I am envious of people who listen to a lot of podcasts and contribute frequently to online forums. They cleary have better time-management skills than I do. I contribute to two online forums, The JREF Forum and Bad Astronomy, but that's only because I'm addicted to the content of those sites. I listen to one podcast: Skepticality. I found Skepticality in the summer of 2005 and became an instant fan of the show. It helped with my mid-year TAM withdrawl symptoms. Hosts Derek and Swoopy were producing top-shelf skeptical content on a regular basis. And with each episode, you got to know them better.In September 2005, Steve Jobs named Skepticality as a top podcast. That same month, they suffered a setback that would have sent most podcasts into oblivion. But they re-emerged in 2006 as the official podcast of Skeptic magazine. What a ride!
Anyway, I think the world of Derek and Swoopy--two ordinary folks from Roswell, Georgia who built a polished, excellent podcast from scratch. Meeting them at TAM5 was a highlight of the meeting. The fact that they included me in their TAM5 episode was an unexpected thrill. Swoopy mentions me by name and says something nice about me, I get to weigh in on the ongoing "monkey news" controversy, and they linked to my website on their show notes for Episode 45.
Download that episode to get a sampling of TAM5 audio gems that Swoopy was able to catch. I'll post to report when I can get my head to fit through a doorway again.
2 comments:
I haven't listened to this podcast yet, but if you are saying that they had Monkey News before the Ricky Gervais Show, it's not true. Monkey News is the continuation of a segment they did on their weekly radio show in London. I am such a fan of the podcast that I downloaded some of the old radio shows from 2001, and Monkey News is on there. CASE CLOSED!
That's the original Monkey News.
When you listen to the podcast, O serious MonkeyNews aficionado, you will hear me qualify my statement appropriately.
I should have further qualified it by refering to Skepticality's MonkeyNews as the original, "listenable" MonkeyNews.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Ricky Gervais fan. Loved the BBC's The Office! But when I tuned in to my first taste of his show (free podcast, once upon a time), I found it to be unlistenable. Him and his buds in "stream of conciousness" mode for, well, too long. If there was a structure to the show or any sense of editing involved, it wasn't apparent.
And I had been listening to Skepticality podcasts well before I saw Gervais' podcast on my iTunes screen.
But if you want to get technical, there was probably a zine in the '90s doing MonkeyNews, and maybe something else doing it before that. CASE OPEN.
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