Political/History podcasts - Recommendations

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.

Dana Gould basically turns his Audible ads into 20 minute monster movie history segments

I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't skip through the 7 minutes of ads at the beginnings History on Fire episodes. Maybe now that it's behind a paywall that doesn't happen.

Not a history podcaster obviously but Greg Proops used to do sarcastic readings of his ads, criticise the prose, read out the instructions, make his own jingles "audible... for when you don't feel like reading!" etc. but at some point they stopped him doing that and I stopped listening to the ads. Adam Buxton does a good job of making them into entertaining jingles/sketches.

I know it's toxic to most, but the Cumtown ad reads are one of the best parts of the show - they basically do everything they can possibly do to get fired by the sponsor.

Hollywood Handbook is the ad read GOAT

Adam Buxton does a pretty good job with ads but ymmv (perhaps that should read your ability to deal with shit whimsy may vary, or yatdwsw).

Anyone know how much a podcaster would get for an ad?

I think some only get paid if people sign up for a service using their code

I know that Itunes U's heyday (if it ever had one) is like a decade past, but I find listening to decent undergrad lecture courses about a million times more informative and entertaining than any of the history podcasts I've tried. I found that colleges were only really putting their "tried and true" lecturers online, and a formally trained historian speaking to a present audience was usually more engaging than a hobbyist talking into a microphone in his study. And the professors carry a little more credible for me, tbh.

I really liked Stanford's "History of the International System," and Yale had a French history from 1871-present that was pretty good. There were probably good ones from less fancy institutions too, those are just a couple of the ones I found.

Lectures are good, but History podcasts are for EXHAUSTIVE detail.

like sure, you could listen to 7 hours of lectures about the Crusades, or you could listen to 318 episodes of the History of the Crusades podcast

Lol that’s definitely true. I guess I just prefer audiobooks for that.

then you also have to accept that the advertisers can tell if you skip the ad and they don't get the money.

I don't they can with most pod delivery methods, though? That's why so many still rely on the custom URL method.

yeah, my podcasts are all just mp3s on my (android) phone. I seriously doubt that my podcast app is tracking where I skip forward and if I ever discovered that it did, I would just start using another app.

Same.

same

I use podcast addict, 99% sure it doesn't track this, though it does remember where I've got to and seems to scrobble though I wish it wouldn't. (ahem new episode of my thing which is almost like a history podcast is out today and obviously doesn't contain any fucking ads apart from the very brief patreon plug at the start ahem)

Same. It's amazing how smart some of these devices are that we let into our homes, but our podcast apps can't even remember where we left off.

My biggest frustration at the moment is not being able to subscribe to a podcast version of The Shipping Forecast. It's just not there, while it should be, and there is a TuneIn link to it, and I downloaded TuneIn specifically for it. And and and it still doesn't work. Southwesterly gale force 8 imminent, Clive, increasing severe gale force 9 soon.

(xp)

you like a bit of Doggering then?

You betch'er Calz! Susan Powell reading the Shipping Forecast has been on of my best weapons in combating insomnia...

This isSusan Powell isn't it? She's mostly just announced as 'Susan', I have no idea who she is, but at 0.48am she's been doing wonders.

Alistair Cooke's Letter From America used to have the similar effect on me. Even though his politics sucked absolute shit, his voice had an AMSR effect.

Yeah I suppose you could call it an ASMR effect, even though I refrained using that term. ASMR stuff seems to lull intentionally. Shipping Forecast (esp read by Susan, I do admit) just... is. It doesn't tickle my earbuds or gets me butterflies. It just carries me off into sleep. Which is all I ask for when insomniac.

Also: no product placement in the Shipping Forecast :)

Alistair Cooke's Letter From America used to have the similar effect on me.

Yeah I get that. His politics were rubbish but there was something undeniably soothing about his voice and just zoning out, listening to it.