Some 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:
- Adam and Joe BBC 6 Music
- Alan Watts Podcast
- All in the Mind
- anonradio: the next generation
- Are We Alone?
- Artworks
- ASX Investor Update Podcast
- Background Briefing
- Big Ideas
- Blogariddims
- The Bugle
- CBC Radio: Quirks & Quarks Segmented Show
- CBC Radio: The Best of Ideas
- Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com
- Daily GizWiz
- First Monday Podcast
- FLOSS Weekly
- Hindsight
- hungbunny
- In Conversation
- In Our Time
- KCRW’s Le Show
- Late Night Live
- Lingua Franca
- MacBreak Weekly
- Movie Time
- Mysterious Universe
- National Interest
- net@night
- Ockham’s Razor
- Over The Edge
- Overlap.org » symbiosis
- Philosopher’s Zone
- Eleven Eleven
- Chasing the Tangent
- Radio Eye
- Read/WriteTalk
- RRR FM (Byte Into It)
- SALT - Seminars About Long Term Thinking
- Science With Dr Karl
- Some Assembly Required
- StarShipSofa: Science Fiction Audio Podcast
- Stephen Fry’s Podgrams
- The Amazing Show starring James Randi
- The Book Show
- The Economist
- The Media Report
- The Music Show
- The Night Air
- The Science Show
- The Skeptics’ Guide 5X5
- The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe
- The Sound of Young America
- The SubGenius Hour of Slack Podcast
- The VFX Show
- this WEEK in TECH
- triple j’s This Sporting Life
- WFMU’s Codpaste with People Like Us and Ergo Phizmiz
- WFMU’s Do or DIY with People Like Us
- WFMU’s Phuj Phactory with Ergo Phizmiz
- WFMU’s Seven Second Delay with Ken and Andy Breckman
- WFMU’s The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling
- Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott
- WNYC’s Radio Lab
- You Look Nice Today
Humour is such a personal thing, but Adam and Joe make me laugh. Frequently. I first got into them via their great XFM podcast.
Mostly talks on Eastern philosophy from Alan Watts’ archives.
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.
Cory Doctorow reads his stories, and sometimes others’, such as Bruce Sterling’s excellent non-fiction work, ‘The Hacker Crackdown’.
A silly program about gadgets, presented by Leo Laporte and Mad Magazine’s Dick DeBartolo.
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.
A 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).
An Australian show about the paranormal.
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 thought this was a sound art show, but now it’s dubstep.
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.
Tech news from Melbourne community station RRR FM. Of interest to me is that the cast includes some members of the experimental music scene.
Interesting lectures from people such as Brian Eno, Joline Blais & Jon Ippolito.
Australian celebrity scientist Dr Karl takes listeners’ questions on this BBC show.
A musical fix for the Negativland/John Oswald style cutup scene.
Spoken short stories, mostly, including some well-known names from the genre.
I wish I could live in Stephen Fry’s world.
Sporadic at best, I heard about it through the Skeptics’ Guide.
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.
The mini-me version of:
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.
From the legenday Australian characters Roy and H.G.
Amusing mixing from two well-known collagists. See also their individual shows below.
Live radio shenanigans.
Cult radio from WFMU.
Insights into the Windows world with Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott. Not as much fun as MacBreak Weekly, but still interesting for the hardcore geek.
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:
- Boing Boing TV
- Cranky Geeks
- David Wain
- Diggnation
- Epic Fu
- Howard Rheingold’s Vlog
- iFanboy
- Internet Superstar
- Lynchland: The Liam Lynch Podcast
- MacBreak
- My Damn Channel - Big Fat Brain
- My Damn Channel - Harry Shearer
- PixelPerfect
- popSiren
- Rocketboom
- Tekzilla
- The Digg Reel
- The Totally Rad Show
- Tiki Bar TV
- UChannel Video Podcast
- Wallstrip
- Web Drifter
- XLR8R TV
- Yacht Rock
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.
If you liked Stella you’ll like this.
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.
The author of Smart Mobs takes us into the classroom and his freaky wardrobe.
I don’t have time to read comics these days, so I watch this instead.
Martin Sargent is my Internet superstar. He’s obsessed with the weirder side of the web and presents it for our pleasure.
The guy who sang ‘The United States of Whatever’ and directed ‘Jesus is Magic’ makes this amazing-looking show full of music and humour.
Not, as one might assume, a show about Apple computers, but mostly little tutorials about high end media production technology. Which is interesting to me anyway.
The ‘You Suck at Photoshop’ series is already a classic.
Occasional satirical sketches and songs from Harry Shearer.
Photoshop tutorials by someone from the Mafia, apparently.
A show hosted by women, for… guys? I’m not yet sure about this new Revision3 show, although Dr Kiki’s science demonstrations are fun.
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?






