On Sex – My favorite podcast by a mile these days is Dan Savage’s Savage Lovecast (iTunes link). It is joyfully vulgar, funny, honest, sometimes heart-breaking and generally eye-opening. It answers questions I’d never even thought to ask and routinely makes me laugh out loud on my way to work. Of course it also reminds me of all the fun I’m missing out on right now, what with my relatively ascetic lifestyle [ascetic means "not getting any"].
On Skepticism – There seem to be a lot of skeptically themed podcasts around these days, but my favourite is still Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe (iTunes link), for its humourous and mostly geeky banter, and for great mix of personalities headed up by Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society. A great complement to SGU is Skeptoid (iTunes link) a tightly focused show with each short episode devoted to a straight talking dissection of a pseudoscience or other supernatural phenomena. Listening to both of these podcasts is probably more than enough to shock you on a regular basis at the amount of bullshit even intelligent people will tend to swallow.
On [American] Life – Although it’s still more a radio show than a podcast, This American Life (iTunes link) continues to be my favourite source of stories. About people, place, politics, anything. It’s the sort of show that makes neo-conservatives puke, and so it should, being a celebration of everything that makes us human.
On History – Ok, in truth this is about the only historical podcast I listen to, but if you remember that senile old movie star who used to be president, I recommend listening to his speech at the Berlin Wall via Great Speeches in History (iTunes link). Everyone thought Reagan was an idiot didn’t they? Compare his speech with anything delivered by GWB and suddenly he seems like Abraham Lincoln. (only updated every month or so)
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I’m currently interested in finding some new podcasts to listen to, so if anyone has any suggestions please leave them in the comments. As long as they are not religious, because I’ve sampled a few of these and found them exactly as boring and pointless as attending church. Atheist offerings can be a little boring too, as they tend to comprise people feeling pressed to explain for the ten millionth time that yes, atheists have morals too, and yes they are openly discriminated against like no other minority.
I must admit I have pondered the idea of having a podcast, but have yet to come up with a suitable theme or source of material for it. A panel/discussion type of thing would probably be fun, but so easy to stuff up and requiring of so much organization that it will probably never happen. Also, 90% of podcasts aren’t really worth the time it takes to listen to them. Just as it’s probably better that every person doesn’t get to go on the radio and say what they think, it’s probably best that most people not bother producing podcasts (a nightmare scenario many evangelists seemed to think was the medium’s future). You can skim a blog entry in seconds, but you can’t skim 5 minutes of someone breathing into a mic going ummm and complaining about the media.