Although I no longer have the one-hour commute that I once did when I drove from Cañon City to Colorado Springs every day, or the two hour commute that I drove previously from Brewster, New York to Hartford, I am in the car a good half-hour each way to and from work, and when I'm not using my nifty bluetooth headset to chat with someone, I listen to podcasts.
It got hard to keep up with the number of podcasts I'd accrued during those long commutes, and so many have fallen off. But here are the podcasts I'm currently into.
- Jumping the Shark - A newer podcast affiliated with Gameshark.com. Each week, they spend at least as much time talking about what they've been playing as they do with their weekly topic, which I like. Talking about the games we've been playing is not only what we as gamers like to do, it's also generally more fun to listen to than an interview with some game publisher about the challenges he faced in marketing his game. I also really like when they talk about games that didn't come out within the past month. Bill spent some time recently talking about Demon's Souls, a two-year-old game, and there's even been some talk about the old-school Ultima games. Nice.The Jumping the Shark crew later started a little website called No High Scores, which got some facetime on Penny Arcade. The Jumping the Shark/No High Scores crew is Bill Abner, Brandon Cackowski-Schnell, Todd Brakke, Danielle Riendeau, and Michael Barnes.
- GeeksOn - I've been listening for four or five years, and I love the show. The episodes come out so infrequently as of late due to the fact that The Geeks are having kids, but I don't care. I snatch them up as I can.Each episode, they hit "Geek News", where they discuss news stories from online, and I've generally heard of about one in three that they discuss, which is cool. Then they hit their topics, which have been everything from bullying to James Cameron's Avatar to an amazing interview with David Brin. The GeeksOn crew is Aaron Hendricks (brother of Firefly's Christina Hendricks) Matt Yang King (who has been on Friends and 24) Donald Marshall (who makes video games) and Peter Robinson (wrote the screenplay for Trenches)
- The Secret Lair - I'd have to say that what I like the most about The Secret Lair is that the guys there seem just like normal geek guys. Like me. Except that they're also Evil Overlords bent on world domination. I can't decide whether I'd rather be a minion or a lackey when they conscript me, but in the meantime I do enjoy listening to them discuss books, games, and other geekery.
- Scott Sigler - His stories are not for kids. No way, no how. But I really enjoy his writing despite the excessive violence and gore. He's currently podcasting his novel "The Starter", which is book two in a series about Quentin Barnes, a GFL football player in the distant future who plays football in a league with alien races. The receivers can jump fifteen feet in the air to catch a pass and the linebackers can take down a brick wall. And the players need armor, because on-field deaths are common. Great story, and I don't even like sports.
- PC Gamer Podcast - I don't subscribe to the magazine, but I do really like the PC Gamer podcast, although I've been having serious trouble keeping up with all their episodes. It's not at the top of my list, but it's a good show.
- The Totally Rad Show - I liked it less when they dropped their amazing season one intros, wherein they'd spoof movies. I liked it less still once the show went daily. And there's a lot that I miss due to the fact that I listen to the mp3 version of the podcast rather than the video version, but I listen as I drive and the video version isn't doable. Still, I do like the show, although I only listen to about 50% of their episodes.
I'm also infrequently listening to the Critical Hits and Going Last podcasts for D&D stuff and for some reason I'm still listening to Slice of Sci Fi, which despite the fact that they've reduced advertising is no longer nearly as good as it used to be. I'll probably drop that one.
Any other really good podcasts that I should check out?