2021 — The year in podcasts

It seems like I outlined this same subject at the end of 2020 as well; hence some of these may be repeats. I don’t know that I really expanded my podcast-listening experience in 2021, but here are some podcasts that I enjoy:

• The Shocking Details. The hosts are engaging, and their choices of mysteries / topics continues to be interesting. My favorite show is still their treatment from a couple of years ago now of The Beast of Gevaudan. They are consistently good.
• Thinking Sideways. I also am continuing to work my way through past episodes of this now-defunct show. Most of the episodes are interesting, though I did find at least a couple where I bailed on it (those are rare, though). I also found the series finale episode.
• Trace Evidence: I don’t focus on the ‘true crime’ genre that much. The host has a very methodical, matter-of-fact way of progressing through the cases. I also enjoy how his sense of exasperation with particularly inept or amoral characters comes through.
• Holy Crap It’s Sports with Pete Davis. Though I am not a sports fan by any measure, his diversions into pop culture and current events (though not the focus of the show) and his humorous asides about the sports topics are still enough of an attraction to keep me listening.
• The Adam Carolla Show. I don’t listen to regular episodes, but I enjoy occasional best-of segment of this one. However, the fact that these are almost always from 10+ years ago is sometimes a hindrance to enjoying them. When you do find a real gem on these, it is worth the wait, though. If they did a show exclusively of Huell Howser bits, that would be the ultimate.
• Darknet Diaries. I went through a lot of those in 2019–2020 and found myself listening to it a bit less this past year. I’m not sure why. The episodes are usually average at worst and are often quite good. I frequently learn something, and I especially like some of the episodes about penetration-testers (mostly from the human psychology standpoint).
• Our Fake History. This show also has some good content. The only issue I have with it is that subjects often span 2 or 3 episodes, and sometimes I don’t really have 3 hours of interest in the subject. Sometimes I do. I try to just cherry-pick the subjects I like, and then commit to whatever the length is.
• Art Curious. It depends on the subject — if it is some artist or work with which I’m at least somewhat familiar, then I tend to like it.

Now some complaints…

Is there a term for when people cannot pronounce the letter T in the middle of a word? Take the word ‘important’. Why do some people wind up pronouncing that as ‘impor-ant’? I encounter this on a few shows, and it is really starting to wear on me. It like up-talking in terms of how irritating it is.

Podcasts about film… These have become really problematic for me. When they are good, they can be really good. I truly enjoyed a couple of episodes (from The Rewatchables) about The Godfather and The Color of Money. These stayed on-task about the movies themselves or closely related features. There was a lot of interesting insight into the films in question. OTOH… And I find this is truer of film-related podcasts than any other genre… When the participants stray much at all from their subject matter, it becomes tedious, then painful, and then unlistenable. There was one such download about The Martian. The ’insights’ here from one guy were that it was sad that this film represented a point of departure where people stopped trusting science and no longer wanted to cooperate with China. Uh…isn’t this also when publicity about China’s human rights abuses was ramping up too? And that doesn’t factor in here? As for his other point, I don’t think people are more distrusting of science, just of some scientists. There’s a difference. He may have had even more points to make, but that was where I deleted that episode and moved on. Another example, which I was looking forward to at the end of the holidays, concerned A Christmas Story. This started out okay, but when someone tried to seriously make the case for it being a movie about gun control because the request for the BB gun was childish, I again had to delete that episode. I guess I just need to begin any film-related podcasts with lower expectations and more of a willingness to just delete it.