Just Like Starting Over: Getting Into Podcasts
This dog I have, she needs walking. Which means for at least forty minutes of my day, I’m outside.
I don’t know what to do with myself.
The good news is, all this walking is good imagination-fodder for my stories and Numenera campaigns. And as opposed to pacing in small circles in my backyard muttering to myself – the traditional wellspring of my ideas – I now do the socially more acceptable version of walking a dog and muttering. Which is great, because when you’re chanting, “A feral libertarian Disneyland! With sports drinks!” over and over as the idea takes root in your mind, you really need a puppy as a distraction.
But there are days the brain is fuzzy, and for those I think I need podcasts.
Which is weird. I have not traditionally liked podcasts, because I have television when I’m programming, and I have music when I’m driving, but walking at a dog’s pace is just not the right beat. Voices seem like a good idea to me.
I don’t know where to start.
Which is weird. Podcasts have been around for at least ten years now, they’re common, and I am a techno guy. I can create a fully-functionable website from scratch in half an hour. I can sling jQuery and Memcached and MongoDB with the best of them to create really massive user experiences at Starcitygames… and yet when it comes to this extremely popular thing, I don’t even know where to go or what to do.
Which is not to say that I won’t learn. I’m sure it’s easy to subscribe podcasts on iTunes – one subscribes, right? – and certainly it can’t be that hard finding them. I’m gonna look for a Numenera podcast first, to see if I can find something that inspires me in my game. But it’s just weird that for all of my mad techno-skills, there are a lot of things that people do commonly, trivially, that I now require the online equivalent of a “For Dummies” guide to make happen.
In some areas, I’m bleeding edge. In others, I’m way behind the curve. And it’s just weird to go from “Master of Twitter” to “Grandpa, wondering how I get The Podcast on this here Apple Phone” within seconds.
I have two non-RPG suggestions that I’m pretty sure you would like. The first is WTF with Marc Maron, and the other is How Did This Get Made?.
As far as RPG related ones, I really haven’t found any that I really like. Either there are annoying hosts, or they are all powergamers, or they have low quality recordings. Nerd Poker was about the closest I got to liking one, but despite the charisma of the people involved, it felt mostly listless.
I like WTF, but it always makes me paranoid about my own coding.
As for subscribing, if you have an iDevice, it’s pretty easy, I believe you can subscribe either through iTunes or the native podcast app.
For recommendations, I don’t listen to a lot myself, but I’m a huge fan of Mark Rosewater’s magic design podcast “Drive to Work”.
Suggested podcasts from someone who recently started listening:
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff
Mark Rosewater Drives to Work
Alton Browncast
Nerdist Podcast
Welcome to Nightvale
Thrilling Adventure Hour
Check them out, there are probably one or two of interest to most people.
Not sure if you’re still into Magic, but http://www.manadeprived.com hosts two podcasts that I enjoy a lot even though I don’t play a lot of Magic anymore. They’re called The Eh Team and Heavy Meta. The last one even includes a guy that calls himself the ferret.
I MUST SLAY HIM IN A PIT OF FIRE.