Jim Sterling’s “Podquisition”, and the “Slightly Civil War” podcast.

Citations Needed is by far my favorite.

I have listened to every episode of Marc Maron’s WTF; I started listening to it in late 2009, and went back and listened to the ones from before I had started.

The other podcasts I listen to most regularly:

Stuff You Missed in History Class
This Day in History
The Writer’s Almanac
Savage Lovecast
Sawbones
Car Talk
Pop Culture Happy Hour
History Extra
Ask Me Another

On a long drive, I will listen to:
Outside Magazine Podcast
Revisionist History
Cabinet of Curiosities
Revisionist History

The Brülosophy Podcast is my new favorite.

I also listen to some (Apple-focused) tech podcasts like The Talk Show with John Gruber, the Accidental Tech Podcast and Core Intuition.

I used to listen to Ride the Lightning about Tesla news, but got too busy to keep up with it. Arming the Donkeys with my favorite economist, Dan Ariely, was my top podcast until it stopped being updated several years ago.

I used to listen to The Skeptics Guide to the Universe many years ago, but I didn’t have the time to fit it into my podcasting schedule.

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History
Making Sense with Sam Harris
Scott Sigler’s Audiobooks
The Drabblecast
Escape Pod

No. I’m not 100% sure what one is (not that I couldn’t ask), and I don’t know what it would take to hear one. Don’t care.

—Unrepentant Boomer

@Jeruba A podcast is essentially an online radio show. In fact, a couple of the ones I like are aired on the radio first before the podcast version is made available. You can download episodes and listen to them on your phone or computer.

—Obnoxious Millennial

I love millennials, sweetie. (May I call you sweetie?)

If it turns out that podcasts are the last independent medium, then I’m all for them, even if I don’t have any myself. Electronic samizdat?

However, they still depend on a platform controlled by profit-making enterprises, and therefore, shall we say, outside my trust limits. The plug could be pulled anytime, for any reason from politics to wildfires to global mischief. We may yet have to resurrect Gutenberg.

@Jeruba ”However, they still depend on a platform controlled by profit-making enterprises”

That is inaccurate. Podcasts are independently produced and published by their creators. The tech they use is free and open. You could listen to one on a Linux computer that you built from salvaged components powered by solar panels in the lobby of a non-profit that you walked to—if you wanted to be certain no dollars were spent.

Many podcasts do also publish them on commercial platforms (like iTunes) and that is a convenient and popular way to aggregate/organize/sync them, especially with your mobile devices, but it’s not a requirement.

Other than being an open standard, the best part is being able to listen to the content you want at a time and place that’s convenient for your lifestyle. That’s a major downside of relying on broadcast radio’s live transmissions.

@gorillapaws, inaccurate? Really? So you don’t have to have an internet connection to hear them? Then how do they get transmitted? How can something be online if it’s not coming by way of some ISP?

Also, you’re using devices that either plug in or have been charged on something that plugs in, right? That energy supplier too is a commercial vendor.

@Jeruba Good point. You’d have to walk to the public library of a municipality that runs its own internet.

My point is not that I decline to use anything that comes from a for-profit provider. My point is simply that if it comes from a for-profit provider, I don’t trust it to put anyone else’s interests ahead of its own (meaning its owners and shareholders).

Sorry, @Demosthenes, I didn’t mean to hijack your thread. (Exiting.)

@Jeruba “So you don’t have to have an internet connection to hear them? ”
If you’re opposed to internet connections, how did you type that message?

I didn’t say I was opposed to anything, @Caravanfan. I don’t know what I said that sounded like that. I said I don’t trust profit-making enterprises, and @gorillapaws seemed to say you could hear podcasts without them. I requested clarification. If I sounded sarcastic, I didn’t mean to.

I was sincerely asking how, since he said my notion was inaccurate (quote: “That is inaccurate.”). I’m really looking for an explanation, which is why I asked How can something be online if it’s not coming by way of some ISP? Anybody who knows more about this stuff than I do is welcome to answer.

@Jeruba If you have a computer you can hear podcasts. For example, here are the Hardcore History episodes that Dan has available for free. If you want to listen to the others (which I highly recommend), you have to pay for them, but you’re not paying a huge corporation, You are paying Dan and his family directly through paypal.

https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/

@Caravanfan, am I grossly misunderstanding something? My household has internet access through Comcast. It’s a service we pay for. Without it, we don’t have internet connectivity.

We were using computers at my house before the internet became available to us common folk. My husband bought his first TRS-80 in, I think, 1980. We did plenty of stuff on it and its successors (Kay-Pro, Toshiba, and others, even some little Sinclairs), but we couldn’t send anything from computer to computer over the wire until we had an internet service provider (ISP), which didn’t exist when the first home computers came out.

Back then we had dial-up. We paid for a special phone line. We had to put in a number or code or something and wait for a connection, which could take a while. We could have only a certain number of hours of access per month.

The ISP is a profit-making commercial enterprise. And its services could be withdrawn at any time by whatever forces cause businesses to stop operating.

Is this understanding different from yours?

It seems to me that, by analogy, you are talking about sending a package, and I am talking about UPS.

@Jeruba ”...if it comes from a for-profit provider, I don’t trust it to put anyone else’s interests ahead of its own…”

I think that’s a valid position and I agree with it. We all should be skeptical about the financial motives behind things and constantly ask ourselves: “who is paying for this, how are they getting the money to pay for it and why are they paying for it?”

That said, I’m still confused about your hangup? How is downloading a podcast any different from using Fluther? The ISP has no editorial control over the content or availability of the podcasts (other than to completely cut off your access to all sites). If you’re willing to participate on Fluther, what’s the hangup over checking out an independant podcast on a topic you’re into?

I’m not sure if this is based on a confusion about how podcasting works and is distributed that we could help clarify? or something else?

@Jeruba OK. Well through your comcast internet you can open up a browser, point to the website, and listen to podcasts. Or if you have a smart phone you can download them to a free app like Downcast, and listen to them then. No extra cost unless you want to donate to the podcaster (which I often do)

@Caravanfan, bringing it back to podcasts: apparently Dan is (or is analogous to) an independent journalist, which is where I came in with a rhetorical allusion to electronic samizdat. And I think that’s a great option to have.

All I’m saying otherwise, though, is that the access to such communications depends on a corporate entity, namely, whatever is providing the internet connection; and there’s no manual windup version of that. They control that, and the user (any user) doesn’t.

@gorillapaws, what hangup? Where? I simply do not get the apparent gap between what I’m saying and what you guys seem to think I’m saying.

Do you think that because I haven’t been listening to podcasts, I’m against them? That’s nutty. I haven’t been using roller skates, either, or eating anchovies, but I don’t oppose them. Is that the disconnect here? I am genuinely mystified.

@Jeruba You’re right, I don’t get it, I’m sorry. You have internet access through Comcast. I am assuming you pay for that. Therefore you can listen to podcasts for no extra charge. You choose not to, and that’s fine. What I’m not understanding is your point on the paying corporations thing. You’re already paying for that access, why not use it?

Podcasters are sometimes paid by their employer. For example, NPR podcasters get paid by NPR, and ESPN podcasters get paid by ESPN.

But many podcasters do it for free, relying on donations and sometimes advertisements to get them by. Some have paid products that you can buy like books. It’s like being a blogger or a youtuber.

There are literally podcasts on everything. For example I just randomly picked “knitting” and googled “knitting podcasts”. 15 came up.
https://blog.feedspot.com/knitting_podcasts/

@Jeruba I guess I’m confused by your earlier statement:

”However, they still depend on a platform controlled by profit-making enterprises, and therefore, shall we say, outside my trust limits.”

Maybe I’m not reading it how you intended? It sounds like you don’t trust podcasts in that statement, and I was trying to clarify how they work in case there was any confusion on your part (I suspected maybe you thought Apple controlled the content or something like that). Anyways, if you like listening to spoken-word content at a time/place that’s convenient to your life, I encourage you to check out a few and find some you’re interested in. I’ve learned a ton from them; they have certainly enriched my life.

People standing between you and the podcaster, any of them with the power to block access to the content:
– If you use a site like Soundcloud, it is that service that could decide to delete the podcasts.
– If you have your own website, your web-hoster could decide to terminate the podcaster.
– Even if the podcaster runs their own server, your ISP could decide to block access to the podcast.

The profit-making enterprises are outside my trust limits. The fact that podcasts are accessible only through them means that the podcasts aren’t truly independent existentially. I mean in terms of assurance of availability and continuity. They can’t be. This says nothing about their content, which may indeed be independent of influence. I have given no thought as to whether they are or not because I don’t listen to them.

I wonder if there’s been a confusion here of a neutral statement of demonstrable fact with an ideological position. ISPs are commercial entities. Is that false? I don’t subscribe to podcasts. That doesn’t mean I can’t or shouldn’t or anyone shouldn’t. I’m not against them in any conceivable way.

What if I said that unless you subscribe to hard-copy periodicals, you must be against magazines, whereas of course you could subscribe to them because we have a postal service?

I’m really bothered by the idea that I can’t communicate the difference and that a comment on the status of something (i.e., access being controlled by a for-profit organization) translates into opposition.

Is this a matter of pronoun reference? An unclear expression and a grammatical error are often found in tandem. If I made an ambiguous statement, I will have to go flagellate myself for shame.

@Jeruba It isn’t a pronoun reference, or an unclear expression or grammatical error. I think people are confused because all content, regardless of medium, is subject to similar potential blockages, and podcasts seem to be an odd choice to take such a principled stand.

Right. Fluther, for instance, is subject to potential blockages.

I did not take a stand about podcasts, pro or con.

I did not take a stand about podcasts, pro or con.

I did not take a stand about podcasts, pro or con.

@Jeruba what is confusing us is that you wrote this:
“However, they still depend on a platform controlled by profit-making enterprises, and therefore, shall we say, outside my trust limits.”

So you don’t want to depend on a platform controlled by profit-making enterprises, but you have Comcast internet, which is a profit making enterprise. Do you now understand our confusion?

@Jeruba However, [podcasts] still depend on a platform controlled by profit-making enterprises, and therefore, shall we say, outside my trust limits. The plug could be pulled anytime, for any reason from politics to wildfires to global mischief. We may yet have to resurrect Gutenberg.

So, do you mean that podcasts (unlike books) could theoretically be “disappeared” at any point in time? If your government or private service provider blocked internet access or even electricity? And that books (while they can also be banned) are more difficult to control?

People would have to go into your home to get and destroy your books.
Almost no one downloads the podcasts they listen to.

@Caravanfan,

Ah. Okay. You think that because I don’t trust it, I must not use it, or must disapprove of using it. Not so. And I didn’t say that.

Not doing something just because I don’t feel like it is a luxury that hadn’t occurred to me.

Depending on things I don’t trust is unavoidable. The government, for example. The medical industry.* The educational system. Big pharmaceuticals. Megacorporations.

I can’t get away from dependence on them unless I live off the grid. But that doesn’t mean I have to have blind faith in them. I’m cautious and skeptical about a lot of things. And I remember that they exist to serve somebody’s interests other than my own.

This doesn’t gain me much. Some people might be more comfortable just treating them like another religion. I’d still rather look them in the eye and know them for what they are (to the extent I can), even if I still have to say, okay, I have no choice but to put myself in your hands.

As for podcasts, I don’t care one way or the other. They mean nothing to me, pretty much like social media and downtown bars: they’re not part of my lifestyle. Not for any philosophical reason. I just have other interests.

—-
*This is not an indictment of individual medical practitioners such as yourself. But I no longer have a doctor. He closed his practice with the collapse of Verity. I was forced by circumstances (i.e., insurance) to visit a clinic where the medical professionals are angry, underrated employees who cannot practice medicine the way they were taught and instead have to process us through the quickest and cheapest solutions, where the greater part of every visit is devoted to going over for the hundredth time our lists of current prescriptions.

And Gutenberg’s press did not run on electricity.