TL;DR: I listen to podcasts. A lot of them. Perhaps too many. There is a list below of my favorites. You can look at the list rather than reading my rambling introduction, I guess.
So it was 1993, the internet was a blossoming place. The world wide web was rapidly gaining over a variety of other services. I think it was an O’Rielly newsletter which pointed out the first episode of Internet Talk Radio. One of my friends had the task of downloading the audio file, which took hours, and we sat around his computer listening to it. Being that cumbersome I don’t think I ever listened to any other subsequent shows.
At one point in my life I started noticing my habbit of turning on the TV as soon as I got home from work, and it was on until I went to bed. When I was moving in the year 2000, I decided to drop that habit and since my TV was missing its antenna all I had to do was drop cable to break that habit. I replaced that habit with turning on the radio (NPR) as soon as I got home. But that was an improvement, since audio does not hinder me from doing other things around the house.
Some radio stations were starting to stream onto the internet, so I was able to follow some shows, notably Go Vegan Radio. I think it was 2003 when I heard about Cristopher Lydon’s show The Whole Wide World. Apparently this show was was the reason RSS added the ability to include audio files, which was the birth of podcasting. Though, as is often the case with me, I failed to notice the significance for several years
Sometime around 2006, after a concert of the band “Fruit”, I went to get a CD and one of the band members saw my vegan tshirt and suggested I read Peter Singer. That triggered a memory and when I got home I looked for interviews with Gary Francione. I knew that my wife had listened to an NPR interview with him which inspired her to become vegan, and I suspect I remembered him critiquing Singer. I found the Veganfreak podcast’s interview with him, and I listened to that podcast regularily as long as it ran. I think this marks the start of me actively seeking out and regularly listening to podcasts, but with several different software packages, but after I got an Android phone I settled on AntennaPod.
So, what follows are the podcasts you must listen to (this list is going to grow over time, stay tuned):
| podcast | when | notes |
|---|---|---|
| 13 Minutes to the Moon | 2019-2021 | Excellent documentary about Apollo 11 and Apollo 13. Soundtrack by Hans Zimmer. |
| Death in Ice Valley | 2018-2021 | An engrossing podcast about a mysterious death in 1970 |
| Dungeons of Drakkenheim | 2019- | One of my favorite actual play D&D podcasts. I am running two campaigns based on this setting. |
| GM Word of the Week | 2015-2023 | A far-ranging podcast which starts with D&D terminology and covers history, mythology, and most anything else even vaguely related. I can (and do) listen to this over and over again. |
| If Books Could Kill | 2022- | You know that odious bestseller self-help book? These guys will rip it apart. |
| More or Less: Behind the Stats | A refuge from misinformation, I found it during the pandemic and it help maintain my sanity amongst all the misinformation. | |
| Podcast Party | 2020- | A great D&D actual play podcast, well produced, well acted. |
| Satanic Panic | 2020? | I have long had a fascination with the Satanic Panic and this covers a particulary alarming case of lives being destroyed as a result. |
| The Bomb | 2020- | A deep dive into two different people involved in the development of the atomic bomb. |
| The Bunker | 2020- | I discovered this (and several spin-off shows) at the beginning of the pandemic, and it helped me maintain my sanity during recent events. |
| The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong | 2017- | Fascinating tales of historical screw-ups. The patreon feed is well worth it! |
| The Lazy RPG Podcast | 2017- | The best podcast about D&D |
| Uncivil | 2017 | An excellent podcast about the Civil War. Sadly it came to an abrupt end, I am sure they had more stories to share. |
| Unobscured (first season) | 2018 | The first season is a detailed account of the Salem Witch Trials. |
When I watched Enola Holmes with my daughter, I really liked the protaganist breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience. And I had a thought: What if someone ran an actual play D&D campaign with the same mechanism?
When I am listening to actual play podcasts, I often hear the players create an unexpected situation, sometimes I can even hear a sigh or some other reaction from the DM that indicates they didn’t expect it either. It would be really instructive in those cases to have the DM stop, turn to the audience and talk about the situation and what they are thinking about doing in reaction.
Anybody who has run a game knows what it is like to have players make unexpected choices. For example, in a recent game I had a player approach a person in a tavern, and rather than ask questions, simply punched him. OK, I didn’t expect that, and I don’t want a full bar fight, mainly due to the time it would take. The NPC had some magic at hand, so he makes a “suggestion”: “why don’t you just sit down and have a drink?”. The character makes his save, which I didn’t expect as it was a high DC. So I have another, well armed, patron step in and make it clear that a fight would not end well. Or should I have let the full bar fight happen? While a one-way soliloquy would not have helped my current situation, but it would have helped other DMs into the thoughts running through my head as a desperately tried to cope with the situation. Being a DM can be a lonely thing at times, and at least seeing others deal with the unexpected would be comforting.
I briefly thought about doing such a podcast myself, but then I think better of it given that I have no experience with audio recording, I have a really annoying sounding voice, and I don’t think my current group would be interested in being recorded. But if someone out there does this, let me know.