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Ask HN: Recommend me a Podcast

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Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a Podcast

#72
post #10

WNYC's Radiolab: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/ Absolutely brilliant in every way. Has the highest production quality of any podcast I've ever listened to. Please give it a listen as soon as you can.

Radiolab is great. However, it presents topics much in the same way that I imagine people who visit this site do- they love to explore interesting surface-level explanations of everything from the multiverse to the nature of consciousness. Don't get me wrong: Radiolab is very good at this, and since it's in audio form, it's the perfect way to learn while commuting, for example. I'm just saying that I have already learned a lot of the stuff they explore on the show, and I suspect a lot of hackers will have, too.

I also find their presenting style annoying sometimes, as they cut in and out of the subject talking and the hosts telling the story, and occasionally the hosts' banter seems forced for interest.

On the whole though, highly recommended!

Edit: It's worth confirming the high quality. I listen on 2x speed and it is almost 100% natural to listen to. Amazing.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a Podcast

#73

TechZing gets my vote. http://techzinglive.com/ It's broadly about issues relating to tech startups but meanders quite a bit. The hosts are characters and it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Hey, this is Jason from TechZing. Thanks so much for the mention! I never really thought of myself as a character, but you're probably right. ;)

By the way, for anyone interested in checking out the TechZing podcast, we not only discuss tech, startups and other HN-like topics, we'll even on occasion take a risk and venture into the unknown. For example, we recently interviewed a historian of UFOs and the national security state which, to our surprise, turned out to be one of our most popular shows of all time.

This week we're interviewing David Fogel, who evolved a world-class checkers playing algorithm named Blondie24, and I anticipate that to be an especially interesting show.

Anyway, you should listen to us here: http://techzinglive.com because if you like HN then you'll probably like our show.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a Podcast

#75
Lots of very good stuff mentioned by others already so I'll just mention others:

Astronomy Cast: http://www.astronomycast.com/ I saw someone else mention it, but it needs a second vote. I love the "not just what we know, but how we know what we know" format.

All in the Mind: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/default.htm

For amusement, The Bugle. John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman BSing for a bit is fun.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a Podcast

#76
post #22
post #9

The History of Rome Podcast: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-history-of-rome/id261... I've listened to all 112 episodes so far (and still quite a bit to go) - once this finishes I'll probably go back and listen to the "12 Byzantine Rules" again - which is also very good. Although not purely a podcast, I can also strongly recommend the BBC Radio 4 series "In Our Time" - which is available as a podcast: http://w…

The History of Rome looks good. Here's the link for their home page, for those of us who don't use itunes: http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/

I was going to write a perl script to download all these but after I discovered that the naming scheme wasn't consistent throughout every file, I gave up and installed iTunes to download everything. I then promptly removed all hundreds of megabytes of it. An advantage is the naming scheme is pretty good; nothing that a novice shell-scripter can't fix.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend me a Podcast

#79
The VOIP users conference, www.VUC.me. The range of topics is all over the place, in a good way. It goes from discussing very small installations to huge 100,000 plus installs and the products and solutions used. Every week there is a new guest speaker giving a talk. They recently had a talk about providing a trial cell/voip setup to a remote island.
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