Political/History podcasts - Recommendations

his padded out jibber jabbering is that lacking in content you could literally listen to half an hour without actually learning anything on a subject.

Mike Duncan hits the right middle ground of tone for me - conversational, direct but not boring.

I would bet those early eps were him just talking into whatever microphone was built into his laptop, though, it's true.

The Age of Napoleon guy is good too, and sticks to a similar length/pace

age of napoleon is very good

Wouldn't some of you lot get so much more from listening to classic audio books. Idk like C V Wedgwood.'s 30 years war. Barbara can't remember her surname' s magisterial Guns of August. I've tried to listen to him again earlier and he seems even more pointless than the first time I tried.

I'm against audiobooks for dumb reasons. i only listen to podcasts while cooking or walking alone

I like the 30-minute chunk format, I find it really digestible and I feel like I actually retain some of the info

(another reason I never got into Dan Carlin, aside from his obnoxious voice and aesthetic)

Audiobook history sounds good, but where to get these from? Audible is £8 per book, this is too much to justify when I will listen to it once only and the same book is usually just a couple of quid to actually buy.

Podcasts are written a very different way, I think. The conversational tone of the best podcasts is very appealing. Audiobooks take up all my concentration when I'm listening, I can't bike if I listen to an audiobook for instance. So I just read books instead. While I listen to music.

Yeah, podcasts and books are apples and oranges. The presentation of a podcast, if successful, is much more geared toward aural reception. I can't imagine trying to listen to someone narrate most of the history books I read.

I zone out on audiobooks and miss multiple 'pages,' for some reason that doesn't happen with podcasts.

Plus some of these things (Mike Duncan joints, History of England) are pulling from such a wide range of sources that they are, from a certain perspective, almost more useful than reading a single book. That said, my engagement with them is mostly as a supplement to stuff I'm actually reading.

Yeah. As someone who even sometimes finds myself missing key moments in podcasts, I would really struggle with an audiobook while driving.

Lol driving and audiobooking does sound quite hazardous tbf

I've enjoyed audiobooking stuff I've read before, Paradoxes of Power and Bloodlands are books that I felt I had enhanced experiences with taking them in both ways. Some audiobooks are worth paying £8 for if they have a decent reader, but others aren't worth shit. But I nab them from torrent sites so can't complain.

Just out of curiosity like... where can you torrent audiobooks? tpb has fuck all of any interest

all the formerly dependable stalwart torrent sites all seem to be dying in recent years I'm afraid. I used to use thegeeks.bz but lost my password and got locked out - i'll get back to you on that if I get back in and get an invite if you want. z00qle.com might be worth a try.

shit, managed to get back into thegeeks but have zero invites

lol, password was 1234abcd

dem0n01d.is

is still online, that used have some brilliant and rare audiobook torrents. But I haven't used it in ages and don't know if it has the same cache of torrents in it's current form. but deffo worth a try.

A LibGen for audiobooks would be amazing. Alas, I fear it's mostly newsgroups where it's at these days? I'm not on there. Slsk is a 50/50 success rate though.

his padded out jibber jabbering is that lacking in content you could literally listen to half an hour without actually learning anything on a subject.

― calzino

see this is kind of what i like about his podcasts - they're very long and you don't have to actually pay attention to anything he's saying. i like the sort of podcasts where i can just zone out for half an hour and not suddenly wake up and say "wait, what did i miss?". because if there's anything he's going to actually say he will SAY IT VERY LOUDLY and multiple times, i kind of need that with podcasts

the ira glass imitators may have good shows but that is a thing i just cannot do, i've tried, no. i'll do mid-atlantic accent guy or trailer voiceover guy, that's it.

I'm going to have another try at listening to him when I'm cooking or something!

I'm well into pt III of the Dan Carlin WWI series now and I love it. Even the basic, cliched sort of themes and concepts about WWI that I've received a dozen ways through school and popular culture are much more vivid for me now.

the last straw for me (and I'm never going to listen to this guy again!) was when he said something like " this Kaiser Wilhelm guy ..you know.. he didn't get the job on merit .. you know"

they're very long and you don't have to actually pay attention to anything he's saying

i hear this a lot re:podcasts, "i like it bc i dont have to pay attention to it", which i honestly can never understand. like if you're looking for soothing non-informational audio sounds that help time pass, why not try music? Fewer ads for mattresses and mail-order underpants.

too many notes though

I guess you could listen without paying attention to the history podcasts I favor in the same way one might in a college history class. Meaning that you're not likely to learn much but, hey man, that lecture hall sure is a great place for a leisurely snooze.

It feels weird to listen to music before lunch. When I was driving a lot before podcasts I had to listen to Diane Rehm and sports talk radio in the morning.

I sleep better to talking than I do to music. Don't know why. And then I have a half-heard podcast in my library, and I'll relisten to it again while I'm out walking/biking/whatever.

Also, I'll listen to a half hour podcast in bits and pieces, and I'll relisten to it if I feel like I'm missing something. It's malleable, not like a book, where I really feel like I have to get into it.

Dan Carlin interrupted by underwear ads would be something

"Those who have not experienced it can hardly fathom the STENCH alone that emitted from these trenches -- rivers of human waste and filth, piles of rotting corpses. Too bad those troops didn't have Mack Weldon underwear -- it's protected by a silver-infused antimicrobial lining that prevents odor."

I have two listening modes for podcasts, stuff to listen to and stuff to sleep to. one show is both, when a new episode comes out I'll give the previous one a proper re-listen then go to sleep to the new episode.

massive wowwwww @ putting on podcasts and not listening to them

idk how do you stop your internal monologue from overwhelming you dude

There’s nothing quite like podcasts for that

where can you torrent audiobooks

all I find there is links to Amazon/audible - not torrents.

The self is lava; podcasts are the rocks we leap on to avoid contact. Actually listening to them is a bonus.

silby otm, i have podcasts about rugby that are for sleeptime, its great

when you get past the iffy product placement that Revolutions podcast is very good.

idk how do you stop your internal monologue from overwhelming you dude

― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Wednesday, December 4, 2019 7:18 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Effing unconsciousness isn't even enough to quiet my brain.

when you get past the iffy product placement that Revolutions podcast is very good.

after like three eps you master the art of skipping to the strings

It's not 'product placement' it's just ads, lol.

'Lenin spent three years in a prison in Siberia, where his only comfort was a Casper mattress, which comes in three models...'

I started listening to a new podcast about Medieval history, but the episodes are all 7 to 11 minutes long, much of them taken up by ads and patreon requests. Like how do you have patrons when you haven’t even established your podcast yet? And why 4 different hosts in ten episodes?

xps

when someone starts a history podcast talking about how good a particular brand of suitcase is - that is product placement to me, pal.

that's an ad reading

the only thing close to product placement these podcasts do is when they cite a text and then say it's available on Audible