Best podcasts?

In this posting, I'm going to answer what I'm sure is one of the questions uppermost in your mind: what podcasts am I listening to? There's all sorts of podcasts out there, and I tend to listen to the geeky ones. Unfortunately, most of the people who make them tend to spend the first 5 or 10 minutes on title music, sound effects, and various personal stuff that I don't care about. They also say things like, "the wife," which for some reason annoys me. Anyway, there are three podcasts which stand out for me, enough so that I thought I'd write about them.

• The first one is Science @ NASA, which is a great website, and which has a number of delivery vehicles, including podcasts at the feed: <http://science.nasa.gov/podcast.xml>. The audio quality leaves something to be desired, but the segments are short and sweet.
• The next is Morning Stories from public radio station WGBH in Boston, with a podcast feed at <http://streams.wgbh.org/podcast/morningstories.xml>. An eclectic collection of short shows with very high production values.
• And finally, there's In Our Time, from BBC Radio 4. Excellent, in-depth shows that take the time to seriously cover a wide range of topics. The host, Melvyn Bragg, sits down with three guests each week to discuss topics in history, science, religion, culture, and philosophy. You can find the podcast feed at <http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/mp3/podcast.xml>.

All three of these shows are part of highly informative web sites with much additional information and multiple ways of obtaining shows besides RSS feeds. I suggest you skip one of your usual blog reads today (after you're done with mine, of course) and go to one of these sites instead.