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Comment by jordanpg | Hacker News Reader

What an edgy, contrarian critique.

Watch as the author translates his criticisms of some podcasts that he doesn't like into a global criticism of all podcasts.

I wonder if this guy still insists on listening _exclusively_ to LPs and lossless audio formats.

Here are some things about podcasts that I love:

* some podcasts are true gems -- extremely high quality content

* free

* no ads or ads are trivial to avoid

* blather that I (and apparently the author) don't like can be trivially skipped

* rule 34 for podcasts: someone is making podcasts about everything

Did I mention occasionally extremely high quality, free, and no ads?

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Can you point me to some high quality podcasts? Most I have listened to have so much fluff and unnecessary banter that I subconsciously tune out.

I have been trying to get on the podcast bandwagon but having a hard time finding something to like.

Hardcore History

Drifter's Sympathy

S-Town

99% Invisible

Making Sense

This American Life

Serial

Heavyweight

Imaginary Worlds

Reply All

More Perfect

Intelligence Squared US

Slate Podcasts

Welcome to Night Vale

The Black Tapes

Within The Wires

Myths and Legends

Ear Hustle

The Allusionist

The top four there are fiction if it matters to you.

The Adventure Zone: a family roleplaying game turned into a largely-improvisational radio play.

It's not even that this podcast is perfect, but I think it hints at the immense promise of what the format could become!

noagendashow.com

And congressionaldish.com

Are you just listening to popular stuff or looking for podcasts about your more obscure interests? Or just randomly sampling?

I like storytelling podcasts for example, so something like "Re:Sound" was great. It is compilation of the best from other sources: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/re-sound/id135072877 (hard to find it actually) This can lead you to a number of podcasts from all over the world.

Critical Role is an amazing very long form podcast of a DnD game: https://critrole.com/ And if you like it, there is another bunch of similar content discoverable by association.

A lot of top-level stuff targets general audience. If that does not appeal to you, keep digging. Possibly treating it the same way you may look for technical information, with specific keywords, exclusion patterns and following the cross-referencing links. Once you hit the niche you like, you can then test different things within that.

Jocko Willink puts out an excellent podcast focusing on learning leadership and discipline lessons via military history books from the perspective of a Navy SEAL.

I don't listen to it too much because it gets pretty dark (My Lai, WWI, Chechnya), but every episode I've listened to has been worthwhile.

http://jockopodcast.com/

>What an edgy, contrarian critique.

Let's not use "edgy and contrarian" like Britain's working class use "pretentious". E.g. to criticize any attempt to divert from the norm and be more inquisitive.

It's perfect fine to be "contrarian". If anything, we need more of those.

>And being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian is a TERRIBLE idea. I'm all for thoughtful criticism, but simply disliking things for no intelligible reason is grounds for ridicule.

It makes as much sense as liking things because they're the norm, which is the default for most people. So hardly "grounds for ridicule".

Plus, "being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian" adds contrarian voices, which are by definition few (if they were many, they wouldn't be contrarian but "the norm") -- and are thus sorely needed in a mono-culture of agreement (or shallow bi-partisan splits of opinion, like Dems and Reps).

If not for anything else, to serve as the devil's advocate, since few ever consider points outside the norm.

Notice that I said contrarian, not stupid/crazy. E.g. it should be a contrary opinion to popular opinion/norm, but that doesn't mean any contrary opinion will do (e.g. "I believe we should all be eating rocks").

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