Episode: 748
Title: HPR0748: My Favorite Audiocasts
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0748/hpr0748.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 01:52:27

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Dismiss science, checking in on Labor Day weekend, it's May 30th, 2011.
And I'm in the mood again to produce yet another audio cast because I love audio casting.
When you contribute to hacker public radio, you feel like you're really doing something.
It's almost like you're an angry bird in the video game going up against the blockades of life
revealing the truth or your perceived truth.
Because we know that this is not going to happen in the standard media.
Most of you guys know how I feel about the popular media, NBC and Fox and
these channels of such low quality. A few years ago, I started really getting into
audio casting. It felt something so truthful or so authentic at the very least.
That I'm at the point now where I actually listen to audio casts just about all day long.
I listen to them while I'm working, while I'm traveling, while I'm relaxing audio casts or
pretty much my entire life. So I wanted to take this episode to share with you guys some of the
stuff that I listen to. So I'm just going to go down the list. This probably won't take very long,
but it'll be a short presentation, but it's like it started with a little bit of Python.
A little bit of Python is an audio cast about the Python programming language.
It's a language that I absolutely love. It's my favorite language to use. I've actually never
used it professionally, strangely enough. I only use it for personal projects, but this audio
cast is actually produced by the Python software foundation. So it's kind of official.
The only problem with this show is that it doesn't come out very often.
Another audio cast that I listen to is Marketplace. This is an NPR
affiliated business program, and I think it's pretty balanced. I don't think they're too...
I don't think that they
glean too much on any one side. They give pretty interesting information about macro and micro
economic topics. I've been listening to them for years, and I think that they have maintained a good
show. Another show that I listen to is Common Sense with Dan Carlin. He's kind of crazy,
but he's good, and he produces two shows. One of them is called Common Sense, and it's
kind of non-standard political points of view. And some of the stuff really kind of makes you
think sometimes. He also produces another one which I listen to called Hardcore History.
I haven't liked this show in a little while because he's been focusing on the Roman Empire.
That's interesting a few times, but I think he's been doing like 10 or more Roman Empire shows,
and I don't think it's that interesting. I hope he moves on to a new topic soon.
The next show I listen to is Distro Watch Weekly. I've been watching the website and listening to
this show for a fair amount of time, and it's a pretty excellent show for people who
are trying to understand more about Linux. It's fairly technical, but not extremely technical.
And it's pretty accurate. He looks like he takes a lot of effort into
saying very correct things, and it's a great way to keep up on the entire Linux ecosystem.
Probably the best way. I've not heard a more comprehensive show.
My next one is an audio cast called Fact Check. Fact Check is a group out of the University of
Pennsylvania and in Berks, something or other. But in fact, all these guys do as they go through
and they check the facts of politicians, and what they've said, and if it's accurate or not
accurate, and I think it's a really helpful tool. These guys do a lot of the research work that
many of us won't do. And just kind of put the story out there, and I think they're good.
They've not been publishing recently. I haven't seen an update from them in a while,
but I assume they'll be back at it again at some point.
Next in the list, Feather Cast. Feather Cast is an audio cast about projects within the Apache
Software Foundation. I'm sure you all know what the Apache Software Foundation is. It's
impossible to be an open source person and not be familiar with the Apache Software Foundation.
Provide us the Apache, the exquisite Apache web server, and the myriad of other projects that
are all extremely helpful. As with most heavily tech oriented podcast, audio casts,
they don't publish very often either. But when they do, it's pretty good.
The next one is Floss Weekly. This is part of the Twitch Empire. I don't really like Twitch
in general, but I do like Floss Weekly. I think that they do a good job, and they do publish often.
They published about once a week pretty regularly, and they have very interesting interviews
with the leaders of various open source projects, and it's really good to hear from the
mouths of these guys. Half the time you don't know who they are, what they look like.
All you know is our software that you've downloaded, and it's really good to put a face on some of
the people who provide you some of this great software. Next in the list, Freakonomics Radio.
This is a fairly new audio cast, and they are on fire. For those of you who have read the book,
Freakonomics, it was kind of like a groundbreaking book a few years ago. And if you're interested in
unusual economic outcomes and circumstances, you really ought to look up these guys.
This audio cast has just been spectacular, I think, since it's been out, and I see a big future
for these guys, but something's going to happen. They're going to have a movie or a television show
or something. Next in the list, Frontline. Another PBS audio cast. You can also watch full videos
on their website, but Frontline is a show, a PBS show, and they usually attack some type of
controversial issue. And it's one of those things that you can listen to or watch late at night.
If you're having trouble staying entertained, it's one of those good late night types of things
to listen to. Next in the list, Frostbite Media. This week in Debian. Part of Jonathan Nidu's
audio cast Empire. I was really glad when he decided to come up with this show. This week in
Debian, he's had some really great interviews of various people within the Debian project.
I don't think he's been publishing recently. I think I've gone a few weeks out hearing something
from him. I'm not mistaken, but hopefully they'll get back to publishing soon.
He does some excellent work in general. Next in line, GNU World Order from Klaatu.
He publishes, of course, hair. He's one of the hair heroes of Hacker Public Radio, and he also has
his own audio cast. And he is usually doing some tutorial work. He's generally figuring things out
and then sharing it with everybody else, and that, of course, is very helpful. A lot of it is
media-oriented. I think a lot of it is focused for people with the artistic background, and that's
pretty helpful. It would be nice to get more artistic people into the open-source world.
In the open-source world, we're all such number crunching database storage management,
security type people, and we overlook a lot of the art world, or don't take it as seriously as
perhaps we should in. I think Klaatu is an excellent representative on that issue.
The next in line is Hacker Public Radio. Of course, I listen to every single show, and I love
you all, and wish you would start recording more. All of you guys listening, and it would be
nice to hear... I'd love to hear Hacker Public Radio, somebody who wasn't a European or North
American. I think the majority of us publishers are North American, and I've heard a number of
Europeans, some Brits, some continental people. I'd love to hear somebody come in from Asia,
or somebody come in from somewhere else to help diversify the pool.
But yes, that's just my little shout-out record-guised record.
The next in line is Hoko Mojo Podcast. That's what it's called. I live in Howard County in the
United States State of Maryland, and this is an audio cast and local issues. Of course, we don't
have any local news where I live. In the United States, we're running out of local news. I mean,
it used to just be bad local news, and now we just don't have any local news at all.
Newspapers are going broken, local radio stations are going broken. These guys are trying to fill in
some of the pieces of the puzzle. You know, it's very hard to really know what's going on
in government, in your local government. I mean, at the national level, people are covering
that to a degree. I don't really know of much way to really know what's going on in the local
level of government, how your tax dollars are being spent, how policies being formed. It's very
hard to find out, but there are some brave audio casters who are tackling this, and you know,
maybe they can help save the future of local politics.
Next in line, consular cast, James Howard consular. I've been listening to this one for a few
years also, and you know, the quality remains pretty good. Some shows better than others, but
it's generally pretty good. I can't just skip this one. I'd have really leased it. It's humorous.
And for those of you guys who don't know, this is a podcast audio cast focused on James Howard
consular. He is a self-taught urbanist, self-taught urban planner,
slash architect, slash futurist kind of guy, and he's really like a predictor of things to come.
I think he is relatively accurate. He's a doom and gloom type of guy. He doesn't really think
the future is going to be very good, and he might be right. I don't know, I might not be quite as
pessimistic as he, but effectively his story is that we're going to soon run out of oil on
earth, and when that happens, all the shit is going to hit the fan. And we'll just have to see,
we might find out pretty soon. Next in line, Linux Foundation podcast is the title.
And they had some excellent interviews on this. They were interviewing all types of corporate
heads of IBM and Cisco and Red Hat and Oracle on their use of Linux. They had a few excellent
interviews with Mr. Linus Torval's himself, but they don't publish often. I think they only have
10 or so shows in their library, and I don't think they're publishing anymore, which was a shame
I wish they would. It was really good. The next in line, NPR. I have a number of NPR
things that I listen to. NPR is National Public Radio in the United States. It's the equivalent
of the BBC in the UK or this CBC in Canada. Publicly funded radio. I'm pretty high quality
stuff. No question about it. These are, these are kind of like some of the leaders in quality.
And they have some shows that are very good. I listen to their economy feed.
The economy feed is, they just give like five to ten minute updates on various economic
happenings around the world. And it's kind of interesting. They have another feed for intelligent
squared. Intelligent squared. These are like hour long shows of debates on controversial topics.
Topics that, you know, split America or split the world. Things like legalized prostitution
and things like that. And they usually will line up experts on both sides of the issue and
they'll just debate it down. You know why it should be or shouldn't be. And then the audience votes
in the end on whether or who won the debate. A pretty innovative concept, I think. I think it was
actually borrowed from the United Kingdom. I think they have a show similar to this in the United
Kingdom. And this is like the American version. And my last NPR feed is Planet Money. They give
like 30 minute interviews on deeper economic topics. A pretty decent show.
Lightning things up a little bit is the onion radio news. The onion is something I've been
following for a while. I just subscribed to the audio cast. It's off-color humor. They are
funnier sometimes than other times, but generally it's still pretty much worth the effort.
The next in line is Pearl Cast. Pearl Cast is an audio cast about the Pearl Programming Language.
A language that I've been dealing with for a long time. And I have done most of my work in it.
Let's have a deep history with Pearl as a programming language. And I love it. I've kind of
become a Python person with age. But Pearl is my second favorite language. And most of the other
languages that I don't really like very much call me a language knob. But yeah, Pearl Cast
publishes as usual with these highly tech audio cast. They published very infrequently. I think
the last time I published was in July of 2010. So you can count on them to give you one audio cast
a year, which is, you know, I guess people are busy. But I wish they'd publish a little bit more.
Okay, we're getting to the towards the end of my list. Next in line is Software Engineering
Radio. This is a German audio cast about software engineering in general. They interview some
interesting people. Not really the type of tech I like very much. They're not that open source
loving. They are open source loving, but that much open source loving. They don't really love
you know, Linux. They don't really love Python. They are enterprise guys who, you know, love
other types of systems. But it is worse than listening to some time today. Do have some
interesting open source people sometimes. But let's just an okay audio cast. Next in line, Ted Talks.
Ted is the conference group. They hold conferences all over the world. They have some of the most
fascinating people on every topic. Give presentations, everything from agricultural practice to bacteria
and disease fighting mechanisms to architecture to software. It doesn't matter what the topic is.
They have incredible speakers. Perhaps the smartest people in the world from what I can tell.
And you know, if you have a lot of money, you can go to one of their conferences. But if you don't
have a lot of money, you can watch their conference on your phone by downloading from their feed.
Very much worth the effort. Next in line, the economist. I've been reading the economist since I was
kid, which could tell you a little bit about my personality. Economist is a very good British
conservative magazine. You know, it's so funny how we use words, you know, America we call it
conservative in the UK. They call it liberal. But they are pretty good. For the most part,
look forward to their audio casts. They have a whole lot of them. Every week they publish on time
like in the military, you know, they're, you know, at this time on Thursday, you're going to get all
the feeds. But I got to give them one big negative. They've got this one show called
Babbage. And it's a technology show hosted by two journalists. And it is absolutely
atrocious if you ask me. I mean, it's a really, really bad audio cast. I listen to it
partly because it's part of the economist's group of audio cast and I listen to all of them. But
I listen to it partly because it's so bad that it's interesting to listen to. They're so biased.
So inaccurate. But that being said, um, still, I think it's worth checking out.
The next one, I only have two more left to talk about. The next one is a social work podcast.
It is a podcast audio cast on social work. They usually interview site colleges,
psychiatrists, social workers on issues concerning people with mental disorder, old, young,
or people with hard life circumstances. And it's extremely interesting. It's done very
professionally. It comes out of some university somewhere in the Midwest. I think University of
Illinois or Wisconsin somewhere like that. And it's definitely interesting. And the last one I'll
talk about is this American life. Perhaps the most popular audio cast in America. It wins awards
all the time. It's not always very good. But sometimes it's good. It's very good. But sometimes
it's really not very good at all. But I still listen to it because I've been listening to it for a
long time. And usually if I get 10, 15 minutes into it and it's not good, I just delete it.
I don't know if the quality is maintained. It's pristine levels over the years. But
you know, we all have our quality ups and downs. As you know, I shouldn't be disparaging anybody
under audio cast quality. I mean, I'm sure my quality goes up and down depending.
There's more science. Checking out to now 5 a.m. I look forward to hearing more from all of you guys.
Keep the cues full.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio. For more information on the show and how to
contribute your own shows, visit HackerPublicRadio.org.
