Podcasts

Astronomy Cast

Astronomy Cast takes a fact based journey through the cosmos as it offers listeners weekly discussions on astronomical topics ranging from planets to cosmology. Hosted by Fraser Cain (Universe Today) and Dr. Pamela L. Gay (SIUE), this show brings the questions of an avid astronomy lover direct to an astronomer. Together Fraser and Pamela explore what is known and being discovered about the universe around us.

The latest one is on multiverses and is pretty good. The do a good job with most subjects and are up to episode 166 so it's pretty comprehensive and all freely available.

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Binge Thinking History

If you go to his page and click podcasts, that is the only way to see all his pages without iTunes. He starts all the way back at the foundational documents of the Magna Carta and works through English history up to the American revolution in the first four episodes, switches to the Battle of London for five episodes in sometimes excruciating but interesting detail, then the history of the Royal Navy since with his last episode being about Captain James Cook. I didn't like him because he was a dirty imperialist but this podcast gave me a different view of him. Great podcast all around.

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The Bugle

The Bugle has John Oliver of the Daily Show and Andy Zaltzman, a british comedian who is pretty funny and given to incredibly long contrived word play jokes. They're friends and pretty funny together. Hands down the funniest podcast out there.

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History According to Bob

This guy is a history professor and general lover of all history. He usually tackles several themes or topics and does ten to twenty minutes about one of the topics a day. He is awesome and incredibly knowledgeable. Another thing that's really great about this podcast is that he provides the sources he used for the topic for further reading. This podcast is so awesome I am probably gonna pay for access to the archives once he has that available in mp3 format.

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In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg

This is a BBC radio show in Britain that is like Tom Ashbrook but way better. He just did a huge three hour show on the Royal Society of Britain. The geological formation of Britain was another great episode and a recent episode about the Samurai. Really well structured show, very knowledgeable guests and awesome topics. Best of all, no callers.

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Irreligiosophy

This is one of my favorite podcasts of all. They make fun of religion with a scholarly bent for why the ideas of these religions are ridiculous. Their episode on Jehovah's Witnesses is great and they are usually pretty funny.

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My History Beats Up Your Politics

This guy has read more political memoirs than should be reasonably expected to be possible but he brings a lot of historical context to current events by contrasting what we do today with how it is like what our ancestors did and how they dealt and how well it worked. Really great podcast if a bit of a dry style. If this podcast were read by Ben Stein I would still listen. Another one I am considering paying for the archives of, especially since it's only ten bucks.

And there is no RSS feed immediately obvious but you can download a bunch from his blog directly.

This American Life

White people entertainment at it's height, they bring stories from anywhere and they are usually pretty good with some being completely amazing. One of my absolute favorites was this episode about a preacher at a mega church who stops believing in hell. The first story in this episode about Nauru, a little island in the south Pacific that got fucked hard is great, the second story not so much but it was interesting.

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The Napoleon Bonaparte Podcast

This is an awesome podcast that is pretty epic in scope. It is the biography of Napoleon from a professional Napoleonic historian, J. David Markham, and an amateur Napoleon enthusiast, Cameron Reilly (he also has his own podcast and is the CEO of the Podcast Network), and they discuss Napoleon's life in as much detail as they can and they give an awesome picture of Napoleon. Listen from episode 1 to 53, this must be listened to in order. Think of it as a rambling improv audiobook about Napoleon.

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I have many more podcasts so I will hopefully have more up later but they will be more obscure and probably less interesting.