Poopcast

Recently I heeded the call for podcast suggestions by searching through my stash but I get bored with things very quickly.  So I can't really find much to recommend that is consistently entertaining.  I'd start by saying that there are two sorts of podcasts and they are very different.  For a while I wanted video podcasts because I had a phone with a big screen to watch them.  But they were largely disappointing two years ago.  I was hoping for something like this:




Goth Talk - The Beholder

Shinerod | Myspace Video

God I wanted to find something like this.  I didn't.  At least not on iTunes.  People take their podcasts way too seriously but they aren't amusing like this.  I guess that is youtube poop fair, but youtube is an inconvenient format for phones.



Why isn't this a podcast??  ZOMG the lols.

Of course youtube poop is full of duds too, people sitting in mom's basement droning on at the camera about stuff that is boring and unfunny.

The other category is audio podcasts.  This is much better for amusing yourself while commuting or working when you don't feel like listening to music.  I enjoy a few music podcasts as a way to supplement my intake of music that I only have a passing interest in.  For example I enjoy low light mixes because I'm not a huge fan of ambient electronic music but an hour of free music is a good deal and I have enjoyed a few of the mixes.

Still, I haven't found any audio podcasts that are like a good blog:  funny but not comedy oriented.  Witty without being boring or pretentious.  Clutter free.  A few of the NPR shows make good stand alone podcasts but I do find them to have a consistency problem.  They also don't go through the range of topics that interest me:  alcohol, poverty lifestyle, heavy metal, photography, Hemingway, weird classical music, college football, Glenn Danzig, and international political economy.



I'd also like to take this moment to criticize iTunes for having an incredibly shitty search function.  It is really cumbersome to try and search for free audio podcasts and to filter out topics like religion, or try to filter through a topic to find something that interests you (like Mormon apologetics).  Lo, iTunes sucks, and searches are usually fruitless and time consuming.  Compare that to youtube, where I found Goth Talk Jr in less than 1 minute.

To sum up podcasts I'd say they have so much untapped potential.  I don't just not listen to the radio, I actively hate the radio.  I hate radio programming and podcasts were a way to liberate audio content from the thumb of radio stations.  Plus the name podcast is great branding.  The DIY ethos of podcasts never produced much of quality, which is sad.  Thus I find them to be greatly disappointing, and there is a lot of content on the youtubes that should probably be produced into podcasts but I suspect that Steve Jobs' walled garden prevents that from happening.  Should I blame Jobs for the lack of a real life Goth Talk podcast?  I don't know.  But I do know that it is an underused format and while I like wasting time on the youtubes that won't help me on my commute or at the office and podcasts would.  So for now, so long poopcasts.