For my Comm439 class, we've gotta listen to a podcast and write a review of it. Given the fact that I subscribe to quite a few podcasts, I figured this would be a good opportunity to write reviews of all my favorite podcasts (and some that I'm giving a shot). All podcasts below are available on iTunes, but for those of you without it, I'll try linking each podcast's website.

Knitwit
Given the fact that I'm a 22-yr-old male college student, it might be surprising that one of my favorite podcasts is about knitting, but I really like this podcast.
I don't know a thing about knitting, but Carry's stories are what make this interesting. Sometime she gets too in-depth in the knitting stuff, but that's what makes the ffwd button on my mp3 player worthwhile.
There's something nice about walking around campus hearing about whats new with this woman's sheep, dog, rabbits, and cat and hearing stories from now to when she was a kid. Plus I learn some random stuff about sheep (e.g. feeding a spinner's flock grain is important).
[website link]






CoffeeBreak Spanish

Soy learning Spanish for free! 20 minute Spanish lessons.

[website link]






NYT: The Ethicist

I always like reading advice columns in newspapers, and this weekly ethics column is as close at it comes in the NYTimes. Covers topics like "Is it alright if I sublet my company's second parking space away and keep the profits?" The podcast doesn't have any extra content beyond what's written in the New York Times magazine, but it's still good if I for whatever reason miss the column.

[website link]


The Bitterest Pill

I actually haven't listened to more than about 5 minutes of this. It seems really interesting, but I don't want to start over from the beginning. Sometime when I've got a bunch of time I'll burn a few of these to a CD and see what I think.



[website link]

This American Life

Full episodes of NPR's best show. Each week, the people of Chicago Public Radio pick a theme and then have a lot of people tell interesting stories about that theme. Recently had stories by David Sedaris and Ann Arbor's own Davy Rothbart. Best story in recent weeks: guys getting stranded on an island well in view of New York's skyline

[website link]


Around the Net
While the main Attack of the Show podcast feed sucks pretty bad, the individual segment feeds are good. This one is by far the best. The hosts go through four funny/interesting videos from video sites every weekday. Sometimes I've already seen em, sometimes they're not funny, but they're always worth checking out.
[website link]


AOTS: Hardware
Attack of the Show Hardware reviews. Laptop reviews are boring. Airsoft gun reviews are interesting.

[website link]





Car Talk
Car Talk is a great show. But it costs 99 cents if you want to download a full episode. I'll take a free weekly call as a consolation.

[website link]





Marketplace
NPR's business and money show is interesting for all its random inside business stories. Last week I learned that some work-at-home postings on Craiglist are money laundering jobs, where your criminal bosses don't care about you and you're likely to get arrested in about a week.

[website link]




AOTS: In Your Pants
G4's video advice column. The title makes it sound like something skeezy, but its not. Mostly it answers questions from the G4 demographic. What's a gamer to do when his internet girlfriend breaks up with him? More typical questions too.
[website link]





Board Games with Scott

Twice a month or so, Scott gets out a new nerdy board game and shows you how to play it. Given my love for nerdy board games, this is my kinda podcast.

[website link]





Fear the Boot

While we're talking about gamer podcasts, I should talk about Fear the Boot, which seems pretty well listened to in the tabletop RPG community. I just burned this to a CD to give it a chance. So far they've talked about Settlers and how much they love it. Not surprising for a gaming podcast.


[website link]





Wasting Time at Work

Another podcast I'm giving a shot: two guys take 10 minutes out of their workday to talk and make jokes. I've listened to about an hour of content thus far. Sometimes they're really funny. Sometimes they just need to get on with the podcast and stop making up stories. I wish they encoded to mp3 format so I could load this onto my mp3 player instead of having to burn it to CDs

[website link]




CrashIntoLove
A pastor's podcast about marriage. Good because there aren't maybe decent Christian podcasts out there. Meh because he's only done 4 podcasts so far.
[website link]







dotBoom
Not sure how I feel about this yet. A puppet show about a webdesign firm. The net needs more webdesign humor.
[website link]








Best Week Ever
A Daily podcast making fun of the going-ons on people's favorite TV shows. Better than the TV version because I can fast forward through boring crap
[website link]






Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me!

NPR's News Quiz Show. The question writers must browse some of the same sites I do, because sometimes the questions will be about stuff I read on the net a few days earlier.

[website link]




That's it for now. If there's any podcasts out there that you think I'd like, please shoot me an email or leave a comment.