This Week in Podcasts
When I published this article’s predecessor, I should have debuted this series as a collection of the podcasts I listened to within the past week rather than those released during that time period. This slight difference in phrase would have been especially appropriate given my eight-day absence last week, during which I could not listen to a single episode of any show. Now that I have returned, with a week’s worth of episodes now outside of my stated time frame, I have painted myself into a corner of sorts. Or I would have, but for the fact that I can make that necessary change now: from here on out, these “This Week in Podcasts” posts will include episodes I have listened to since publishing the last installment rather than only those less than a week old. In addition to broadening the scope of these posts, this will also give me the ability to — in good conscience — talk about retired shows and episodes long past their prime. On top of that, I can now talk about all the shows I missed while in the Bahamas.
Thank You For Calling! 3: Willing to Negotiate. Part two of a nearly hour-long show recorded with John Roderick, Jim Dalrymple, Lex Friedman, and Brent Billings back in February, Moisés and his impressive roster of guests continue discussing airline travel and all its associated frustrations and miseries. Come for the guests, stay for the topic: each not only brings with them their unique personality, but their own just barely believable horror story as well. If Moisés manages to maintain this level of quality in all his shows across the recently-established Electric Shadow Network, I’m going to have to carve a lot more time out of my schedule for podcasts.
Electric Shadow 3: Libido of a Salesman. Speaking of Moisés, his new network, rock star rosters, and great podcasts, Adam Lisagor, John Gruber, and Guy English got together to talk about new media and how original content producers like Netflix could shake up the status quo within this industry. Also, Bad Grandpa.
Electric Shadow 4: Meatball on the Tree. In the second part of their two-part series, Moisés, John, Adam, and Guy continued their discussion by delving in to the then-recent news of Comcast attempting to overtake Time Warner and become one of the world’s largest cable providers, and the associated topic of net neutrality, before going off the rails and moving on to talk about Jimmy Fallon’s performance on the Tonight Show. The last hour or so were a bit erratic but the first half more than made up for it.
Storming Mortal 12: Lonely sandwich magic and a place for the soul with Merlin Mann. Hat-tip to Marco for pointing this one out, Anže Tomic “interviewed” — and I use that term lightly here, because it really felt nothing like the stale, scripted interviews I see all too often these days — Merlin Mann for his show Storming Mortal. If Anže’s name sounds familiar, you may be recognizing it from Linus Edwards’s The Podcasters series, or the thirty-seventh episode of The Menu Bar, iKlout, where Andrew Clark and Zac Cichy had him on as a guest. Anže is a great guest, but an even better host; this is one show you shouldn’t miss.
The Voicemail 088. Again, absolutely hilarious: if you enjoyed Stefan and James in their previous episode wherein they talked about Mobile World Congress — and honestly, I can’t for the life of my find a reason you wouldn’t have — you’ll love this successor episode. The Voicemail is quickly becoming one of my favorite shows by far, and great episodes like this one are certainly not helping everyone else’s shows.
Bionic #82: Do as Mel Gibson Does. I’m trying not to link every single episode of Bionic in these articles, but Myke Hurley and Matt Alexander are just that good at what they do here. If you ever wondered what it was like to be an entrepreneur with your own mens’ clothing startup, Do as Mel Gibson Does is a great place to find that out.
The Talk Show 74: Heart of a Gambler. Glenn Fleishman joined John Gruber to talk about Bitcoin in perhaps the best discussion on the topic I have heard to date; highly recommended if you have any interest in the world of cryptocurrencies, and especially if you ever intend to participate.
ATP 56: The Woodpecker. After their previous episode on software methodologies, in which John (apparently erroneously, if the show’s listeners are to be believed) placed programming above all other fields with regards to difficulty, he came back with some fantastic follow-up reminiscent of Hypercritical where he clarified his statement and made a rather damning case for it. This is John at his best, folks. Unfortunately, it only lasted about twenty-six minutes — a far cry from the days of Hypercritical — but I’ll take what I can get. After that, they went on to work through some more software methodology follow-up, Marco’s new Mac Pro, and then talk about AV receivers and sound systems.
Unfortunately, although I had an entire week to do so, I failed to catch up on all the podcasts I missed while out of the country: as of this morning, my queue still contains fifteen episodes coming in at just over twelve hours. But this is the cross I have elected to bear, and so — with a heavy heart — I will go into next week with a roster of fantastic shows queued and ready to play. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.