Podcasts
My wife works about two miles from home and walks to and from most every day. On the trek she usually listens to her iPod Mini, but quickly has grown tired of the same ol' music selection. She'd ideally like to listen to KPBS, the public radio station serving San Diego, but our walkman gets pretty poor reception from KPBS, especially the closer we are to the oceanfront.
Fortunately this podcasting craze has really taken off, thanks in large part to Apple integrating podcasting directly in the latest version of iTunes. Previously you needed to download additional programs like iPodder or, if you were a geek like me, you needed to write a small script using wget.exe and schedule it to run once a night to download the latest and greatest podcasts.
I tend to stick only to radio station quality podcasts. I've not found any “independent“ podcasts yet that have piqued my interest. Let's face it: being on air and being entertaining and interesting is not a trivial job.
Unfortunately only a handful of public radio programs are podcasted, most usually the local ones. I've found, though, that bumming around various public radio websites you can amass a nice collection of non-local news programs on podcasts. Here are a few that my wife and I subscribe to:
- KPBS Podcasts - there are currently just three shows, two of them local. The non-local one is A Way With Words, which is an entertaining examination of the English language. These Days is usually pretty good, but typically is focused on events, people, etc. happening in San Diego.
- KQED Podcasts - there's only two podcasts here, KQED Forum and KQED Perspectives. I've listened to a Perspectives piece that was talking with Nobel Prize Laureates in the San Francisco area, pretty interesting, looking forward to more good stuff.
- In Our Time - I've yet to have a chance to listen to this BBC Radio programme (look, English spelling!), but it sounds very interesting: “The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life.“
- The Dave Ramsey Show - my financial talk show of choice. Only one hour is podcasted and the commercials are left in, but that's why there's the fast forward button, I guess. I wish my other favorite talk show host - Dr. Lauara - would podcast, but she's too busy selling access to her program over the Internet through her StreamLink program.
What I'm really hoping for is to find a podcast for This American Life. That show rocks. I know you can buy episodes from Audible.com, but I'd like to be able to just subscribe to a podcast.