I’m very big on podcasts and at the moment I’m listening to David Hockney and Andrew Marr putter around the artist’s farm in East Yorkshire. It’s reminded me that, if you’re looking for a good holiday-themed listen, there may be no better 45 minutes this year than last week’s Start the Week: Giles Fraser (who recently resigned as Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, arguing that the Bible is on the side of the Occupy movement rather than the Church of England) on Constantine and the invention of Christmas, Claire Tomalin on Dickens and, I suppose, the reinvention of Christmas and Susan Hill on the tradition of the Christmas ghost story.
While I’m at it, I might as well mention a few other favorite podcasts of the past year, many of them favorites for the past several years. First and foremost would be the New Yorker’s Political Scene, a sharp and concise discussion of one of the top issues of the week. Thursdays, usually running just under 20 minutes or so. It’s one of those podcasts you can listen to while walking or working out but not while doing anything else that’d require a bit more of the mind’s bandwidth. Also in this category for me are the German podcasts I subscribe to: Deutschlandradio’s Kulturpresseschau and Feuilleton Pressegespräch (both daily) and the first 45 minutes of Der Pressclub from WDR on Sundays (I find the question period at the end to be a waste of time).
In the second category are the podcasts you can have on while doing things just a tad more mentally taxing than putting one foot in front of the other (e.g., formatting a Notebook roundup once the rounding up is done, etc). Slate’s Gabfests are very gabby indeed, but I enjoy the virtual company of the two trios who talk culture and politics. Sound Opinions and the NYT’s Music Popcast. And there are others — too many others, really — to run under varying circumstances, though I probably wouldn’t call them favorites.
I’m also interested to see how n+1’s monthly podcast will evolve; I’ve listened to the first four episodes and the fifth awaits. So far, so good. And I’m very much looking forward to catching up with the first Los Angeles Review of Books podcast and hearing what they’ll be doing with the format.
