Wednesday, September 26, 2007

podcast is a noun which can be verbed, etc.

Having recently become the owner of an iPod through the kindness of a friend I have begun to fall in love with the podcast once again.

I used to listen to these things a lot when I was living abroad but stopped when I came back to the US and had AM/FM in English to listen to. On top of that, my days became busier with a lot of academic reading which precludes the opportunity to simultaneously listen to someone talking (or podcasting if you will).

But the dead time that I often have when commuting or doing household chores can now be filled with talky goodness.

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It is thus that I was reacquainted with the NPR show RadioLab. In a world where science reporting for the general public tends to do greater harm then good, as the diluted versions are often misrepresenting the facts or obscuring the significant bits thereby distorting the results, WNYC's RadioLab does a little bit better. And they tell the stories in such clever ways, managing to explain generally complicated processes via audio more thoroughly than most science shows do it using the medium of TV.

RadioLab isn't perfect; I'm sure it falls pray to many of the pitfalls of simplifying science. I was a bit surprised by some of their oversimplifications of E&M physics in their relativity episode, for example. But I think it's really fun to listen to, and it has familiarized me with topics that I may have otherwise been forever ignorant about. Besides, I'm sure that the majority of pitfalls really come from reporting verbatim the reports on linguistic phenomena provided by a respected neurologist. I'm sure the neurologist knows a lot about the nervous system and a little about neuro-linguistics, but her oversimplification of linguistic phenomena will then be simplified further by RadioLab (assuming, as everyone often does, that the expert knows exactly what she's talking about) leading to poor science reporting.

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I'm still looking for more podcasts to listen to. Right now I've got "this american life", "chinesepod", "car talk", "all songs considered", CNN and MSNBC's hourly news updates, and "Help! a bear is eating me!" Any suggestions?

2 comments:

klinton said...

these aren't talky podcasts, but they are good:

KEXP has some good ones: http://kexp.org/podcasting/podcasting.asp
I especially like the live performances.

similarly, KCRW, out of santa monica has some great stuff (including many talky podcasts I can't necessarily vouch for, but which may be good) and the Morning Becomes Eclectic live performances:

http://www.kcrw.com/podcasts

enjoy!

Jim said...

what about "wait wait don't tell me"

I love that show also the Unger report is good.

I love listening to Sounds on stage but they don't have a podcast :(