[QuickTidal]

Don't know if it's due to a recent iOS update, or if it's always been like this but...the native Apple Podcasts App....is a horrific battery hog. Like we are talking I listened to a 20 minute episode, and in Usage on the phone it says 50% has gone to the App...while Music (which I arguably use MORE) is using about 5%.

WTF?

Anyways, going to switch to another podcast manager and see if it helps. This is madness.

[QuickTidal]

So I've been trying out StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson...and while it CAN be informative and showcases Tyson's breadth of science knoweldge...the format is strange: Neil interviews someone on his own. Then organizes a panel or people who listen/watch that interview, and they discuss it. Which is...convoluted. It feels like Talk Soup for science. I'd MUCH rather just hear the one on one interview...but that bring us to the second issue I have with it...Tyson is INTERRUPT MAN. Sweet jumped up jiggety jeebus, if deGrasse Tyson actually ALLOWED a guest to answer a question he's posed, they might get somewhere...but he literally can't stop interrupting them with his own thoughts. It's fucking IRRITATING. I reached my wits end when he interviewed Alan Rickman (and after calling Snape a "super creepy" character causing me to question if he's even sat down to WATCH the HP movies at all)...and you can literally tell that Rickman is not impressed by the interviewee asking questions and not allowing him to answer. By the 4th question you can tell he's largely checked out of the whole thing. And Tyson is asking him strange questions that attempt to tie an interview with an actor into science, and I'm like "Just stop man. Just stop."

So yeah, the show COULD be good...but the strange format, and the fact that Tyson could not interview a guest properly with his mouth sewn shut, utterly ruins it for me.

Oh, and the ads. FILLED with ads. For a show supported on Patreon (with 500+ patrons bringing in about $3400/month) by the schmoes who listen to it...the fact that a 45 minute-to-1hr podcast is inter-cut with about 5 ad breaks is a bit of a shitshow if I'm honest. But that may be even more irritating just due to the tiered format of the interview and panel.

I dunno. I love NDT's science knowledge...but this is a mess for me.

-------------------------------------

On the bright side of podcasting, after binging every ep of 99% INVISIBLE, I've delved into the rest of the Radiotopia shows and found that they are all as classy as 99pi! THE MEMORY PALACE, THE RADIO DIARIES, and CRIMINAL are quick faves so far.

[QuickTidal]

Just discovered a podcast that some of you are likely already aware of. MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE. It's an Aussie podcast about the supernatural, futurism, paranormal, and just all around mysteries...GREAT production quality, the hosts are awesome because if something sounds sketchy or skeptical, they call it out (in a nice way). So it finds the line between the story and the truth as often as possible. Great fun. Great listen.

[QuickTidal]

Started listening to SERIAL S1 two days ago, and I'm binging the hell out of it. On Ep8 already!

[QuickTidal]

SERIAL S2, about Bowe Bergdahl. Wow, totally different from S1, but fascinating in a different way.

[QuickTidal]

Listening to:

CBC's SOMEONE KNOWS SOMETHING. Two seasons of a true crime podcast, the first of which deals with a disappearance of a child in eastern Ontario in 1972 while fishing with his dad and siblings. Really well made.

MY FAVOURITE MURDER with Karen Kilgaraff and Georgia Hardstark. For something that deals with such sometimes "hard to hear" and dark aspects, the women do a great job of keeping the proceedings as light as they can as to not drag the listener into a moody and dank place. It's pretty fascinating, and often deals with subject matter I've never heard.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 06 October 2017 - 05:34 PM

[worry]

That reminds me, my sister has a podcast with two of her friends called BRAVE GIRLS CLUB (not to be confused with the women's online community of the same name). They just started it this year, for fun, no sponsors or anything (but they are on Itunes et al). My sister is a My Favorite Murder junkie, and the podcast has some similarities to that, but it deals with all things in the spooky vein whether real or supernatural. It's pretty loosey goosey, but it beats listening to Aaron Mahnke stammer through a script for half an hour. Also if you have spooky stories of your own, you can send em in to be read/discussed during their mini-sodes. https://www.facebook...rlsclubpodcast/

[QuickTidal]

New season of SOMEONE KNOWS SOMETHING is out, and revisits host David Ridgen's 2004-2007 documentary about the brutal Mississippi cold case of the murders of Charles Moore and Henry Dee by members of the KKK. It's a fascinating look into 1960's era south and the klan especially as the terrorist organization it was/is...and how the murders of two innocent young black men were solved, but never prosecuted because of how thick the state was with either klan or racists.

Solid listening yet again by CBC's David Ridgen.

[Morgoth]

The Onion's A Very Fatal Murder, a parody of the true crime genre, is just amazing.

[Tiste Simeon]

OK so a quick skim of this thread shows that no-one has mentioned THE BEEF AND DAIRY NETWORK podcast. It's a podcast for those involved with, or just interested in, the beef and dairy world. And it's hilarious. Only about 26 episodes or something at the moment but it's been consistently high quality.

[Aptorian]

I've recently added NPR's Car Talk to my podcast subscriptions.

I've often heard people gush about the show but I've never bothered to check it out since I don't own a car or really care about cars at all. However I was looking for something different so I thought I'd check it out anyway.

It's really good! It's sort of a mix of a quiz show and a conversational detective show about diagnosing what ever is wrong with the callers car. Coupled with the good humoured nature of the hosts it makes for a very entertaining listen.

[QuickTidal]

Avoid Payne Lindsey's new one ATLANTA MONSTER (about the Atlanta child slayings)...as he's just basically giving voice to conspiracy theories, and inanities. It SEEMS like it would be interesting, but it's not.

On the flip side, over at Radiotopia, Phoebe Judge (who hosts and producers the CRIMINAL podcast), has a new one all about love stories called THIS IS LOVE, and it's quite wonderful....it's very similarly constructed to CRIMINAL....just not about crime. VERY good. Plus, I could listen to Phoebe all day...if she ever does a co-hosting podcast with Roman Mars, it would be the two best voices in podcasting together.

[QuickTidal]

So I want to talk/vent more in depth about Payne Lindsey’s podcast ATLANTA MONSTER (this is only my first listen to one of his podcasts….and apparently he already has a reputation I was unaware of for putting shit out there just because) which is about the Atlanta Child Murders in the early 80’s where something like 29 kids and teens were strangled by as serial killer.

Please note: This case will be what comprises season 2 of the Netflix show MINDHUNTER, because the two guys who started the Behavioural Science Unit in the FBI were involved.

Going into spoilers in case anyone wants to listen to ATLANTA MONSTER…though I’m going to recommend you don’t, because it’s conspiracy theory garbage. I listened to the whole season so you don’t have to.

Spoiler

So the murders went on for so long and scared entire communities that the FBI was brought in to help, and in the end they realized that the most recent bodies were being dropped off bridges into the river so they had a country-wide stakeout of all the bridges to try to catch whomever was doing it. They heard a splash at 3AM, found a guy on the bridge starting his car up and trying to drive away. This is how they eventually arrested Wayne Williams, who was eventually charged with the murders and still sits in prison for them.

The murdered were all black males, and the mode of their killings was usually strangulation. They started off as younger kids (aged 7-15), but a bunch of the latter ones were young adults in their early 20’s as well.

Wayne claims he was on the bridge looking for the house of a woman he was going to meet the next day as he was a talent scout for music acts. I mean…that’s a stupid attempt at an alibi, but whatever.

Anyways, Williams was convicted on the testimony of the police who heard the splash and stopped him in the car, fibre evidence (very RARE green carpet fibres only minimally produced in Atlanta, purple fibres, and dog hair fibres…the Williams’s had that green carpet in their house, Wayne had a purple bedspread, and the exact type of dog the dog hair fibres were) which was found on at least 15 of the strangulation victims…the fibre evidence examiner said it was so rare that these elements line up in this way that his analogy was that it was like Wayne was driving around in a lime green Rolls Royce with purple flames on the side…finding two cars like that would portably not ever happen….thus the odds that all those there fibres would appear in another home would be astronomical (the green carpet fibres especially as carpet fibres are EXTREMELY unique apparently in their makeup under a microscope AND the specific wear and tear). So while the main evidence against Wayne was all pretty deeply scientific, it still pretty clearly points at the guy.

There is also Wayne himself who exhibits ALL the hallmarks for a sociopath/psychopath. The charisma, the lying, the desire to control the media, the strange pastimes, a lack of empathy, a lack of ability to form strong loving bonds with anyone, including his own parents. Ect.

Now the argument that Payne dives into is the conspiracy idea that Wayne didn’t commit the murders, and that he was a scapegoat by the Atlanta PD and the FBI to “close the cases” and they needed a guy, and Wayne was their guy. Which is already kind of stretching, but then he speaks to Wayne in prison and allows Wayne to rail about conspiracies…like Wayne claiming he was recruited by the CIA as a young adult and trained to kill during Iran Contra and THAT was why they pinned these murders on him, to keep him from telling the truth about clandestine CIA operations with training youths to be super soldiers and spies. We get to hear from his cellmate who’s rap music career he is helping along for half an episode…then we get to talk to that cell mates MOTHER for some reason, who says nice things about Wayne…we hear about his sketchy ass lawyer…..and the police detective who believes Wayne is innocent….who we then find out is incarcerated for attempted murder HIMSELF…it’s just a clusterfuck of asinine conspiracy theory pathways to show “Maybe Wayne Williams ISN’T the Atlanta Child Murderer?” TM. They speak about how Wayne is too small to have killed and disposed of some of the bigger bodies (the two he went down for officials were 20 year old males), or that because of racial tension that the KKK may have been killing all these black males…a fact which ignores the very well documented fact that serial killers nigh universally kill only amongst their own race. And the fact that all these boys were taken from parts of Atlanta where a white person picking up random kids would have stood out like a sore thumb and been noticed.

Anyways. It’s irritating because this is a fascinating case, and no matter what conspiracy theories you try to throw at it, you still have a guy who exhibits most sociopathic traits, whose alibi for why he was on a bridge in the middle of the night in a stopped and then started car (while there was a splash and bodies found) is ludicrous (and based around meeting a woman the next day who has never been found to actually exist), who has three very distinct items in his home in which they matched fibres perfectly to 15+ of the bodies, and who makes up obvious lies about involvement in the CIA and Iran Contra….and who when Payne asks for elucidation on any topic to prove his innocence he says shit like “You’re going to see…” and “I’ll tell you and you’ll be astonished…”….and NEVER produces any of that information. Payne literally asks him some point blank “Whats’ the proof of that?” questions and Williams says “When you talk to ____, they will tell you and you will understand” or some shit. It’s fucking MADDENING that A documentary podcaster is giving this much time to entertaining clear bullshit from a convicted serial killer.

There are slews of people interviewed who think he’s innocent and was railroaded, and they dominate the lions share of the episodes…and their reasoning is always like “What about this? What about that?” and they ignore the fact that the main evidence still points DIRECTLY at Wayne Williams, and no wiggle room.

So Payne Lindsay wanted to make a podcast about the Atlanta Child Murders, and instead of just a three episode documentary about the whole thing that was tidy and correct that might show all sides, but didn’t delve into conspiracy theories too much….he pads it out to ten episodes and drives it with a “what if he didn’t do it and was set up by the Deep State?” narrative…and it's like listening to crazy people rant for an hour at a time.

Anyways, this just means I’ll avoid Payne Lindsay’s work in the future the guy is a hack, looking for clicks.

[Malankazooie]

 Alternative Goose, on 23 February 2018 - 10:51 AM, said:

I've recently added NPR's Car Talk to my podcast subscriptions.

I've often heard people gush about the show but I've never bothered to check it out since I don't own a car or really care about cars at all. However I was looking for something different so I thought I'd check it out anyway.

It's really good! It's sort of a mix of a quiz show and a conversational detective show about diagnosing what ever is wrong with the callers car. Coupled with the good humoured nature of the hosts it makes for a very entertaining listen.

About NPR podcasts. You ever listen to Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!? It's a lot of fun. It airs on the weekend mornings on the NPR programming schedule and is a quiz show of the past week's current events (with short interviews of the celebrity guests appearing on the podcast). Give it a go if you like to be quizzed on your knowledge of what just went down in the world the past week.

https://www.npr.org/...t-dont-tell-me/

[QuickTidal]

A stellar, emotional, and amazingly produced podcast by CBC (who also make the incredible SOMEONE KNOWS SOMETHING) called MISSING & MURDERED: FINDING CLEO has ended its ten episode season, and it's probably the most heart breaking podcast I've ever listened to, and VERY informative.
As a Canadian, I've been remiss to not know about the Sixties Scoop and the Residential Schools that preceded it....and what a black mark the Canadian government has on it for basically making it so the Indigenous peoples of our country never even had a fucking chance.
I'm horribly ashamed that I've lived 40+ years in this country and NEVER knew the depth of depravity and assimilation attempts our country has been responsible for. We should be beyond ashamed. We should not be able to look away. This shit needs to be taught in Canadian history classes and social studies classes. It's THAT important.

The podcast is about just one family of split up kids amongst THOUSANDS...but it's poignant, and incredibly deftly done...and the CBC producer of it (and host) is a Cree nation woman herself, so it all feels well-earned, and unintrusive. I feel like you NEED the native culture POV here, as anyone not of the First Nations Canada could not have delved into this deeply and also understood the backdrop, connotations, and results of things like Residential schools, and the Sixties Scoop.

And after having listened, the below painting breaks my goddamn heart and utterly enrages me at the same time. If ANYONE came to try to take my kids from me in a misguided attempt to assimilate them...I can't imagine. I simply can't.

 Sixtiesscooppainting1.jpg (150.96K)
Number of downloads: 0

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 03 April 2018 - 03:51 PM

[QuickTidal]

New CBC podcast about Keith Rainere & Allison Mack's sex cult NXIVM.

UNCOVER: ESCAPING NXIVM

It's insane, full of fucked up revelations, and shows how insidious cult leaders are.

[Tiste Simeon]

 QuickTidal, on 13 September 2018 - 05:58 PM, said:

New CBC podcast about Keith Rainere & Allison Mack's sex cult NXIVM.

UNCOVER: ESCAPING NXIVM

It's insane, full of fucked up revelations, and shows how insidious cult leaders are.

SOLD.

[acesn8s]

I finally found out about Critical Role and I've been catching up via their podcasts.

Voice Actors playing D&D, it's a lot of fun.

[QuickTidal]

Finished up the last two eps of UNCOVER: ESCAPING NXIVM, and the penultimate episode is all from Keith's defense lawyer...and my gods....it's like hearing someone who has fallen for Keith's entire NXIVM bullshit. He literally spouts a bunch of NXIVM buzz phrases in defense of certain actions, and he even pulls the MRA card by claiming that we (society) don't get upset that football players brand themselves...so according to him it's sexist to say that when women brand themselves (which is how Keith positions that part of the cult) they are victims. My gods. That was the hardest 45 min to listen to in the whole series, simply because that lawyer (who also represented that asshole Pharma guy Martin Shkreli) is an insufferable asshole talking shit the whole damned time. My eyes nearly rolled out of my head.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 26 September 2018 - 01:03 PM

[Aptorian]

Anyone been listening to Marvel's Wolverine: The long night?

I just started episode 3. It's fantastic. It does that clever story telling trick where it's not being told by Wolverine or following him directly. Rather it's being told around a pair of government agents tracking him and how the local citizens in the area have reacted to him.

It seems to revolve around a series of murders that Wolverine is being suspected of and a weird cult.

I don't believe this ties into the rest of the marvel universe. It seems to take place in a time after Wolverine escaped from the weapon X program. Sort of like the Hulk, he's on the run and just staying low and out of sight.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 02 October 2018 - 05:52 PM