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NetcastsSome friends of mine are getting broadband (at last) and I’ve been asked for netcast recommendations. Over the past few years most of my media consumption has switched to downloads, whether netcasts or torrents, accessed via RSS feeds, aggregated using Google Reader. My use of radio and TV is now mainly for news and occasional sports broadcasts. This feels like an inevitable technological and cultural shift, so I was surprised when I discovered recently that very few of my students subscribe to any netcasts. Here are my current subscriptions. As you can see, there are a lot of them! I don’t have time to catch every episode, so pick and choose based on episode descriptions. UPDATE: This post has been receiving links, so I’ll endeavour to keep it updated. I’ve just added some recent finds, such as Are We Alone?, The Bugle, and Epic Fu, and removed several others that I was no longer downloading. Audio netcasts:
Humour is such a personal thing, but Adam and Joe make me laugh. Frequently. I first got into them via their great XFM podcast. Interesting RN program about psychology, neurology, philosophy of mind, etc. Run by Tom Ellard, this has evolved over the years and is currently mainly providing downloads of John Blades’ 2MBS-FM program ‘Background Noise’. The SETI Institute’s excellent program about science and skepticism. A good arts program. Nonsense, but useful if, like me, you’d like to understand the world of finance. RN’s in-depth current affairs program. Mostly public lectures from Australia. Dubstep mixes. The Times Online’s satirical podcast, with John Oliver (of The Daily Show) and Andy Zaltzman An entertaining Canadian science show, split into bite-sized chunks. Mostly public lectures from Canada. Monthly academically-inclined podcast about digital culture. Interviews and discussion about the world of open source software. Often quite technical, which I reckon is a good thing. RN history program. Experimental music. RN interview program. Essential. A panel of experts discusses a topic from science, history or the arts. Hosted by Melvyn Bragg. Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap, The Simpsons) has a voice that could make reading the newspaper sound interesting, which is sort of what he does here, along with sketches and songs. One of my favourite shows. Interviews and current affairs presented by Philip Adams. RN program about language. A favourite, mainly because of the amusing banter between Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann and Andy Ihnatko. Movie reviews and interviews, featuring some great collages by Paul Gough (aka Pimmon). Australian national politics and current affairs. Amber Macarthur and Leo Laporte are the engaging hosts of this net-surfing show. Short talks by various Australian thinkers. Negativland’s legendary live mixing show which has been going for decades. I love this show. Accessible discussion of philosophical issues. Excellent sound art and experimental music podcast by Jen Teo. Sofie Loizou presents lovely, soulful electronica. Radiophonic features from RN. From the excellent blog on Web 2.0 etc., this podcast is good when they’re not recording from a speaker phone. Interesting lectures from people such as Brian Eno, Joline Blais & Jon Ippolito. A musical fix for the Negativland/John Oswald style cutup scene. I wish I could live in Stephen Fry’s world. Reviews and interviews. A recent subscription, I’m still making up my mind about this. Mainly short but serious political commentaries. When the topics interest me, this is a great program, with insights into the media industries. Andrew Ford is a respected classical composer who is open-minded enough to engage with all sorts of music makers on this program. Radio art is increasingly rare on the ABC, but The Night Air maintains the tradition. Its emphasis is on collage and remixing from the ABC’s archives. An Australian national treasure, the ABC’s flagship science program. Your escape to reality. The panel of rogues turn debunking feeble-minded superstition into laugh-out-loud fun. Cruel, but fair. One of my faves. Entertaining interviews with smart people – mostly writers, comedians and media makers. Church of the SubGenius. Nuff said. Mainly concerned with feature film CGI and compositing. One of the hosts is Australian, which is nice. I’m a big fan of Leo Laporte – he’s the consumate, charming tech broadcaster. The panel usually includes John C. Dvorak and others with plenty of personality, chatting about the week’s tech news. Amusing mixing from two well-known collagists. See also their individual shows below. Essential. This is one of the most interesting programs anywhere. Ostensibly a science feature program, the radiophonic production techniques take it into the realm of art. Merlin Mann and friends being silly. Video netcasts:
Xeni Jardin is a good presenter, and there’s plenty of the weirdness one would expect from Boing Boing, but I want more from this show. Maybe longer, less frequent episodes, rather than the current morsels which leave me remembering the ads more than the content. John C. Dvorak is indeed a very cranky geek, which makes this otherwise typical discussion of tech news entertaining. Some of the guests are interesting, too. I watch this so that I don’t have to read Digg.com. Like many Revision3 shows, it can be painfully frat-boy, but Alex Albrecht & Kevin Rose have enough charisma to carry it off. At last, a Revision 3 show that has a clue about art and music. This is quickly becoming a favourite. I don’t have time to read comics these days, so I watch this instead. The guy who sang ‘The United States of Whatever’ and directed ‘Jesus is Magic’ makes this amazing-looking show full of music and humour. I love this show. One never knows whether to expect serious news or something completely whimsical. Often it’s somewhere in-between. Hosted by Patrick Norton, this Revision3 show isn’t sure what it is yet, but I think it’s intended to become a relatively mainstream, viewer-friendly tech show. UPDATE: The wonderful Veronica Belmont, whose talents had been wasted at Mahalo Daily, is now co-host of Tekzilla. Roger Chang is getting more screen time too. This bodes well. A compilation of popular videos from around the net. It’s funny downloading a huge HD file to watch lo-res YouTube videos. Reviews of TV, films, comics, etc. by ‘three rad dudes’. Good production values. A very silly show featuring Dr Tiki, Johnny Johnny and Lala. Video recordings of lectures. Sometimes fascinating, sometimes dull. A humorous show about the stock market? It shouldn’t work, but it kinda does, mainly cos it keeps things short and punchy, with each episode focusing on a single stock. Martin Sargent meeting Internet weirdos again, this time on their turf. Whether it’s checking out Matmos’ record collection, or getting Ableton Live tips from Christopher Willits, this is a cool show for music geeks. A brilliant, melodramatic piss-take of the world of 70s smooth rock. Any others you’d recommend? Related4 comments to Netcasts |
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Hey man, wicked post, must’ve taken a while to do. Really appreciate the info dump. I’m such a grandad, I’ve only recently started using Goog Reader and now I’m a fuckin bloglines freak! Fuck it, more distractions from art!
Pz
Thanks Pz, I hope you like some of them. I’d have liked to add descriptions to each of them, but that’d take even more time which I don’t have. Maybe I’ll update it later, as I’m continually adding & removing feeds.
[...] pretty useful for recommendations too. Two long lists of favourite podcasts : via Textism, and via Shannon O Neill ( Syd sound-scaper [...]
[...] links >> textism TEXTISM, MOZILLA AND SHIGERU MIYAMOTO Saved by Debteacher on Thu 25-12-2008 Comment on Netcasts by skynoise » Podcasting 2008 Stylee Saved by manuva on Tue 16-12-2008 Textism’s Word HTML Cleaner Saved by nirgoth on Mon [...]