On a Podcast Kick

Source: WallpaperAccess.

I'm really late to the podcast world.

My elder daughter has been listening to podcasts for many years, starting with one that discusses Dungeons & Dragons campaigns in a storytelling format. She has discussed some of the episodes with me and told me that she consumes podcasts so much that she has become used to listening to them at two-and-a-half times their normal speeds, while still understanding them, so she can listen to more of them, more quickly.

I've only sped up one podcast, and listening to it at one-and-a-half times its normal speed, I had to pay attention.

The first podcast that I heard, to be honest, didn't seem to count as a podcast to me because it was simply a CBC radio show that I listen to on a regular basis, but had missed the episode when it had originally aired. I wasn't listening to the show in the true sense of listening to a podcast.

As a regular CBC Radio One listener, I often listen to Podcast Playlist, a show devoted to highlighting interesting podcasts, playing enough snippets to get the listener interested. For a year or so, I had often been interested in the podcasts that were being featured in the show but never remembered the name of the podcast or looked to download them.

My 'real' podcast didn't come until this summer, in late August, as DW and I were driving from our home, in Ottawa, to Killarney Provincial Park, along the north shore of Georgian Bay. Neither of us wanted to listen to each other's music and I wasn't in the mood for an audiobook, so DW suggested a podcast.

"What kind of podcast did you want to listen to?" she asked me.

"True crime," I answered without hesitation.

After some searching, DW found one that we were both interested in. It was a murder, where the accused and convicted suspect has always maintained his innocence. It was Season 1 of the podcast, Serial. We listened to the first half of the season on the drive up to Killarney Provincial Park and the second half on the way back to Ottawa. It was very well done and both DW and I were hooked, trying to figure out if Adnan Syed was truly guilty of killing his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee.

As lovers of mystery novels, DW and I were hooked on true-crime podcasts, so afterward, on a future long drive to Toronto, we listened to a CBC podcast, Someone Knows Something. As we had heard snippets of various seasons while listening to Radio One, we decided to find a season with which neither of us was familiar, and listened to Season 2, which involves the disappearance of Sheryl Sheppard.

If her boyfriend/fiancé isn't guilty, I don't know who is.

Since then, I've been paying closer attention to Podcast Playlist and have actually started writing down names of shows that have interested me from the CBC show. To date, here's what I've listened to:

• ars Paradoxica: more radio theatre than other podcasts I've listened to or heard of, ars Paradoxica tells the story of time travel during the Cold War. In the story, physicist Dr. Sally Grissom finds herself transported from the present onto the deck of the USS Eldridge during the Philadelphia Experiment, in 1943. It caused me to pay a lot of attention to follow along, and while I enjoyed it, I stopped listening at the end of the second season.
• The Flamethrowers: if you've ever wondered why the United States has become so politically and socially polarized, this podcast tries to explain the evolution of right-wing talk radio. If you're not offended by what you hear in this podcast, I don't think you and I could become friends.
• The Pod Directive: to clear my mind of vitriol after listening to The Flamethrowers, I went to a show that appeals to my Trekker side. Hosted by Tawny Newsome (Star Trek: Lower Decks) and Paul F. Tompkins (BoJack Horseman, Comedy Bang Bang), the two talk all things Star Trek and have famous guests who are equally nerdy. Because each episode is separate, I'm taking my time with this podcast, going to it when I need to clear my mind.
• Stuff The British Stole: another CBC podcast, teamed with Austrailia's equivalent, the ABC, where host Marc Fennell gives us an unusual history lesson in explaining how British institutions that are housing foreign pieces from the past came to acquire them. It'll have you scratching your head the next time you're in a major museum.
• Bomb on Board: yet another CBC podcast, this is what I'm currently listening to, having found it just yesterday. In Season 2 of the podcast, Uncover, CBC journalists Ian Hanomansing and Johanna Wagstaffe investigate the the mid-air explosion of Canadian Pacific Flight 21, which occurred on July 8, 1965, over the B.C. Interior and killed all 52 people on board. I had never heard of this act of mass murder before (I was only four months old when it happened) but I'm gripped by this investigation.

This is my list, so far, and I'm looking for more. What are your favourite podcasts? Leave your recommendations in the Comments section.