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- MCP server with stdio transport for local use
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Episode: 1516
Title: HPR1516: 01 The podcasts I listen to
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1516/hpr1516.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 04:33:38
---
Ooo!
Hello, this is Dave Morris. Today my talk is about the podcast that I listen to. I
listen to quite a lot of podcasts. I started listening to them around about 2005 after
I'd bought my first portable player. I've always been a keen radio listener and so
podcasts sort of stood in for that sort of process except that it allowed me to pick
and choose more readily. So nowadays I listen to podcasts pretty much to the exclusion
of about everything else. I've got several players that I've bought new or picked up on eBay
and I rotate between these. I came up watching TV more than two years ago now. British TV
is not bad but it's the the quality of garbage to anything of any quality is so high that
I just cannot be bothered to fish out the the good bits. I've written my own pod catcher software
which is an adaptation of Bashpodder but I keep all the data about the feeds in a post-gress
database and that allows me to manage everything. The details of feeds, the episodes within them.
Let's me make playlists and assign them to players and stuff like that. Fairly geeky stuff and
tuned for my own needs. So getting onto the podcast, my interests range widely. I'm retired and
I'm a great believer in lifelong learning so I listen to stuff from astronomy through to
virology. Obviously I, because I'm a HPR listener and a contributor, I have a bias towards
IT related stuff but I was also educated as a scientist so I listened to quite a lot of signs.
When I started planning this talk I was listening to 84 feeds, subscribe to the 84 feeds.
Now it's up to 87, I've really got to prune some of these back. I'm giving you the 84
in this particular episode and another one that will follow. So in order to organize my
feeds I've categorized them fairly arbitrarily by my own categorization so that allows me to load
for example all of the science episodes on one player and things like documentaries on another
player and so forth and I can swap between them. I've added the category to the database and
the list that I've offered you in the show notes has this category in it just for your amusement
or whatever. I made a list of all the podcasts in the show notes using a tool I wrote around the
database but what I tried to include was the feed and also the website. As far as the websites
concerned I've got it most of the time but there are few cases the feeds don't contain a valid
website and I haven't corrected those. I've also included an opml version of the whole list in
case you maybe you want to skip this talk and just load it and look at them yourself. Okay let's
get into the first batch. So starting off we have Friday night comedy this is the comedy section
of stuff that I listen to. So Friday night comedy is a BBC production 30 minutes long it's
a podcast of a couple of radio shows that alternate. Now I suppose I ought to say I'm pointing
at BBC stuff in many many cases and I'm not sure exactly how visible these are outside the UK.
I know some of them are because they're part of the BBC world service but I'm not sure whether
they all are so if you find that these these pointers are not available to you I'm very sorry.
So yeah that's Friday night comedy I'll also listen to one called the geologic podcast which
has got nothing to do with geology. I think somebody else has referred to this as well. It's done
by a guy called George Harab who is a musician and the geo in geologic is his name of course.
He's a very funny guy he's very big in the skeptical movement. He does lots of weird characters
on his show which he obviously enjoys recording and he does spots like religious moron of the week
which is always amusing by my measure of things anyway. That's about an hour an hour the
particular shows are. Moving on into my documentary category I listen to documentary of the week
from the BBC. This contains a collection of documentaries and interviews and they cover all
manner of subjects. A recent episode was looking at whether using standing desks was a good idea
for fitness. They can vary between 30 minutes and an hour. In our time is the next one. This is a very
academic type of program. It's very very very good. It's one of my favourites. All manner of
discussions on everything from science through to art subjects. They recently had one on the states
of matter talking about solid liquid gas and other states that matter can occur which I've
certainly find fascinating. This is around about 50 minutes to an hour. Lives in a landscape,
another BBC production is documentaries about people and their lives in Britain. It's about 30
minutes long and then last one in this category is Radio 3 Documentary. This is another one of
these wide-ranging series through history, science, philosophy, etc. You'll see it in the show notes.
These are good. These are very good. Require a fair bit of listening, attentive listening.
I think I'm always that good at giving and I'm listening to podcasts. These are the ones I sometimes
have to rewind and listen to all over again because I miss them. Moving on, next category is
Environment. I only listen to one in this category called Costing the Earth where they look at
all manner of environmental issues. This is about 30 minutes long. It's very good actually. It's a good
good thing. I listen to more. I'm not sure they have much more in that category. Next category is
Film. I'm maybe not so much of a film buff as I used to be. I tend not to go to films as much
as I used to do. I'm not quite sure why that is. Possibly because there's so many disappointing
films out there. I listen to Mark Cormode and Simon Mayo's film reviews which is a very
idea of a syncratic programme, another radio thing from the BBC, where they deal with films
in quite a lot of depth. But Mark Cormode, who's the film critic, tends to have some rather quirky
opinions about stuff and I really don't agree with some of his things. But it's quite fun to
listen to nevertheless. The film programme is the second one in this category which is
less opinionated I think, but also quite comprehensive in terms of the reviews that it does.
I should have said that the Mark Cormode one can vary up to an hour and 30 minutes and possibly
more in length whereas the film programme is 30 minutes. So just looking back I think these
have all been BBC things I've told you about so far. Living on to literature which is another
category. I listen to two. These are not BBC product productions. One is called Escape Pod. I think
they're from the same stable escape pod and pod castle. These are, Escape Pod is science fiction
short stories which vary in length. Some can be really quite long actually and obviously they vary
in their appeal because it's such a matter of opinion obviously. There's often discussion about
them afterwards and there's a forum where you can go and join in the discussion. I do really
enjoy these. Pod castle is a similar sort of thing but fantasy. I'm pretty certain that Cristiana
Ellis has done stuff on Escape Pod. She's been a reader on there just just thinking about the
audiobook club. Next category is music. I don't listen to a lot of music through this route. I do
listen to music for a bit but not not not as a podcast but I do listen to CC hits which is creative
commons music. This is the daily feed I listen to. Creative commons music about around about five
minutes each piece and it's produced every day. You do get to hear some quite interesting stuff.
The thing I find about it is quite hard to find the music after you've heard it and liked it
but that's probably me. Next category is nature. Quite a lot of separated nature and environment I
don't know. I've got here two BBC productions, Best of Natural History Radio which is quite a
wide-ranging series of natural history programmes. Mostly UK based I think. I'm not sure that's true
actually. No, I suspect they cover the world. Coast and country tends to be more British,
Britain oriented. This is really sort of interviews with people out in the countryside of the
UK. Finding out about local wildlife and issues in local localities around the UK.
Next category is opinion. Rather vague category actually. Point of view is the first one in this.
Another BBC show. It's really nice. I've got my notes are in different order from what I'm
looking at here. Anyway, never mind. Point of view. Just 10 minutes slot of different viewpoints
on the current world. The moral maze is one I've recently signed up to which is a quite
in-depth debate for 30 minutes or more on all manner of moral issues and thinking aloud is
really updates on the world of sociology. Well, they don't use the term sociology much but
as a scientist I was taught that sociology was non-scientific. I think that's completely rubbish
these days. Anyway, that's actually quite an interesting show. 30 minutes in length. I know why I
got things out of order. I jumped up a section. I missed out the news category and I listened to
two in this category from from our own correspondent of BBC Thing which is reports from BBC
correspondents all over the world correspondents and journalists and this one's a bit weird.
Peter Day's world of business. This guy called Peter Day goes all over the place looking at
different ways that people run businesses and being it's not really the sort of stuff I would
have expected I would like but I do quite enjoy them. Both of those 30 minutes long. So jump
forward. We're into I think number 20 in my list. Science, the science category which is quite
large. Starting here with 365 days of astronomy. Now this is obviously a show a day,
variable in length, lots and lots and lots of astronomy things. Some are overlaps with the
feeds that I'm listening to independently but if you're into astronomy at all there's some really
really good stuff there. Astronomy cast is the next one which is also available in the 365 days
of astronomy. This is a good introduction. Good explanations of concepts in astronomy.
Discussion of topics 30 minutes or so. What I've signed up to recently is called
Awesome Astronomy. I don't think I've got it on my list actually. Things have got slightly
up step in my in my lists. I have to make sure my show notes that I've pre-prepared
do reflect what I'm telling you about. I didn't realise this was going to be such a large task when
I started it. Anyway awesome astronomy is a British based show. It's not the BBC and it's a monthly
monthly show I think. There's a sky guide what to look out for in the sky and also quite a good
magazine type thing mostly based around the UK astronomy issues. That's up to an hour that
particular one. Next we've got BBC Inside Science. This is a science magazine show about 30 minutes
long which is good. Click the next one. This is a really a technology show. They're looking at
computing and technology issues around about 30 minutes. The BBC show Discovery and other
BBC One. Wow I do listen to a lot of BBC stuff. Science documentaries. Recent hats has a show on
free will as it seems to be a subject of debate at the moment. Is there any such thing as free
will? Trouble is I've not heard anybody define what free will is yet. Maybe it's me I don't know.
So next we've got sort of fairly lightweight one Dr Karl and the Naked Scientist. This is a
rather odd show BBC thing again where it's a section of an all night radio show where they alternate
between a guy from Sydney Australia, Dr Karl and the group in Cambridge called the Naked
Scientist to come on and discuss science matters. 30 minutes long. Inside Health is the next one.
Health related topics being discussed. This is very very good I find. I'm quite interested in the
whole subject of medicine and health. One point I was thinking of going into medicine myself
but never did. Then we get to a whole series of the podcast produced by the Naked Science group.
There was this there was a time several years ago where putting the word naked into show names
was seen by somebody. I don't know who the hell it was. It has a good thing. So we've got
Naked Sciences. We had the Naked Chef. I don't know quite what it's meant to do.
Get people excited and want to go and watch it or something and listen to it. I seem stupid to
me but there you go. Naked astronomy regardless of all that is an excellent astronomy show.
30 minutes long from this group. They also do the naked genetics which if you're
totally interested in genetics is quite a good insight into the latest stuff in this area.
Naked neuroscience is another one if you're totally interested in that subject. There was one
called Naked Oceans which I think is no on hiatus. They seem to seem not to have produced a show
for quite some time. It was all about marine issues. So moving on to the next batch. Science for
people is a show from Canada which does a one hour in-depth look at all manner of science topics.
This is really good actually. It does dig very deeply into these subjects, the subjects that it
deals with and I certainly find it to be one of the best I listen to in terms of not just skimming
over the surface of the subject. Science in action is a BBC show which covers science news for half
an hour. The digital human is the next one which is looking at humans in a digital culture.
That's should say a lot of these BBC shows not too surprisingly because their radio shows
they're on for maybe six weeks and then they go off the air for a while and that's reflected in
the podcast for naturally enough. Next is the infinite monkey cage. I think somebody else has
mentioned this in their list of feeds. This is a discussion between Brian Cox, the physicist
and a comedian Robin Inns about all manner of subjects in science. It's both quite deep in terms
of his look into these subjects and also very amusing because they both they can both talk
together in amusing ways. Next we have the Life Scientific of BBC show where
Professor Jim Alkalili interviews leading scientists for 30 minutes or so. It's very good
insight into how scientists have ended up where they are, what the careers have been like,
quite fascinating I find. Then we have the main naked science show, naked science podcast.
This is a science magazine show about an hour. It's actually very good although it's a slightly
joky feel to it. They do go quite deep into into subjects and I'm always impressed at the way in
which they can interview people and get right down to the heart of the matter. Unlike so much in
the way of journalism, journalists these days who are dealing in science matters seem to have
no clue about what they're doing. Not certainly not the case with the naked scientists.
Now there's some real heavy weights in the science section. This week in microbiology with Vincent
Rackenulo. Vincent Rackenulo is a phasor at Columbia University in New York. He's a virologist but he's
he has this particular drive to get the subject that he's interested in out to the the wide world.
So you can you can join his lectures on Coursera. I think you can watch stuff he does on YouTube as
well but he does these, he does three shows, three podcasts. This week in microbiology is talking
about the subject of microbes in general excluding viruses. So it's bacteria and fungi and so it's
actually very very good. I find this one very uh listenable. If you haven't got the background
in that area you might find you might struggle a bit because it is really very uh very deep.
Last about one and a half hours this particular show. The second one in this group is this week in
parasitism. Again Vincent Rackenulo is discussing parasites with the with the colleague who's a
parasitologist. They look at eukaryotic parasites which means anything anything with
of a cellular late nature with nuclei so that means it doesn't include bacteria and doesn't
include viruses but boy does it cover a lot. If you're at all squeamish about parasites I think
you'd probably be west to keep away from this one. Though I'm deeply fascinated by
health subject to parasitology, parasitism. And the third one or the last one in the science
topic subject line is this week in virology with Vincent Rackenulo. Now this is um this is very very
advanced stuff. They they uh look at the news in virology and uh analyze papers on the subject
and I have to admit it goes over my head to a fair degree. At one point I was thinking of maybe
getting into virology because we had not so there was very little known on the subject when I was
a student. So I was quite fascinated with what's happening in that area but the level of
of molecular biology and so forth that you need to to really understand it seems to be
considerable. So I'm not doing very well as a student of this subject at the moment but I put it
here as a as a landmark podcast for um for this particular subject if you're at all interested in it.
So our last podcast in today's show is a different category science fiction. I did use to listen
to more science fiction stuff um Doctor Who was one category and the the podcast I mentioned here
Doctor Who Radio Free Scaro is the only one I know listened to um I have been a Doctor Who fan since
it was since it started I was a kid when it when it started up and I remember watching it scared
behind the sofa all that stuff um and uh was very very pleased when it came back to life again
a few years ago um so this I find is the best of the bunch in terms of uh Doctor Who podcast
so if you're at all interested in that subject I would recommend it. So that is the end of my
list I will do the remaining batch in um another show in due course all right okay thanks very much
and if you if you have a show in mind that you would like to do for yourself then please do it
and submit it because HPR is getting very low on shows at the month okay thanks goodbye
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