Listening (253/365)

[white_hart]

I listen to quite a lot of podcasts, mostly while I'm sewing or to distract myself from anxiety enough to fall asleep, but also sometimes while I'm driving or walking to and from work. The podcasts I enjoy tend to be presented by women and non-binary people and have an intersectional feminist slant; most of them are about books and/or SFF, though there are a couple about crafts and one recent addition about swimming (Amber Butchart's Making a Splash). Long-term favourites include Verity!, a Doctor Who podcast; Antimatter Pod, which is about Star Trek; Breaking the Glass Slipper, an SFF podcast which is mainly focused on books; Be the Serpent, which looks at fanfiction alongside written and broadcast SFF; and Our Opinions are Correct, which takes a fairly eclectic approach to topics related to SF and science more generally. More recent additions are the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books podcast; Ali Baker's Fantasy Book Swap, where she and a guest discuss one classic and one newer children's book; and Shedunnit, about Golden Age detective fiction.

There are some podcasts I used to listen to which are no longer running: Galactic Suburbia is one, and As My Wimsey Takes Me, a Dorothy L Sayers read-through which is on indefinite hiatus (though I hope it will return some day).

I do occasionally fall out of love with podcasts. I used to really enjoy Buffering the Vampire Slayer (a Buffy recap podcast with original songs), but by the time it got to Season 4 I felt that it had become very reliant on in-jokes and jingles rather than trying to provide interesting commentary on the series. The Harry Potter podcast Witch Please went the other way, and was too densely academic for me. And I think I'm about to part ways with a Discworld recap podcast which I do generally quite enjoy, but which is peppered with errors (apart from the twenty-something hosts being all wide-eyed at discovering the Annotated Pratchett File, which just makes me feel like Methuselah). I stopped listening for a while after they claimed that "Here's looking at you, kid" was from Dirty Harry, and only restarted recently; but today they said (a) that 'There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis' was by Kate Bush and (b) that Live Aid was held in Hyde Park. And maybe I am Methuselah, and to the hosts this is all ancient history, but really, it's not like Wikipedia isn't right there...

(Actually, I have just looked at their Twitter, and they do acknowledge in the episode tweet that they mixed up Kate Bush and Kirsty McColl, so maybe I'll stick with them for now.)

Comments

[used_songs]

I enjoy As My Wimsey Takes Me, too. I hope it returns.

[lilliburlero]

But consider: a Kate Bush cover of "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop..." Consider the video.

I think the problem is that it's not quite ancient history enough for them to feel they need to look it up, but when it comes to articulating, say, where Live Aid was held, they realise they don't actually know.

[white_hart]

It would be quite stunning.

I think you're right - these are things they think they know so don't double-check.

[lokifan]

I know what you mean. I started listening to one podcast and never got beyond the first episode I heard, because it was about Iron Man 2, and they said it was great to see a superhero having fun and enjoying themselves. Iron Man 2 is about Tony Stark spinning out (including by partying and getting blackout drunk) because he thinks he's dying. That level of misunderstanding was... okay I can't take anything else you say on trust.

Be the Serpent sounds interesting! I don't listen to a lot of podcasts, but I do like Sawbones, which is medical history from a husband-and-wife team (she's the doctor, he's the funny one being explained to).