I have to say that the whole "podcasting thing" is something that I quite enjoy. I've done radio--for years in high school, and occasionally still--and while I worked with a loosey-goosey community/public access station, it's something that had been a big part of me. It's weird working in the yarn store, people I've never met recognize my voice from time to time, and I'm not used to that at all. And so at the very beginning, when I heard about podcasting, I thought, "yeah, I'll take a pass. I mean, It's a cool new technology, but sorting out the copyright rules independently for music, and then you have to edit, and gah--" so I'd never really thought about doing one myself.
But I think part of my problem is that with one brief exception, I've always done live radio, the thought of having to do serious audio editing kinda freaks me out. And I think there lies part of the problem. While the notion of podcasting sounds pretty cool, I've for too long thought about it too much like radio and not enough of it in it's own regard. Thinking of podcasts as something more than just radio shows on the Internet, or as something that has the possibility of being more than just the Internet, is something that has been pretty helpful to me.
Part of the TealArt redesign effort, which I suspect I'll be writing more about in the coming days/weeks, is to support a possible podcast that I've been thinking about doing for a while now. It's still a ways off, but it's something that I'd like to think about. But this is a post about podcasts I listen to, or at least it was supposed to be.
The thing is, I have a really big problem listening to podcasts when I'm doing something that involves text, and really I've pretty much always been this way. I listen to music constantly, but if I'm trying to read something more than a few sentences or write a like amount, and there's television or radio or some-such, and I pretty much can't do it.
Which means I listen to podcasts when I'm driving, and that's about it. It also means that I want to listen to a lot of podcasts than I actually do. A little secret: I've not synched my ipod since the end of august. And I've been listening to a bunch of them, and I'm still not out. I'll sync up again this week, because I have a road trip at the end of the week.
So here's the podcasts that come up near the top of my queue with a lot of frequency.
2. Cast-On Podcast for Knitters - Brenda does an amazing podcast, frankly radio quality and then some, and while it tends to get metaphysical a tad more than I would under similar circumstances, it works great, and it's a lot of fun. 3. Cory Doctorow's Craphound podcast - I think if I did a podcast, it'd be a lot like Cory's, with a little bit of the Boing Boing Boing Podcast thrown in for good measure. Anyway, I like how the podcast is basically Cory and a microphone and various recorded things he's done. Stories he's working on, panels and lectures that he's given, books and papers that he finds interesting, and so forth. Great stuff. 4. Jared Axelrod's "The Voice of Free Planet X" This is an ironic one, that I absolutely love to death, and I can't explain it. I don't really enjoy short short fiction, and yet the fiction on VFPX is great. I'm not big into alt/indi music, but somehow the music is amazing. And while I really like Jared's commentaries and updates, we're definitely very different kinds of geeks. And yet, it works out in this amazing sort of way, and I think you should all go subscribe. 5. Prometheus Radio Theatre - Great radio drama science fiction stuff. I'm a big fan. Actually Scott of PRT reads this blog, --waves-- I think I'm basically caught up as far as the ones I have on my ipod at the moment, but I know there are more waiting for me. 6. Escape Pod I think it's really cool that a podcast that's only a bit more than two years old has one of the highest distributions of science fiction magazines. Period. Again, I'm not a huge short fiction fan, but I like hearing stories read to me way more than I seem to like reading them myself. 7. I should be Writing I really like Mur's work and ISBW is good stuff. While I think it's clearly possible to OD on writerly advice, and even though I'm young, and even though I'm really not that accomplished between the writing list and my own travels, I'm not feeling like I've missed a lot of the things Mur talks about, it's good to hear it from time to time. 8. Lime and Violet Yep. Great stuff. Not to be missed. Again an ironic one because I'm not much of a sock knitter, and don't really buy yarn recreationally, but they're fun. 9. TWiT podcasts - Not going to lie, I like the TWiT stuff, many of it anyway. I think the roundtable format is pretty cool for podcasts and it lets me connect to a geek element that I frankly have a hard time reading in text. And they sound good and they're interesting.
There are others, of course, but I think that should be enough for now.
Onward and Upward!