I’ve never really been a fan of podcasts. It’s related to the reason why I rarely listen to talk radio – I think that audio is a really inefficient way to absorb information. I could take in the information at three or four times the speed if I could read it.
But there’s an exception to every rule and I’ve finally found a podcast that is interesting enough to download and listen to every week.
It’s called The Pod Delusion and it describes itself as “a podcast about interesting things”. It’s run by James O’Malley and each week it features four or five reports by James or his many co-conspirators. Subjects usually stay pretty close to the kind of skeptic-atheist-lefty areas that I often write about here, but there are also interesting other reports – for example, Mark Thompson’s look at ITV’s move away from regional broadcasting from episode 17.
Some subjects are covered very often. There’s usually something taking the piss out of homoeopathy (often including plugs for the 10:23 campaign) and as far as I’m concerned you just just can’t knock homoeopaths enough. There’s also strong coverage of skeptic events in London (see Crispian Jago’s report from TAM London in episode 4 or James O’Malley reporting from last night’s BHA Darwin Lecture in today’s new episode – including an interview with Richard Dawkins).
If you’re the kind of person who is interested in the kinds of things I write about here then you’ll probably find The Pod Delusion interesting too. I recommend you give it a listen.