March 25, 2012

Your Favorite Podcasts Revealed!

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Yesterday I asked for podcast recommendations. I got loads of ’em! So now, as a public service, I figure I should provide you with a rough Top Ten list culled from comments and emails. The full comment section has a lot more than just the podcasts below, and you should take a look if you’re in the market for something a little different, but here were the favorites:

  1. Radiolab won by a mile. The entire stable of NPR shows also got a lot of votes, including Planet Money, Car Talk, This American Life, Foreign Dispatch, and others.
  2. In Our Time was the only show that came close to Radiolab. The rest of the BBC radio lineup got lots of recommendations too.
  3. The Bugle, a news sendup from John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman.
  4. Philosophy Bites, “podcasts of top philosophers interviewed on bite-sized topics…”
  5. “The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877,” a Yale University course by David Blight. The Open Yale series in general got a lot of strong recommendations.
  6. History of Rome, a massive, ongoing series of podcasts “tracing the history of the Roman Empire, beginning with Aeneas’s arrival in Italy and ending (someday) with the exile of Romulus Augustulus, last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire.” So far it’s up to episode #172, which covers Attila the Hun’s invasion in 451 AD, so it must be getting close to wrapping up.
  7. WTF, comedy with an attitude from Marc Maron.
  8. The B.S. Report, sports talk from ESPN’s Bill Simmons.
  9. The New Yorker’s stable of podcasts, incuding Comment, Political Scene, Fiction, and Out Loud. 
  10. Slate’s stable of podcasts, including Gabfest, Culture Gabfest, and Double X Gabfest.

On the technology side, there were also several recommendations for Downcast as an alternative to iTunes. And, of course, lots of other recommendations that were a little farther off the beaten path than the ones above. Click the link for more. Enjoy.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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