How to be Me: Podcasts

Here’s the podcasts I currently subscribe to, along with some sort of comment as to their appeal to me.

Anime World Order – Despite the slightly annoying delivery the hosts can tend to have – everything tends to be pronounced with an upward lilt towards the end of a sentence, making everything sound like a rhetorical question – this is an excellent anime podcast, albeit a lot more infrequent than it used to be.

AST Radio – talking of infrequent, Matt Bellknap’s A Special Thing podcast hasn’t released anything since July, but there’s plenty of great interviews and comedy perfomances to be found in the back catalogue. Especially recommend the Doug Benson Interruption episodes and any Paul F Tompkins episodes.

Comic Geek Speak Podcast – Heavily superhero bias, sure, but they get a lot of good interviews, put out a lot of material in a week and now have a impressively varied voice. The most annoying thing is the tendency a couple of the hosts have to reduce explanations they are putting forward to “blah, blah, blah”.

Dave And Joel’s Fast Karate For The GentlemanProbably my favourite anime podcast that I’ve heard. And the only videogame one I listen to. It feels like eavesdropping on a genuine conversation, even if I disagree with the review, I tend to have a good time listening to it anyway.

Fighting TalkColin Murray used to annoy the hell out of me when he was doing the afternoon slot on Radio 1, but his work on this Radio 5 comedy sports panel show I really like.

Friday Night Comedy From BBC Radio 4It’s the News Quiz at the moment, The Now Show is also offered when that’s airing. Not sure if anything else will get added – do they still put that Armando Ianucci thing on Fridays?

Jordan, Jesse Go! The idiot cousin of Jesse Thorn’s The Sound of Young America. The show works best with a guest, as Thorn and co-host Jordan Morris can be a bit annoying on their own.

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews Grumpy fifties throwback Kermode’s film reviews as excised from Mayo’s Radio 5 show. The feed tends to include film related interviews from the show as well as some podcast exclusive material from time to time.

Never Not FunnyJimmy Pardo’s (and Matt Belknap’s) conversation-based comedy podcast is easily my favourite podcast around. It’s moving to a pay format soon (20 dollars for 26 episodes) and I’m more than willing to pay.

The Sound of Young AmericaJesse Thorn’s PRI interview show in podcast form. Often has extended versions of the broadcast interviews.

Quiet! Panelologists at WorkBy all rights I should find this comics podcast annoying, but it’s really well produced and has a “Smith & Jones’ head to head”-esque idiot charm.

retroCRUSH Just coming back to this after a long time forgetting about it. Robert Berry of retroCRUSH talking about pop culture detritus is what it is.

WFMU’s Seven Second Delay – Monk creator Andy Breckman and WFMU station manager Ken attempt to perform various radio stunts within one hour. Often collapses into an enjoyable trainwreck.

WFMU’s The Best Show On WFMUMonk writer Tom Scharpling takes phone calls, occasionally has guests and invariably receives at least one death threat. The calls Jon Wurster makes in character are perhaps my favourite thing right now.

Wrestlecrap RadioRD Reynolds and Blade Braxton fail weekly to discuss the week’s wrestling news. The greatest thing about the show is how recurring jokes expand and take on a life of their own, the Trolla Corporation being perhaps their cleverest conceit.

Anything else I should be listening to?