Podcasts I'm Subscribed To (Part 1)

So I realized I have some however never recommended any podcasts on this blog. Or, well, I wrote about four favorites awhile back, but I haven't shared the huge amount of podcasts I subscribe to. It's too many, really. I have about 15 of them as actual top-of-the-priority list favorites where I listen to every new episode that comes out, and a LOT more that are just in the "when I run out of top priority, play any of the rest of these at random" list. I hit subscribe quickly and then hit unsubscribe when I realize whatever I'm listening to has ceased to be fun to me and I skip it more often than not.

Because I have so many, I'm going to do it like this. Here is a photo of the first 9 podcasts in my podcast app, alphabetically. I'll talk through this, and then later I'll post another 9.

10 Things That Scare Me. A micro-podcast where a huge variety of celebrities share 10 things that scare them and talk a little bit more in depth about a few of them.

99% Invisible. Another very short one from the folks at RadioLab, about design choices you probably don't think about.

Advanced Spanish (News in Slow Spanish). One of several podcasts I added to help me practice my Spanish. This one's like a 5-minute news blurb in Spanish. I like it because it's short.

Ask Me Another. An NPR game show that I first started listening to because Jonathan Coulton co-hosted it, but turns out it's just great.

Bad Batch. A terrifying short series about a bad batch of stem cells that caused longterm damage for a lot of people.

Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People. Anonymous people call comedian Chris Gethard and talk to him for up to an hour about whatever they feel like. He's a wonderfully empathetic listener and interviewer and makes every guest seem specials.

Behind the Bastards. I just recently subscribed to this one on someone else's recommendation and haven't gotten a chance to listen to it yet, so... *shrug*

Best of All Possible Podcasts. A theater in Virginia gives table reads to unproduced 10-minute plays and then talks about possible ways to stage them.

Black Men Can't Jump in Hollywood. This one is newish to me as well, but it's a group of black men discussing mainstream films featuring black leads and dissecting them. The couple episodes I've listened to are fascinating and funny and it's good to hear perspectives other than my own on film!

I Started a Podcast!

Since I haven't been blogging, I never posted about it on here, but back in November, I started a podcast! My friend Jennie and I had been on the lookout for creative opportunities somewhere, though not necessarily together, and then I came up with a podcast idea and asked her to join me.

The podcast, called Somebody Write This, is based on a writing game I used to play with my sisters, where we'd randomly generate a character, a setting, and a plot action from lists I had on the computer, and then we'd have like half an hour to write a short story featuring that.

I put together a more elaborate (and often more difficult-to-work-with) random plot generator online, and at the beginning of every episode we generate one and then spend 15-20 minutes talking it through into a possible actual story. Sometimes this gets complicated -- in one episode, our protagonist's main action was "unwittingly comforting" someone. In another, an MI5 officer and a gentleman rat were apparently solving crime together. Others lend themselves more naturally to full-length stories, so we get to get into the details a little bit more.

At the end of each episode, we put out a call to the listeners to take any piece of the story that may have inspired them and turn it into something. Any listeners who do write something based on our goofy brainstorming can share their output with us and, with their permission, we'll share pieces of it on-air and publish it or a link to it on our blog. To our delight, we've gotten a couple responses! Our first two episodes yielded a one-act play and a sonnet from our listeners, respectively.

If you're interested in listening, it's available wherever you get your podcasts, or you can check out our host page on Anchor.fm here. We also put up transcripts on the blog so our hard-of-hearing subscribers can be part of this too, so check that out! Subscribe, and if you use iTunes, which seems to be the only place you can review podcasts (get with the times, Spotify), go ahead and give us a review, because that boosts our visibility.

I shall leave you with three random synopses from our generator. You may see pieces of these popping up on the show in the future, who knows?

• A biography of a group of friends, who must follow a clue.
• A Canadian intelligence officer and the Jedi Council face life in a drab police state, looking for a nerve gas attack and a Walkman.
• With a special heritage, the brother of a prominent district attorney is brainwashed to want a book.