I finally figured out what delineates the podcasts I like from ones I completely can’t stand and want to punch in the mouth! SHUT UP I HAVE BEEN THINKING REALLY HARD ABOUT THIS FOR YEARS<\/p>\n
Okay, here it is. The first podcast I listened to regularly was the Daily Affirmation, Kris Straub and Scott Kurtz’s little morning chatter that they would record off the cuff while starting work in their studio. I am a Kris Straub superfan, as is well established, and I like Scott Kurtz too (actually, I like Scott Kurtz more than I like PvP). I really liked it, and that led me to the Penny Arcade podcast, probably my favorite collection of nonmusical audio ever. I listened to both of those corpuses repeatedly; they kept me sane and amused during long, boring days of working from home or driving across the country. They’re much of the reason I started doing a podcast of my own.<\/p>\n
Here’s the thing: Scott and Kris did another podcast called the Power Hour, which was also them just talking, taking callers, like a radio show. I tried listening to it a couple times, and I never liked it. This is much the same setup as the podcast Kris and David Malki ! have now, called Tweet Me Harder<\/a>, which I listen to out of loyalty and don’t mind, but of which I’m still not particularly fond.<\/p>\n This contradiction repeats: I love Dan Savage, both in writing and persona, but the Savage Lovecast turns me off. I don’t read the webcomics Sheldon or Evil Inc., but when their creators (Dave Kellett and Brad Guigar) show up with Kris and Scott on Webcomics Weekly, I really enjoy it. I can’t stand any of that hip snarky bullshit on Jordan Jesse Go or You Look Nice Today (they engender the aforementioned desire for mouth-punching). I have a well-known affection for Mr. Glass and This American Life, but actually listening to that show is too much mental work on podcast time, which is almost always during work hours.<\/p>\n So maybe I just like podcasts about webcomics? Yet I love listening to some creator commentary on movies and TV shows, and in particular, I’ve listened to one episode of the old Battlestar Galactica podcast–where the creator, his wife and a large chunk of the cast got together and just talked about the show for hours<\/a>–again and again. But when the commentary is just the director talking to himself (or when the BSG podcast was just Ron Moore) I don’t care.<\/p>\n This is my working theory right now: I like listening to people who care about their work talking to each other<\/i> about how they make it. It’s fascinating, funny, educational and sometimes thrilling. But I can’t stand listening to people talk for the sole purpose of being listened to, even people whose work I admire. The fact that people who are talking about the things they make tend to be unself-conscious when they get into a dialogue helps avoid the potential overlap between those paradigms.<\/p>\n Anyway, this is why if you mention Jesse Thorn to me in any context I will throw something at you. I have a rant for another day about how much Put This On<\/a> sucks compared to the late, lamented Manual of Style<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I finally figured out what delineates the podcasts I like from ones I completely can’t stand and want to punch in the mouth! SHUT UP I HAVE BEEN THINKING REALLY HARD ABOUT THIS FOR YEARS Okay, here it is. The first podcast I listened to regularly was the Daily Affirmation, Kris Straub and Scott Kurtz’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,83,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-derision","category-kristofer-straub","category-obsessions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2044,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions\/2044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}