Podcasts I Listen To

I first discovered podcasts back in 2006. At work, I did a thing and it got recognized, and I was nominated for and won a recognition award for my hard work. Part of that award was an iPod. I had an iPod but it was a Nano, which only held about 2G of stuff, and what I mostly had on it were audiobooks. So here I was suddenly with an iPod Classic with 320G of storage. What would I do with all that storage?

I started slow. I had heard of these “pod-casts” (say it like someone tasting the word for the first time ever), but had no idea what they were. I had a vague notion that they were low-quality and amateurish. I searched and found something called Skepticality. It was very much not low-quality, nor was it amateurish.

At the time, I was very much into the Skeptical community, and when I realized there were podcasts related to it, Skepticality wasn’t the only one, it was just the first of many. Then I discovered Grammar Girl. And not long after that, the obsession — nay, addiction — set in.

These days, when I’m engaged in activities during which writing would be dangerous or at the very least bad for me (driving, showering, working, exercise), I’m usually listening to podcasts. If you don’t know what a podcast is, what time frame have you traveled here from, and how did you find my page? I kid, I kid! I know podcasts are not necessarily “mainstream.”

In case you don’t know, podcasts are like radio shows that are recorded and can then be downloaded onto whatever device you like, and then listened to on your own schedule. Or they can be like audiobooks. Or videos. They can be strongly about a single topic or generally about whatever pops into the host(s)’s head(s). They can be entertaining or informative. Or they can be just two guys talking into microphones about nothing (picture Seinfeld, only it’s just Jerry and George or Kramer or Elaine sitting in a room talking for a period of time, and you’re watching / listening).

I listen to so many on so many varied topics that I’ve curated them into smart playlists by podcast, and again by smart playlist for subject matter, and again by smart playlist for length (sometimes I only have 10 minutes, and it’s nice to be able to go to my “< 10 minutes” playlist and go from there). What follows is my list of podcasts I subscribe to by subject matter (Genre). And within each genre, the sort might change. From time to time. Alphabetic, usually, but don’t be surprised if it’s something else. :)

I have to tell you this last little bit, because it shows how my brain works. I try to make order out of chaos. Hence these lists. I kept track of them in a huge spreadsheet, which is how I first noticed that I had a lot of ‘True Crime’ podcasts, and that they needed their own subcategory. But the list on this site was originally made — painstakingly — by hand. Which meant I never updated it because doing that would take away time I could use ~~writing~~ listening to podcasts.

In a fit of annoyance, I thought, “I wish I had a way to automate the creation of the table!”

And that snide, oh-so-annoying voice in my head said, “Dummy. You’re a software engineer. You design software for a living. Capisce?” (I don’t know why my inner voice speaks with an Italian mobster dialect, but it does. Don’t judge me.)

So, I wrote a little program in C# that took my Excel spreadsheet (kinda) and generated something similar to the table you see below, beginning with the “Podcasts by Genre.” It counted them for me, arranged all the bold and italic and strike-through and the hovertext. With that simple application, I could regenerate this page whenever I felt like it. And although I spent about twelve hours over the course of two days (Weekend days, I might add!) working on this to the exclusion of all else, it only took about 10 minutes to output the spreadsheet and run the program to generate this page. And 9 minutes 45 seconds of that 10 minutes was saving the individual sheets of the spreadsheet in a form my program could read. :)

Then…Apple — IN. ITS. INFITIE. WISDOM. — decided that iTunes was too good. It worked too well for too many people. “How,” they must have mused, “can we completely destroy iTunes so that no one will be able to get any use out of it?”

So they brainstormed it and discarded anything that had any sort of use until someone — Lucifer himself, I’m sure — suggested, “I know!” — and here, he must have chortled most evilly — “Let’s take away smart playlists! And, for that matter, playlists altogether! And tell our users that…oh, let’s call them ‘stations’!…are the same thing as smart playlists!” And here, I’m sure he paused to laugh so hard, sulfurous fumes poured out his nose, and all those present joined in, slapping their knees in pure joy. “And this way, we make it truly official that we care not a single iota about podcasts! I mean, they’re not making us any money, right?” And yea, verily, all at Apple thought it was a great idea, and thus was ‘Apple Podcasts’ thrust, unwanted, uncelebrated, untested, unloved, upon an unsuspecting world.

Now, you may be getting the feeling, here, that I’m not overly enthused about “Apple Podcasts.” Heh. “Not overly enthused” is…definitely…a phrase. That might apply. If one were so egregiously understating that…let’s put it a different way.

I would say that ‘Apple Podcasts’ is the Poltergeist II of the app world.

No, worse! It is the Matrix II.

No! I have it, now! Worse still, it’s the Highlander II of the app world!

(And yes, I know that The Highlander never had any sequels, but if it had, how very awful they would have been.)

So I searched around and found an app called Overcast that does…almost everything I need it to do. It has playlists and smart playlists, it allows me (a premium user who pays for the privilege) to upload my own files to the app (for back episodes of long-forgotten podcasts that I have stored on my hard drive). I duplicated, as best I could, the setup I had in iTunes.

The only thing Overcast did not do that I needed for it to do was allow me to create smart playlists based on something other than lists of podcasts. Like length or genre or whatever.

You know that little voice I mentioned earlier? The one that has an Italian mobster accent? Yeah, it spoke up again. “Yo, fannullone, remember that little talk we had? You’re a freakin’ software developer. Write your own, you perditempo!” (My inner voice has somehow gotten more Italian mobsterish over time.)

So, as I type this sentence in late July, 2021, I have spent the better part of over a year — in my copious spare time — doing just that. It’s called PodCatcher, because I’m really bad at naming things. It’s not for public consumption and I don’t ever plan on it being for public consumption. This is 1) a project of love, 2) specific to how I used iTunes to curate podcasts, with some changes I wanted iTunes to make but they never did (because Apple clearly hated their users), and 3) allows me to learn more about C# programming on a project I actually care about.

And one of the things I literally just recently (finally) added to the application is the ability to output my curated podcasts in the format needed for below. And because I am the developer, I can’t bitch, moan, and complain that it doesn’t work like I want it to, because I can just open the code, change it, and then make it work like I want it to.

It’s good to be the king.

So now, it only takes about one minute to generate the HTML code to display the part of the page below “Podcasts by Genre.”

Key

Entries will have the following form:

PodcastName {#UnheardEpisodes} (Creator) MostRecentEpisodeDate [Frequency] [Link]

If you see…	It means…
An Underlined Title	The description of the podcast will pop up in a little window if you hover over it. Give it a try to the left. Hover your mouse over ‘An Underlined Title.’
A Bold Title	There is a (often vast) backlog of episodes that I’m listening to to catch up to current. To the right of name is the {number} of episodes in said backlog.
~~A Crossed-Out Title~~	The podcast is “on hiatus,” whether announced or not. In other words, it may be between “seasons,” or it may have just sort of stopped without any sort of announcement, and is probably dead. I still subscribe, just in case.
A Normal Title	This is a live podcast, currently in production, and I’m caught up, listening to new episodes as they go live (within a week or so, usually).
Green background (Current)	I have listened to all available episodes and listen live to new ones as they release
Yellow background (Both Ends)	I listen to new episodes as they come out, but there are older episodes I have not caught up on, and I’m actively trying to do so.
Red background (Archive)	I occasionally listen to episodes, but I mostly store them for listening later.
Blue background (Trial)	I’m trying these out and am unsure whether I’ll continue to listen.
Purple background (CatchUp)	I’m downloading new ones, but only listening from the beginning. Usually a serial situation.

And those “stack,” by the way; I could have a bold, struck-out title with an underline. Meaning it is on hiatus but I have a backlog, and you can see the description if you hover.

Podcasts by Genre(327 total podcasts; 22423 total unheard episodes; 2415d 18h 39m 36s total listening time):

Comedy (8 podcasts; 222 unheard episodes; 3d 3h 27m 37s total listening time)

These are podcasts that exist primarily for the purpose of getting a laugh.
Education (49 podcasts; 1593 unheard episodes; 22d 7h 4m 57s total listening time)

The primary purpose of an episode is to impart knowledge or teach the listener something. Often done in an entertaining way, so a number of these could fall in other categories such as ‘Entertainment,’ ‘Science,’ or ‘Writing.’
Entertainment (38 podcasts; 2825 unheard episodes; 39d 1h 44m 3s total listening time)

The primary purpose of an episode is to entertain the listener. The line can get very blurry between ‘Education’ and ‘Entertainment,’ sometimes. Which one I put a podcast in is entirely how I feel about the entertainment content of the podcast.
Fiction (26 podcasts; 3589 unheard episodes; 45d 18h 0m 41s total listening time)

A single, contained (shorter – drabble, flash, short stories, novelettes, and novellas) story in a single episode, whether that be 5 minutes or 3 hours. Usually read by one person, and without music or sound effects. Just a good, old-fashioned reading of a story.
Fiction – Anthology (16 podcasts; 2860 unheard episodes; 41d 14h 1m 27s total listening time)

Two or more stories (often both poetry and prose) in many episodes, sometimes accompanied by commentary, review, opinion, or discussion pieces by the host(s). Still just readings, but kind of like an audio magazine instead of an audiobook.
Fiction – Audiobooks (0 podcasts; 0 unheard episodes; 0s total listening time)

Generally a single reader reading a long-form piece (novel or a long novella) over numerous episodes. Occasionally also done as a full-cast recording with music and sound effects: an audio ‘movie,’ as it were. Each short episode will have the podcast’s intro and outro section, so it’s less like an audiobook in that respect. Sometimes includes Q&A episodes or other commentary from the author.
Fiction – Audiodrama (54 podcasts; 1545 unheard episodes; 20d 7h 11m 4s total listening time)

In the Golden Days of radio, a lot of shows were audiodramas. They had music, sound effects, and multiple voice actors. This lost art is coming back, but in the form of podcasts rather than on the radio. These are performances by actors, not just straight readings. The distinguishing feature: ongoing stories with arcs that go on for multiple episodes or seasons.
Fiction – Comedy (9 podcasts; 310 unheard episodes; 3d 3h 59m 25s total listening time)

These are fiction podcasts for which the comedy element is the most important. Quite a few of them are improv, which may eventually become its own category.
Interview (9 podcasts; 701 unheard episodes; 12d 11h 12m 8s total listening time)

People interviewing other people! About Things™. The subject varies, but the interview is the reason for the podcast. A lot of these could fit in two or three categories.
News & Politics (33 podcasts; 3268 unheard episodes; 42d 1h 6m 5s total listening time)

The primary purpose of an episode is to inform the listener on current events in the news and politics.
Science (40 podcasts; 2970 unheard episodes; 33d 7h 29m 48s total listening time)

The first few podcasts I ever listened to were science- or skepticism-related. I lump them together because, to me, they are inextricably bound. I have far fewer podcasts in this category because they started to repeat one another, and . . . Frankly, it was a lot of preaching to the choir. The few I still really enjoy are here.
True Crime, Mystery, Weird (17 podcasts; 231 unheard episodes; 1d 21h 16m 3s total listening time)

I realized I had a number of podcasts on my feed all dealing with true crime, mysteries, or just ‘weird’ topics in general. I created this group as a place to put them all, even if they’re not obviously interrelated.
Two Guys Talking (8 podcasts; 647 unheard episodes; 10d 6h 19m 40s total listening time)

Basically, it’s just two people, usually men, talking to each other about . . . things. And stuff. <waves hands vaguely> Subjects vary. It’s the relationship of the hosts and their interaction that is the whole purpose of the podcast.
Writing (20 podcasts; 1662 unheard episodes; 18d 7h 59m 57s total listening time)

The primary purpose of these podcasts is to discuss or teach about writing or publishing.