hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4255.txt

Episode: 4255
Title: HPR4255: What is on My Podcast Player 2024, Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4255/hpr4255.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:06:02

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4255 for Friday the 22nd of November 2024.
Today's show is entitled, What is On My Podcast Player 2024 Part 1.
It is part of the series podcast recommendations.
It is hosted by Ahukah and is about 16 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, this is an update on the podcasts Ahukah listens to.
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Q. We are airing it now because we had free
slots that were not filled.
This is a community project that needs listeners to contribute shows in order to survive.
Please consider recording a show for Hacker Public Radio.
Hello, this is Ahukah for Hacker Public Radio in another exciting episode.
This is something I'm recording for the Reserve Q.
That means if you're hearing it, that Hacker Public Radio is short of shows and they need
to get more shows and that means you should be recording a show.
So this is going to show you just how simple this is because I'm going to do something
that I haven't done for a few years.
Now let's talk about what's in my podcast player.
Some years ago, I picked up the first album from Jethro Tall and it was called This Was.
I thought that was a very clever title because what they're saying is, OK, you now have
this record, this was what Jethro Tall was, but we're now something different.
We all change and I realized when I took a look at the last time I had done something
like this, it turned out that my podcast player has changed a lot because my interests have
changed.
I've gotten older, I've retired.
So what I thought I would do is talk about some of the podcasts that are in my podcast
player now and you'll see that they reflect my interests, of course.
I mean, what else would they do?
And the first one is Dan Carlin's Hardcore History.
I love this one.
Dan goes into great detail on whatever he gets into.
I have been known to download a four hour long show from Dan and my first degree was
in history.
I got a bachelor's degree in history as my first university degree.
And I love history and you're going to see a number of history podcasts as we go through
this list.
And you know, there was famously President Harry Truman once said the only new thing in
the world is the history you haven't read yet.
And I tend to think that's kind of true.
So Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is certainly one that I would happily recommend to anybody.
These are going to be in semi-random order here.
And the reason for that is that I simply went into G-Potter and exported an OPML file,
printed it out.
And now I'm just reading through it and talking about these things.
All the OPML file came out in semi-random order, that's how it is.
Now the next one I want to talk about is the Doctor Who Podcast, DWO WhoCast, DWO stands
for Doctor Who Online.
And I'm a huge Doctor Who fan and have been for a number of years and I have in my science
fiction and fantasy series, I have recorded some stuff about the early adventures of the
Doctor because that's something many people don't know that much about.
So I've got a number of those.
In fact the next one on my list is also a Doctor Who One.
It's called Radio Free Scarlet.
And this is three guys from Canada and they do a very nice show.
They've just started going into video recording of their weekly show and putting it on YouTube.
So I've been watching a number of the shows on YouTube but I say this is just recent
and I've got hundreds of audio shows that I've been working through.
So that's another one I'll mention.
And I'm going to put in my show notes all of the links to these, just in case it sparks
an interest in someone listening to this.
Now the next one is something called Science Talk and this is from Scientific American.
And this is one of those things that something will pop up in the news feed a few times
a year.
Usually I'll get three or four shows right around the time of the Nobel Prizes because
they want to talk about who won the prizes and what was the work that they did and interviewing
people and stuff like that.
But other than that the rest of the year, it doesn't take up a whole lot of my time.
But I like it for when they do put a show out.
The next one is something called Splendid Chaps which is kind of an oddity in a little
bit.
It was a group of Doctor Who fans in Australia and they were primarily interested in exploring
things about the early doctors taking them one at a time.
The starting was William Hartnell going forward and it was interesting and it really has
concluded but I've left it in the feed because I never know what else they're going to
get up to.
For instance they've started their own series of audio dramas and they fund that through
Patreon and actually I think it's GoFundMe, something like that.
Anyway, one of those funding devices called Night Terrace.
You can sort of see that it's influenced a little bit by Doctor Who but it's also kind
of a very, very humorous take because it's about a house that travels through space and
time based on turning on the water taps, so a bit of a fun.
The next one I want to mention is called The Doctor Who Podcast.
I've got a number of these.
They tend to have similar names.
It's just that the people behind them might be a little bit different and I enjoy listening
to them.
I want to mention the Infinite Monkey Cage.
This is a BBC radio program.
It has two regular hosts.
One is the physicist, Brian Cox and the other is the comedian, Robin Inz.
What they do is they do these radio programs and they'll do like a series of eight or nine
of them and then go away for a couple of months and then do eight or nine more, which
I think is the sort of thing that is normal in British media.
But they also make it available as a podcast.
If you were in the UK you would be able to get this without commercials but outside the
UK, they do put commercials into the feed.
I enjoy it.
What they do, they'll take a topic and then they'll have a panel of guests and two or three
of the panel will be actual experts, professors, things like that and then the last member of
the panel will generally be a comedian of some kind.
So you can see the idea is that they want to talk about what is actually a serious topic
but they don't want to be too serious talking about it so there's going to be some laughs
and some comedy built into it.
The next one I want to mention is called Astronomy Cast.
This is a podcast, you might guess, it's about astronomy, space science, things like that.
There are two people involved.
One of them is Fraser Cain and Fraser Cain has a universe today channel on YouTube and
is very involved as a space journalist.
The other one is a woman named Dr. Pamela Gay who is a PhD astronomer and two of them
will each week talk about some topic from astronomy or space.
The next one I want to mention is called I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere and this is a
couple of gentlemen who are members of the Baker Street or Regulars which is a Sherlock
Holmes fan group in the United States somewhat equivalent to the Sherlock Holmes Society
in Great Britain.
What they do is twice a month they will have a program and it will usually be interviewing
someone.
For instance there's a playwright named David McGregor who wrote some plays involving Sherlock
Holmes and Irene Adler and so they interviewed him about those plays.
I've seen them and enjoyed them tremendously.
I don't know if David McGregor is in this area but the plays were all put on at the
Purple Rose Theater which is in this area.
This is a fun one.
I want to talk about the Big Finish podcast.
Now Big Finish is a company that is involved in producing audio dramas.
Originally they were focusing on Dr. Who and they produced Dr. Who stories many times
involving original cast members from the show.
But you know with fresh scripts, fresh stories that they commissioned from writers.
And that did well and then they started branching out into other things so they started doing
some Blake's 7 if you're familiar with that old science fiction program from England
or the Avengers and so on.
So they've actually started to cover a whole lot of ground and you know if you're interested
in audio drama and I enjoy it.
If you're someone who listens to a lot of podcasts and a lot of audiobooks which I am then
why not look into audio dramas as well and they can be very good.
So this company does that.
Now the podcast they put together is usually interviewing people who are involved in the
production of these things.
Sometimes reminiscences but you know it's something that if you're into what Big Finish does
you might find this interesting or not as the case may be.
Now the next one I'm going to mention is another one from Dan Carlin.
I started off with Dan Carlin's Hardcore History on this episode.
Dan Carlin also did a show.
I don't know if he's going to bring it back again called Common Sense.
And is his commentator commentary on current events, politics, things like that.
He tends to be sort of centrist, maybe a little bit of a libertarian slant.
But it's an interesting show and I always find Dan Carlin interesting.
Next is a podcast called Ben Franklin's World.
And this is supported by the people behind Colonial Williamsburg and is a podcast is
about colonial and early American history.
So basically anything from the first settlers to before the Civil War.
Each show generally involves the host interviewing a professional historian about some of the
research they've done.
And it could be about almost anything.
What was the experience of German immigrants into Pennsylvania?
You know, and they'll dive into that or maybe some story about the American Revolution.
So this is a good one and you're getting in this podcast, you're getting to hear professional
historians lay out what their research is and that's a pretty useful thing to do.
So I think with that, this is a good time for me to wrap this one up.
I've got more to do.
But for now, I'm going to sign off.
This is Ahuka for Hacker Public Radio, encouraging everyone to support free software.
Bye bye.
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