Since half the year is gone, I think it’s a good time to pause and take a look at the podcasts that I’ve been listening to. I always think that I’ve not been listening to that many podcasts, but every time I write a podcast post, I realise that I’m wrong. So here’s what I’ve been listening to in the first half of the year:

New-to-me Podcasts

Short Podcasts I’ve Finished Listening

I’m not a monster – This podcast is a production by the BBC Panorama & FRONTLINE PBS, this podcast investigates the story of Sam, who claims that she was tricked into going to Syria. But can her story be taken at face value? Honestly, this podcast was riveting and the journalist, Josh Baker, does an amazing job following all the leads. This story is an example of how life is stranger than fiction because of all the twists!! My personal opinion is that Sam lied a lot about her story and I’m glad her kids are safe now.

Under the Influence – This podcast did not make a great first impression because seems a bit contrived (like how she had a conversation with her husband regarding her Instagram addiction – it sounded as though it was an off the cuff interview but if so, is she recording her life 24/7 in order to get that? Or did they have the conversation and she asked to redo it so she could record?). Plus, the audio quality on this is not good; the actual podcast was very soft but the ads (and there were many of them) were loud so I was continually adjusting the volume. But, it’s the only podcast that I’ve seen that looks specifically at influencers in a fairly balanced way and that’s why I finished listening to it. In particular, I thought the episode on what an authentic woman was and the demand for women to be seen as authentic on the internet was great.

If you’d like to read up on Instagram, I highly recommend the book No Filter – it’s also mentioned in this podcast!

Forest 404: I found this via Abi of Pellinor, who reviewed it on her blog. I’m actually not a fan of the story and only really liked the middle section of the plot, and I ordinarily would not have finished this, but I really like the mini-lectures and soundscapes that accompanied every episode. The lectures are a thoughtful look into the relationship between humanity, nature, and technology and I really enjoyed them.

Longer series that I’ve started

Darknet Diaries – I tried this as a replacement to Reply All when it went on hiatus. The episodes are pretty long, but I’m really enjoying it so far because the topics are quite fascinating. It basically looks at various aspects of the internet, particularly the ‘darker side’ like hackers, cybercrime, etc.

99% Invisible – I never listened to this because for some reason, I had this in the “overhyped” category but my friend Marie sent me an episode, which was good, and then I saw another episode from Tim Harford’s blog, then I got hooked by the license plate design episode. I love how they can take a topic that I’ve never considered, like the design of cinemas, and then bring out how interesting its history is.

Stopped

This is a pretty short section this time around.

Dis-Order – I’ve mentioned that the episodes tend to be really long, so I unsubscribed as soon they finished talking about all the Disney movies. I did see that they had some bonus episodes but nothing really hooked me and I have far too much to listen to and not enough time.

Myth and Legends – It feels weird unsubscribing from this because it’s one of the first podasts I subscribed to (besides all the writing podcasts). But it felt like the ads got really frequent and there were multiple ads at the same time, so that annoyed me and I deleted it.

Story Works Round Table – Again, it felt a bit weird to unsubscribe because I got into podcasts for the writing podcasts, but this just wasn’t holding my attention and like before, I have far too many things to listen to.

Other news

In other news, the Medieval Podcast released its 100th episode in March! I’ve been listening to this podcast since episode one (or around the first few, anyway) so this is such a huge milestone. There is also a new season of Rough Translation, on the army-civilian divide and I’ve been enjoying it so far. Finally, The Opportunist is releasing season 2 right now so I’m really hoping to enjoy it as much as I did the Sherry Shriner case.