Favorite Podcasts II: Podcasts that make me laugh

First in this category has to be the Ricky Gervais Show, with Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant and the Karl Pilkington. Karl Pilkington is astonishing and bizarre and a real hoot. In one podcast, he describes how he had to moon his neighbor because he had accidently seen her naked and to balance things. His comment (in response to a question on whether he could eat an animal penis as contestants had to don a reality show) that he couldn't for breakfast but that he "could eat a knob at night" was one of the funniest things I have ever heard. The older podcasts can be purchased form iTunes or Audible.com, but The Guardian newspaper has 3 free podcasts up right now: The Podfather, with shows for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas (the Christmas one was posted today).

Second is the monthly Ouch podcast, with actor Mat Fraser and comedian Liz Carr. It's hard to describe this one, except as definitely not politically correct humor. Ouch is a disability website, and this podcast is a talk show with things like the game "Vegetable, Vegetable, or Vegetable", where Mat & Liz try to guess the disability of a caller.

Finally, This is Screaming Halibut, a weekly 10-minute sketch comedy podcast. Morag, an evil genius with the intellect of a hundred Einsteins and the cunning of a thousand Machiavellis, has to contend with people who think he has a girl's name.

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Carl Sagan Blog-A-Thon

Today marks the tenth anniversary of Carl Sagan’s death. To recognize the occasion, there is a blogathon in the works. I learned about the blogathon from the Bad Astronomy blog. What a neat idea!

I'm not as eloquent as some of the blogs I've read, but I can talk about my favorite Sagan book: Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. For me, this book really showed his ability to communicate the fascination of science and the real world. As someone who loves reading about science (I majored in science as an undergraduate and ended up a science librarian), I've read a lot of popular science books, and this is one of my favorite books in this genre (I'm also a big fan of Stephen Jay Gould in this genre).

My Favorite Podcasts Part I: Brain stretchers

I love listening to podcasts when I'm walking or driving or working on the computer. These are the lecture or documentary podcasts I enjoy listening to that stretch my brain.

In Our Time - probably my favorite podcast in this or any category. In Our Time is a weekly BBC Radio 4 documentary where host Melvin Bragg talks with scholars about a wide variety of subjects - from altruism to the history of vaccination to Chaucer, the speakers are always engaging and I have learned something listening to every episode.

Lingua Franca - a weekly podcast on language produced by the Australian Broadcasting Company Radio National. Topics have included why grammar is still important and how to interpret museum texts.

Ockham's Razor - another ABC Radio National podcast; this one is a weekly documentary where scientists and others (writers, scholars, researchers) can talk about various topics. I'm a little behind on this one - I just listened to the November 19th podcast on this history of hypochondria and the benefits of chocolate.

A Way with Words - this PBS podcast has been on hiatus since cohost Richard Lederer retired in October. They are currently rebroadcasting old episodes, but new episodes should be starting up again in 2007 with the other cohost, Martha Barnette. This is a call-in show about words and language.