposes a half-serious half-joking leftist idea and tries to get the "sharks" on board with it, developed into a conversation about "do we trust the government to do good things?"). Subscribed!

(hearing CA had a podcast made me think "didn't I already listen to that?" but I figured out I was thinking of "The Dig", Jacobin's painfully boring podcast)

You people are sleeping on Jocko Podcast.

Non-politics, but Shutdown Fullcast is a great college football podcast.

Continuing with "goofyballer's reviews of new podcasts he tried from the thread":

Current Affairs - I already reviewed this but still had 15 minutes left in the episode this morning, and they ended with a hilarious voicemail from Nathan J. Robinson's mom explaining the origins of his kind-of-but-not-quite British accent. 5 stars would listen again, might even subscribe to the magazine.

Opening Arguments - really liked this, thanks simplicitus! This week had a super interesting review of 3 recent SCOTUS cases centered on voting rights and wove a thread through all of them explaining how the conservative majority bent their logic to basically do whatever the **** they wanted, in a simple enough way for a dumb non-lawyer like me to understand, and in an entertaining enough way to keep my attention (as opposed to All The President's Lawyers, which seemed similar in nature but was much more dry). I'm hooked.

Ezra Klein show - pretty interesting but a little slower, probably need to be more contemplative to listen to this. Would listen again but it's not jumping to the top of my queue when a new episode comes out unless the guest sounds exciting.

Another vote of confidence for opening arguments and radiolab's more perfect. If you're interested at all in the supreme Court you'll like them.

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I find a lot of the mainstream liberalish podcasts I used to listen to - anything Pod Save related, NPR politics, the Slate one - absolutely insufferable at this point, although I do still listen to the 538 podcast.

It's been mentioned several times but Citations Needed is essential listening for anyone. Chapo is essential listening to me but is definitely an acquired taste

leftist stuff I haven't seen mentioned

Katie Halper show - she's cool imo, show is mostly interview based, serious but not dull, she interviewed AOC about a month ago which is a good place to start

Intercepted - Scahill's podcast for the Intercept (duh), covers a lot of under-reported stories, mixes in satirical bits and musical performances which are a bit hit and miss tbh, but overall it's good

Agitpod - infrequent but good, British politics, from two pretty well known Corbynites, they've had some solid guests too like Armando Ianucci and Stewart Lee.

Mic Dicta - just started listening to this, a bunch of lefty lawyers discussing legal cases which are in the news, enjoying it so far

Almost exact same; 538 the only centerish one I find worth listening to now.

Hahaha, haven't listened to latest episode yet. Subscribe to the magazine! There's a short amusement piece that reads like it's by Robinson (I read it in his voice, though the author is unattributed) in a recent issue that had me literally crying with laughter. You'd be able to read it in the free digital back catalog.

If anyone wants a physical subscription to the magazine (it's a great looking magazine) and money is an issue I have a couple to give due to Patreon support.

I wouldn't call 538 "centerish" as much as "detached". They just seem to stick to the numbers, there's really no slant since they're not doing punditry.

Pod save america is probably the absolute worst IMO, favreau and pfiffer have street cred because of their experience but that experience doesn't translate at all into doing any sort of analysis. It's like thinking some dude who did accounting at Ferrari will be able to diagnose your engine problem.

No trying to sound snide at all with this question, but what kind of analysis do you think they should be doing?

PSA is like MSNBC but with swear words. The first 30 minutes of the show is little more than an entertaining rehash of the weeks news. Their interviews are pretty good though.