Political/History podcasts - Recommendations

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

maybe right and wrong, but to me an ad is not made by the content provider.

Isn't that just old school radio?

Yeah if the podcaster more or less reads a script that the advertiser provided, it's called an ad reading. If the podcaster just sneaks in a reference in the middle of the story, without breaking the story, that would be product placement.

I must listen to too much bbc or something (where only CCHQ gets free advertising), but when I click on a History Podcast - as far as I'm concerned anything that isn't part of the podcast whether at the start, middle or end is intrusive product placement - so there!

ok dude but product placement is a term with a meaning

I was really just trying to make a joke because I found the idea of product placement in a podcast about Revolutions hilarious. I honestly want it to happen. 'How to explain the Marxist notion of surplus value? Well, when Harrys make their patented five blade razor...'

I know I'm repeating myself, but come on! It's funny!

"Lenin certainly had a knack for political planning. You might even say he was a Policy Genius..."

I know it is easy to click past them, but these "ad-readings" at the start wouldn't be so jarring if it was followed by some sub-History Channel shite - but it is very high quality material and somehow it bothers me even more because of that! Any fogeeraboutit. I've jumped in on ep 21 or something and missed all sorts of stuff on the SR's and Nicky's dad getting whacked.

I think Mike Duncan was the one who started saying "As you know.." at the beginning of ad readings. Everyone else uses it now.

calzino fave Armando iannucci had a funny bit in an interview where he was talking about the surreal experience of listening to the 538 podcast & them trying to incorporate the ads into the “natural” flow of conversation, so you’d get all this wonkish political analysis and then without breaking stride someone will go “we’ll come back to that point in a moment , but I just want to talk about underpants for a bit”

Duncan's method definitely the best. I hate the way pods like Behind the Bastards try to fold in their ads in a "witty" way mid-conversation

Slipping the ads in to the ordinary flow of events is a venerable tradition from old time radio sitcom days, it’s funniest in like Fibber McGee and Molly when the pitchman comes in and finds an excuse to start talking about Johnson’s Wax and everyone else gets mad at him.

The ad-readings on the Slow Burn podcast are pretty funny as well. Especially the underpants he keeps talking about.

xpost It's also pretty common on AM radio, where you will have a local station commercial and then Rush will come back on and talk about Snapple or QuickBooks.

the thing is that if one accepts ads as a necessary evil, in the sense of, "well, my favorite podcasters gotta eat, and this is how they can make some money," then you also have to accept that the advertisers can tell if you skip the ad and they don't get the money. so folding the ads into wacky skits and in-jokes (Blank Check does a ton of this) is clearly a way to keep their diehard fans from skipping ahead, since the ad itself becomes a thing to joke about on Reddit and Twitter, etc. every so often something goes so spectacularly wrong with one of their funny voice characters that i do actually get a chuckle out of them, somewhat ashamedly.