I'm going to revive this topic, simply because I've been listening to a lot of podcasts while at work lately. My basic lineup hasn't changed, I'm still very into Disgraceland, the Hardcore Self Help Podcast, and The Box of Oddities, but my podcast listening had slowed for quite some time due to a number of things, so I have a lot of backlog to catch up on.
I thought I had previously recommended Beach Too Sandy, Water Too wet in this topic, but turns out I did not. This podcast is hilarious. A brother and sister duo pick a theme, for example, beaches in particular state, then look for reviews that people wrote about said places. Usually, these reviews are someone whining about something ridiculous, and then the hosts comment on just how stupid or ridiculous the reviewer is. It's great, I can't recommend it enough.
Speaking of comedy, I recently finished A Very Fatal Murder. It's a satire of true crime media/podcasts, and it had me rolling. Everything from the delivery to the fake ad spots was funny as hell. I wish there had been more than one season, but, on the other hand, I can respect that they didn't want the concept to become stale.
Moving on to a couple of more serious recommendations, as in, serious subject matter, not recommending these more than the above two shows, Disgraceland has a spinoff show called 27 Club. So far, there are two seasons, the first being a deep dive on Jimi Hendrix, the second is all about Jim Morrison. I started with the latter, since The Doors are one of my all-time favorite bands, and it's just as good as you'd expect if you like Disgraceland, or are interested in learning about the lives of talented musicians who died too soon.
American Hysteria is a show I started listening to awhile ago and really need to get back into. They talk about stuff like the pop rocks and Coke conspiracy, satanic panic, and other such interesting topics.
Now, I want to move onto a couple shows I tried to get into but couldn't. The first one is called Dear Therapists. It's pretty much what it sounds like, someone writes a letter to the two hosts, and they give advice to the letter writer, complete with an actual phone interview with the person. It didn't work for me for a couple of reasons. first, it felt really staged to me, like the person had been coached on what to say before the interview. As if that weren't bad enough, I just didn't like the style or perhaps the chemistry of the two hosts, I felt that maybe one of them might have made a more successful version of this show had they struck out on their own and tried it.
I've never been a huge fan of audio dramas, but I thought I'd try something different to combat boredom while at work. I had heard about The Control Group a couple years back, and decided to give it a listen. The basic premise is that it takes place in the early 60's, and is about experiments in a mental institution gone awry. This girl gets picked up by the police because she's suspected of murder. She's a prostitute, and yes, there's about as much shaming as you'd expect given the era and what not, but I think that's why they locked her up in said mental institution when she wouldn't talk about her supposed role in the crime. At first, the story was strong, though the acting, and, to a lesser extent, the sound design left a lot to be desired. The more the series went on, though, the sillier the story became, to the point where there were just huge gaping plot holes and stuff that made zero sense. I listened to the whole thing, but by the end, I really hated it.
So, with all that being said, has anyone else been listening to any good podcasts? I'm going to check out either Archive 81 or The Magnus Archives in the upcoming weeks, I think.
The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.