LanceWillett.com

These days I listen to fewer podcasts than I used to. Unless I’m doing dishes or chores around the RV, my podcasts pile up and I don’t listen to them. Not that I miss driving or commuting all the time, mind you. My job keeps me close to home—I believe I have the shortest commute of my colleagues, even Sam and Rush, both of whom work at home. I walk all of three feet to get to my desk; about enough time to hear the intro and opening theme music…

The main reason for less podcast listening is that I can’t just sit and listen to a podcast. If I try to, my mind wanders, or I start doing something else and stop listening. Like Dean Allen mentioned in Podswollop:

Tim Bray twat something the other day which I think goes to a core problem with podcasts: they’re useless unless you’re driving, or cooking, or exercising, or doing anything at all other than thinking.

When I do have time to listen, here is what’s on my subscription list¹ (from iTunes):

• Groove Salad Taste of the Week “A weekly appetizer of new, rare and favorite music from NPR’s Groove Salad, presented by SomaFM’s Rusty Hodge.”
• Apple Quick Tip of the Week Tips and tricks for getting the most out of Mac OS X—geared towards small business owners.
• KXCI’s Mini-Programs I especially love “Growing Native” hosted by Petey Mesquitey, that was one of the highlights of my week when living in Tucson and listening to KXCI live on the air.
• The Maniacal Rage Podcast “We Put the ‘Funny’ in ‘Podcast’.” Truly a knee-slapping adventure each time. I especially work out the laugh muscles at the out-takes at the end of each program.
• Nature Stories Podcast “Weekly tales of people’s connections with the natural world” from The Nature Conservancy.
• Latino USA This is my news podcast—lots of current events coverage and commentary, primarily focused on Latino issues². One of my favorite parts is the music reviews; I’ve found five or six great bands from this show in the last six months.
• The Talk Show Dan Benjamin and John Gruber bring you the latest in Mac, technology, movies, and a variety of other topics.
• The Word Nerds Still one of my all-time favorite shows! Dave, Howard, and Howard’s podcast about language, words, and why we say the things we do.

For fun, compare this list to my October 2005 list of podcasts. This current list has more variety and less web/technology topics.

¹ Though the Stephen Fry podcast is in the iTunes list, I just added it today, so it’s not described here.

² Though I may not look like it, I am a Mexican citizen and greatly interested in issues affecting the Latino community. ¡Si se puede!

Never heard classic English Literature quite like this!

Howard Shepherd, one of the Word Nerds, recently made my day by doing a rap version of the famous literary work, Beowulf. Howard did the piece as a demonstration of rhythm and meaning in English as part of one of the Word Nerds’ podcasts.

As a high school English teacher, he one day had the realization that Beowulf and modern American gangster rap (hip-hop) music had the same rhythm. The meter of both the poem and the music were trochaic tetrameter—go figure!

Listen to the podcast, and in minute 25 or so you’ll hear for yourself.

Paul Boag has a great podcast about web design over at boagworld that you should definitely check out.

Topics include accessibility, DOM scripting (with none other than Jeremy Keith as guest), usability, and other tasty morsels.

I found it in iTunes and am now subscribed! If you know of any other good webdev or webdesign podcasts, drop me a line.

What podcasts are you listening to?

The one and only IT Conversations has most of my time and attention. I especially like Tech Nation with Moira Gunn; plus all the conferences that are going on usually get ported to ITC sooner or later.

I also listen to Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte bring the weekly: Security Now podcast. My friend Aaron first recommended it to me…The episodes are short in length, but full of good reporting on the latest in computer security. Get it through iTunes, or your favorite podcast retrieval program.

Of note: The Word Nerds, a weekly podcast about words and how we use them. I just found about it today through Peter Merholz’s blog.