Podcast Recommendations

The following is my list of podcast subscriptions. I hardly watch television, newspaper, or radio any more, but consider myself well-informed and entertained. That I am able to connect to all this stuff is one of the marvels of the Internet Age. Ideally, someday one could get this material without all the mechanical steps involved in podcast downloads. Sort of satellite radio meets Tivo meets brain implants.

The lists is in order of most to least favorite.

Luther Seminary Daily Chapel

http://www.luthersem.edu/rss/chapelsermons.xml
This is the most spiritually edifying audio experience I have. It features a daily 15 minute sermon the the students, staff, and esteemed visitors to the chapel at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. If you've ever dissed or wondered about Christianity, your experience is not complete, your critique is not honestly completed until you have understood exactly what is meant by a Theology of the Cross as exemplified by most of these sermons.
Two problems however:

• They stopped producing for the summer.
• Sometimes the MP3 of the sermons are preceded by ten minutes of badly-recorded organ music or coughing echoing across a large sanctuary.

Mark Kermode's Film Reviews

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/fivelive/markkermodesfilmreviews/rss.xml
An opinionated Brit dissing movies he doesn't like. I agree with his value system and taste in film.

Prairie Home Companion

http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/podcasts/xml/prairie_home_companion/news_from_lake_wobegon.xml
This guy sounds just like my Dad and reminds me of what his childhood must have been like. This podcast is the portion of the show which is "The News from Lake Woebegone", which is the funny monologue by Garrison Keillor. None of that country music from Wyoming.

Fresh Air

http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=13
This is the most informative in-depth news show. Talking a lot about Iraq lately.

Left, Right and Center

http://media.kcrw.com/podcast/show/lr
A very incisive discussion of politics "without the screaming talking heads of so much political discourse these days." You get to hear differing views from ideologues across the political spectrum, to see how they think.

Martini Shots

http://media.kcrw.com/podcast/show/ma
This is a fairly cool audio diary of a writer in TV show business. I think he used to be a writer on Cheers and now talks about the process of pitching new shows to the industry.

Linux Questions

http://radio.linuxquestions.org/syndicate/lqpodcast.php
Jeremy's gentle voice tells you about the current state of the linux industry. Even though he seems to be reading business headlines, you end up getting a lot of technical info by the time the show is done.

Astronomy Cast

http://feeds.feedburner.com/astronomycast
Informative dialogue about astronomy. Not just a reading off of headlines but an attempt to explain how they know what they know. Okay, and yes, we love the sound of Dr. Pamela Gay's voice.

Cult Movies Podcast

http://cultmovies.libsyn.com/rss
Two to four nerds talking about all the terrible movies playing now and reminiscing about all the great ones from just before you were born.

Living Water Christian Church

http://feeds.feedburner.com/LWCC_Podcast
The only other sermon podcast I'm listening to. Usually edifying except that this month she's talking a bit too much about her denomination.

Weekend America

http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510099
An often fun but very long (2 h IIRC) news show. I guess it's meant to be listened to while packing for a trip to the beach on a Saturday morning, then you turn it off. I often have to.

Dave's Lounge

http://www.daveslounge.com/rss
Cool downtempo music. The gent talks a bit too much about himself.

Tech Nation with Moira Gunn

http://www.itconversations.com/rss/recentWithEnclosures.php
Sometimes fun and informative interviews with folks of science. A recent one interviewed an expert on North Korea's nuclear program, but was entirely about his experience on The Daily Show. All of the ads for GoDaddy.com on ITC podcasts are quite annoying. Thanks for sponsoring, guys, but could we be less annoying with it?

This American Life

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Podcast.aspx
I have doubts that this link still works. Cool show. Some stories are boring, some are creepy enough to make me hit "next" on the ipod altogether. Some make me LOL and capture my imagination for weeks.

Boingboingboing

http://odeo.com/channel/126064/rss
A podcast by the editors of boingboing.net. Discussion of cool things in popular culture plus analysis of news from the realm of electronic privacy and copyright. Sometimes they're a little too New Agey. They diss Christianity from an atheist materialistic perspective and then confess a belief in unicorns.

Bill Moyers

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/podcast.xml
I just stopped this one. Yes, Bill Moyers hates the religious right, and any person who cares about the faith revealed in the bible ought to be on guard against it. But Bill's response in the three or four episodes I listened to was to interview agnostics who were dissing all of biblical Christianity. That's my take on Bill's podcast.

Truth Dig

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TruthdigPodcast
Just started this one. Heard a grand epic poem by Gore Vidal on the empire.

Just Vocabulary

http://feeds.feedburner.com/JustVocabulary
It's just vocabulary