My wife and I used to listen to a lot of atheist podcasts, but to be honest… just about all of them are gone. We used to spend Saturday morning listening to a number of them, and while we still listen to a lot of podcasts in general, the majority just have nothing to do with atheism and to be honest, I’ve gone looking and haven’t found many that I’d be interested in picking up long term.
Things we used to listen to:
Non-Prophets: Okay, theoretically it’s still around, but before the most recent episode, they hadn’t done a podcast for a month and a half. I’ve been listening to them for years now, I’ve listened to every back episode I can and it’s usually a pretty good show. I know they’re busy, I know everyone just got married, I know Matt moved, I’m not being critical, but they just don’t put out enough podcasts to make it a regular part of my repertoire. Hopefully that will change, but right now…
Chariots of Iron: It vanished a long time ago and while I still enjoy reading the blogs of the people that used to do it, but the podcast itself went away without any notice. I did find that they’ve put out a select few episodes in the past year, but since their last episode shows back in January, it’s just not regular enough.
Atheist News: It was a split-off from Chariots of Iron, where it started as a news segment before becoming it’s own dedicated podcast. Like Chariots of Iron, it’s vanished entirely.
Atheists Talk: A show out of Minneapolis that honestly, just didn’t appeal. It’s not their fault though, they are actually broadcasting on the radio and as such, have to watch what they say. There are several podcasts, such as Thinking Atheist, that fit into that category, which appear on the airwaves and thus have to hold back. I’d rather see freedom.
Boston Atheists Report: It was a short-lived podcast that was sort of fun to listen to, but has been defunct for several years.
Skepticality: While not specifically an atheist podcast, it brought an interesting look at skepticism to the table, but as it does drift all over the place, there just wasn’t enough there to keep my interest. After all, I have enough on my plate with religious crazies, having to worry about all the other pseudo-science wingnuts too is just too much.
I know there’s more that I can’t remember, but for the moment, that’s enough.
Specifically, I want a podcast that’s fun to listen to. There are plenty out there that are, for lack of a better term, just dull. The people on the podcast just don’t act like they’re having a good time and they take themselves way too seriously. On the other hand, you have podcasts which purport to be atheist, but are actually primarily political. While a little of that is fine, mostly it’s just liberal politics and I don’t want to listen to that. I’m also not really interested in endless interview shows. There are plenty of shows out there that interview someone new every week. I don’t do hero worship and honestly, listening to people plug their latest book isn’t what I want.
So does anyone have a podcast that they really enjoy that they’d like to put out there? Recently, I’ve started listening to Reasonable Doubts, which I think is quite good, although I’ve only heard a couple of episodes.
To be honest, I’ve even kicked around doing a podcast myself from time to time. I recorded a couple of episodes years ago but my “partner” backed out and we just never got back to doing anything. I did another episode solo that I’ve released on a previous version of the blog back in the day, but to be honest, I don’t know that I could be much different than any other podcast, especially considering how difficult it is to find many I like.
Like I said, post any podcasts you like in the comments. I don’t care if there’s video, but I much prefer a straight audio stream, we just let it play while we work around the house, we don’t have the time to sit in front of a screen and watch what’s going on, so as clever as the video might be, it’s just not going to get watched.
I look forward to seeing what people come up with.
