Salon post: August 24

[jenett]

Welcome to this week's salon post!


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Topic of the week
What stuff do you listen to?

Someone at work asked me about podcasts this week, which lead to the 'what podcasts am I willing to talk about at work' (since a bunch of my listening is witchy/magical/related stuff, which is both not necessarily of general interest, and not a thing I go into at work.) A partial list of mine in the comments.

What I've been up to
We are pushing our new catalog live today! It's very exciting, but has also involved a bunch of editing of documentation and making sure things work.

This is also the first week since the beginning of May in which I have not had a medical appointment (most of which were allergy shots, but still!) Unfortunately, I spent 2 hours getting a tire repaired last night, so I still feel like there has been way too much out in my life.

(And I have a medical appointment next week, two the week after, and one the week after that. Yes, this is sort of ridiculous but is about fixing a cluster of sort of related things.)


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Comments

[alexseanchai]

ooh podcast recs! *waits patiently*

I have a bunch of queer/witchy/magical/religious type podcasts and iTunes University stuff downloaded but I can't say as I've fallen in love with any of them? Except The Jaguar and the Owl, but that deadified. :( I do want to rec Kaye Bohemier, though, who's doing SF podcast novels with high queer.

Musically, a lot of Pagan stuff. Spiral Dance, Sharon Knight, SJ Tucker. Seanan McGuire plays with some of the same stuff in her faerie folk. Also a lot of Top 40 stuff—Taylor Swift, P!nk; Sara Bareilles is a favorite—and a lot of country by female artists, mostly dating from the '90s: LeAnn Rimes, Martina McBride, Jamie O'Neal, Faith Hill.

What I'm up to: Well, right this minute, waiting for maintenance to come knock pursuant to my calling him at 9:30 last night because my living room ceiling sprang a leak. Subsequent to that (read: I will have had to get up to let him in and I will try to avoid sitting down again until I have Done Shit): let me put it this way. Today is the last day of my lease. I am not done packing, never mind cleaning...

[jenett]

So, I've been going through a lot of podcasts, because the catalog editing is a lot of fairly tedious editing work that doesn't take a lot of brains. I listen on headphones, so I can listen to stuff that I might not advertise at work. Here's some of my recent listening (not a complete list of stuff in my app, mind you..)

They're all non-fiction (though some are more opinion/speculation than others) because fiction takes more concentration for me, and is less agreeable to me picking up what happened if I miss a bit because someone asks me a question.

General interest:

• Ask A Manager
  
• Community Signal (online community management)
  
• Criminal (some true crime, but more sociology and deeper examination)
  
• Gastropod
  
• Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness
  
• Gone(Missing/stolen items)
  
• Productivity Alchemy
  
• Smart Podcast, Trashy Books (romance books and authors)

History:

• Backstory
  
• In Our Time
  
• Museum of Lost Objects
  
• Sawbones
  
• Stuff You Missed in History Class

Mysteries/spooky stuff, including investigations of same:

• Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities
  
• Astonishing Legends
  
• The Conspirators
  
• Lore
  
• MonsterTalk
  
• Oh No Ross and Carrie

Witchy/pagan/magical:

• The Arcane Academy Podcast (from Magus Books)
  
• Hermit's Lamp Podcast
  
• Talking Shop with Theresa and Bri (for metaphysical business owners and process geeks.)

[jazzyjj]

Well, I too am sort of a podcast junky although most if not all the ones I listen to are centered around some aspect of visual impairment. I'm a techie too, so a lot of tech-related podcasts. Once I get a bit better on my iPhone, I will start listening to more stuff on there too. Speaking of my iPhone, I just got yet another call from a number I don't recognize. One of the reasons I went with an iPhone in the first place is the talking caller ID. I think this works with the on-board screen reader turned on or off, but haven't experimented much yet with that particular setting. There are just so many settings on my iPhone that it's kinda daunting. But back to listening to stuff. I also have a vast iTunes collection on my Mac, which includes a wide array of music. I have not yet checked out iTunes U, but it sounds pretty cool.





Regarding other things I've been up to lately, a neighbor and I just returned from seeing a friend at a local coffee shop. That was a lot of fun, and we ended up seeing another mutual friend in passing. Tomorrow I'm going to the zoo with my building mates. Today is my next-door neighbors' son's first birthday, and we decided earlier to go there tomorrow. Last evening I did my grocery shopping for the week.

[pameladean]

I have a terrible time listening to things -- narrative things, that is; music is fine. It's like a relevant part of my brain is not engaged and starts woolgathering. I sometimes listen to the Publisher's Weekly radio show about new books if Rose Fox is doing it.

And I did successfully listen to three seasons of "Within the Wires" -- amazing narrative tricks, amazing narrators, the second and third seasons are about fictional works of art and you can see them so clearly, while the plot unfolds sideways and is extremely tense and engaging. But mostly I can't get that engaged. I'm seriously wondering if there's some kind of exercise I can do to get better at it.

P.

[theora]

At the moment I mostly listen to podcasts, but I'm pretty new to it and so far only follow a handful:

• Brexitcast (chatty BBC podcast about Brexit)
• Food Psych (interviews with Health at Every Size/intuitive eating/fat activist people)
• Betwixt and Between (chatty witch podcast)
• New World Witchery (focus on North American folk witchcraft stuff - haven't listened to a ton yet)

Before the current podcast jag, it was mostly music (progressive metal). I'd like to find a few more pagan podcasts to listen to since I'm (once again, for like the 11th time) trying to approach paganism and figure out what, if anything, I want to do with it. (Actually, in part I'm trying to figure out how to be a religious person of any sort, which is something I've never done and don't have much of a frame for. Are there any podcasts for that?)

[silveradept]

Podcasts I actually listen to on the regular are generally US-left political (although one is a discussion between US-left, US-right, and US-center fast I picked up several guests ago because it was "alternative to the screaming talking heads that dominate political discourse.") and Night Vale Presents network podcasts, including the titular Night Vale, but also Alice Isn't Dead, Within the Wires, The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air) and Pounded In The Butt By My Own Podcast (which is a great introduction to the works of Dr. Chuck Tingle, World's Greatest Author.)

I also listen to a charmer of a podcast called Here Be Monsters, which is about "the unknown" in our lives, like bats. Our sensory immersion tanks. Or what it's like to have left the Latter-Day Saints to take up religious witchcraft.

I keep This American Life as my backup when all of those are exhausted. There are some library-related ones I've subscribed to, but aren't yet in the habit of listening to. Same for The Arkham Sessions, a podcast about going through the episodes of Batman: The Animated Series with a professional psychologist to talk about the issues the characters have in the show.

I listened to all three seasons of Serial (I consider S-Town to be Serial's third season, even though it wasn't released as such.)

I do these things outside of work, though, because I have a tendency to get focused on the work when I'm doing it and then realize a few minutes later than an episode has passed and I don't remember a thing about what went on in it because I tuned the voices out. So I have several YouTube playlists, artists, and albums tuned up for when I would like sound accompaniment to my work.