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Best Science News Podcasts?
scienceListener asks: "As an avid radio listener with an interest in science and technology communication, I'm really excited about podcasts. I've found many that I like, and many more that are just terrible. One of the areas I find very lacking is science news podcasting. Aside from some very good podcasts that are really repackaged radio shows (NPR's Science Friday and their aggregated Health and Science, Canada's Quirks and Quarks, Australia's The Science Show, and a few others), and a couple produced by science centers (the Current Science & Technology Podcast from Boston's Museum of Science and the Redshift Report from the Ontario Science Centre -- which is good but isn't really about science news), I haven't found any independently-produced science podcasts worth listening to. Is anyone doing science news without the help of a major organization and doing it well?"
Two of my favorites that you did not mention:
slacker astronomy http://www.slackerastronomy.org/slack-live.xml
skepticality Science and Skeptic Thought http://skepticality.libsyn.com/rss/
Incidentally, I wonder if this article will slasdot itunes podcasts section? Podcasts don't seem to get the greatest amount of bandwidth compared to the rest of the itunes Music Store.
http://nyamenation.org/
So finding the "best" news will be a tough job.
The Naked Scientists:
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/
Berkeley Groks Science
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~clgroks/
ScienceCast:
http://sciencecast.net/
Personally, I can't get into indie podcasts due to the typically poor production values. There are a lot of insightful podcasters that could be developing a real audience if they would just buy a high quality mic.
domain combinatorics
TWIS is a somewhat entertaining college radio show that is podcast. Not the most thorough of science reporting, but digestable & there is some good stuff. Berkeley Groks is in the same vein, but far nerdier.
My personal favourite - This Week in Science
http://www.twis.org/
well worth a look... sciencefriday.com ...also check out Ockham's razor, www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/ockham.htm
Easy to get a podcast addiction to this stuff... and they thought pr0n would drive the web...
Nature recently started a weekly podcast. http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/index.html
Not sure if this counts as a science podcast or not, but it's certainly entertaining! (Even if lately they are conversing less about important issues) - ME -
Try Al-Qaeda Headquarters
Patriotically as always,
K. Trout, C.E.O.
are these
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Nature has a podcast now, too.
http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/index.html
To understand recursion,
you must first understand recursion.
IT Conversations will periodically have science related items that are not specific to computer science. Look through the archives. The Tech Nation series is especially good at hitting a broad range of stuff.
I know that this does not fit your criterium of being major organization free, but the journal Nature has a podcast covering each week's contents that is quite good.
Slacker Astronomy
s t.rss
http://www.slackerastronomy.org/slack-live.xml
Science @ NASA
http://science.nasa.gov/podcast.xml
Universe Today
http://www.universetoday.com/audio.xml
Berkeley Groks
http://www.groks.net/groks.rss
Regulus
http://www.regulusastro.com/regulus/whatsup/podca
Dr Karl has a happy hour on Triple-J every Thursday morning with Mel (who most slashdotters would die for) - and it's also released as a podcast too. http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/default.htm
Once a week for a magic hour, Karl is Live on Air on triple j. It's an hour devoted to the collective exploration of some of the great mysteries of life, such as "why does the water in the shower slow down just when it gets hot?"
Yes! All of them! You see, God created science, therefore, ALL of science is God's work. To reject science is to reject God!
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
ScienceWeek, no competition:
http://scienceweek.com/
It's not breezy, consumer friendly reporting of scientific oddities, but succinct, clear writing about serious science, complete with contextual explanations.
I don't bother with anything else.
i think, when you broadcast it over radio waves its no longer called podcasting.....but rather, "radio". ;)
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
I love most of the Science Friday topics but the weekly Dr Karl podcast is my favourite
x ml
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/podcast/drk_rss.
The weekly Dr Karl show is a talkback format, people call in with their mostly everyday science and medical related questions such as "why does the water in the shower slow down just as it gets hot" "why does my beer spontaneously freeze when I pop the top off" and "what actually causes memory loss when you are drunk"
Dr. Michio Kaku's Explorations can be found online at: http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?show=33
Thomas Wanhoffs Wunderbare Welt der Wissenschaft http://wissenschaft.wanhoff.de/index.php ist zwar auf Deutsch, but I think he also does an English show.
Christian Science is actually a Christian denomination. It's a church much the same as Baptism, Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, or Catholicism. The denomination emerged about a hundred years ago as a result of quack medicine concurrent with the "science" of the time. The officials railed on magnetism and weird drugs at the time (recall Coke's advertising of the era--a "tonic" or other medicinal beverage) and instead placed an emphasis in trusting in God as a source of healing.
So be careful how you use that term.
These are all top quality programs. I am particularly fond of the ABC (Australian) program, I'm going to bookmark them all. Also check out this link from the ABC site titled "inferior design" (I just love sticking it to the conservative religious scum of the world :) http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/inferiordes ign/default.htm
People + Religion = Confusion & Counterintuition
New Scientist, one of my favorite magazines will begin podcasting soon. http://www.newscientist.com/podcast/
With a focus primarily on Space and the people making it happen today, 'The Space Show' is one of my favorites. It is available as a live feed on Tuesdays and Sundays and as a podcast.
- We dream of the stars. Now let us return to them.
No noone is doing science news well without backing by a major organisation. Just like no one is mass producing cars very well without backing from a major organisation. In both cases there's a lot that has to happen behind the scenes before that science show (or car) can be put together. A good science show generally requires a team doing research - and not just library research, though that's required, but going out and talking to scientists. The interviewer also has to build a reputation with the science community to get scientists to agree to interviews and take them seriously.
If you want some college kid giving you their un-informed or one dimensional opinion on current science, you can get that for nearly nothing without any kind of backing. If you want good science journalism you need a team of well trained people each doing their bit to get the facts, get the interviews etc.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
These are the guys who believe in healing with only prayer. (curiously, they make an exception for dentists). They also forbid alcohol, smoking and even coffee. Mark Twain did a famous investigation in which he concluded that the healthy lifestyle and avoidance of quackery kept them as healthy as average doctor-visiting person.
Check out the Space Show at http://archived.thespaceshow.com/ The host has a moderately annoying voice, but the guests are first rate and the content is deep enough to satisfy the interested nerd. Shows are generally more than an hour, so also good for long drives.
- Jim
#include "humorous_pop_culture_reference.h"
http://www.podcast.net/cat/12
The people who can find the best news probably aren't looking on Slashdot anymore, anyways
If you can spring for an Audible subscription ($49 a year I think), I'd *highly* recommend the weekly Science News . It is concisely written for an intelligent lay audience, covering all the fields, with strength in physics, astronomy and the biological sciences (They are pretty weak in compsci though).
SciNews is run by some non-profit organization, so its not the watery, awkwardly-written PopSci articles you get with most commercial publications, i.e. the "Discovery X Can Cure Cancer" or "New 2006 Automobiles Filled with Science!"
New Scientist ain't bad either, though can be a bit flakey. I'd avoid the audio broadcasts of Scientific American, which has articles that tend to be longer and murkier. That pub's seen better days.
Beyond Podcasts there are:
. htm
a tnight/proginfo.shtml
Let's Talk Stars (Astronomy)
http://www.letstalkstars.com
Celestial North Radio (Astronomy)
http://www.celestialnorth.org/radio/radio_program
NPR Science Friday
http://www.sciencefriday.com
BBC's The Sky at Night (the best weekly science program ever)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/sky
BBC Science Radio
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/
Yes, I know.
The denomination emerged about a hundred years ago as a result of quack medicine concurrent with the "science" of the time. The officials railed on magnetism and weird drugs at the time (recall Coke's advertising of the era--a "tonic" or other medicinal beverage) and instead placed an emphasis in trusting in God as a source of healing.
Cool, I didn't know that.
But, what I find really FUNNY is that the OP was mod'ed as "Flamebait" or something and that you took my post seriously. Maybe you were trying to educate me on Christian "Science", which I appreciate. BTW, I appreciate any correction or any additional information to my posts, which, in this world of FUD helps me to keep my bearings.
What I'm finding REALLY distressful is that FUD seems to be taking over the world. No one wants to think for themselves. Here's the "Flamebait": Rationally speaking (thinking)is taking the place of rational thought. Why would you trump rational thought with Faith? If you have evidence; real tangible evidence for anyting, why would you resort to Faith? You see, tangible evidence maybe God's way of telling the truth.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
i think, when you broadcast it over radio waves its no longer called podcasting.....but rather, "radio". ;)
Unfortunately where I live if it's broadcast over radio waves it's called "Infinity".
You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
Not just about science, but some very good thoughts and interviews on some good science topics.
http://www.bluejack.com/
IANAA (I am not an Aussie) but Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National seems to me to have some of the best science podcasting out there. Blows Science Friday away in terms of depth, seriousness, and presentation. I am a particular fan of All in the Mind(Neuroscience, Psychology, & cognitive science) and Ockham's Razor and The Science Show (both general interest). They also do other health + science podcasts that are linked from those pages.
Here is another australian science show which is being shown on the discovery channel here in the US. Not sure if anyone is offering podcasts for it however, if anyone finds them let me know :)
s eries=115556&gid=0&channel=SCI
http://science.discovery.com/schedule/series.jsp?
http://www.beyond2000.com/
*Content*-wise, BGS is a pretty good podcast, but after listening to about 5 of them, one of the hosts has the most irritating, screetchy, nerdy, fingernails-on-the-chalkboard laughs I've EVER heard. I had to unsubscribe in complete disgust and anger with the intent on never listening to it again. The cream of the crop IMHO, is Science Friday and for astronomy-related stuff, iPlanetary Radio is good.
Coast to Coast AM www.coasttocoastam.com for some fringe science topics such as abiotic oil and zero point energy.
I like SETI institute's "Are We Alone" podcast very much. I think it's their radio show and still retains the advertisings, but the debates are usually pretty interesting. RSS is at http://podcast.seti.org/index.xml
www.microbeworld.com
My wife (MicroBio Ph.D) tells me this is a nice podcast for laypeople.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
same information at a tenth of the speed.. :(
Science and Technology at the Christian Science Monitor
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
i didn't see anything listed here that was a podcast. these are all netcasts, or "blogcasts", if you like that term better. a podcast is a specific kind of netcast, which is irrelevant to someone who doesn't have itunes/ipod.
you go play with your "mp3 player". i'm going to play with my dmp.
I am deeply sorry for that. It should have been www.microbeworld.org. Blame my wife.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
Lots of good links showing up in the discussion. Just wondering if anyone knows of any science oriented podcasts for kids?
We don't quite yet have it configured as a podcast with nice topic information, but you can listen to the mp3s off of our web site. For the shows starting 2005-09-06, go to http://kgnu.net/audio/HowOnEarth/. "Jim Hightower" is the segment just before How on Earth, and in our current state you'll usually have to skip a minute or two of his show before the science show.
How on Earth is the Tuesday feature of the KGNU "Morning Magazine" news show. Once you become a fan :-) you can go back to the Tuesday editions of that show and you'll find HowOnEarth shows back to 2002 or so, about 37-minutes in to each audio file.
--Neal
Go IETF!
There is a french program called "Les Années Lumières" available on the Radio-Canada website which is quite good. They have a whole list of programs available for podcasting.
http://radio-canada.com/radio/baladodiffusion/
(btw, I hate the translated term they came up with. "baladodiffusion")
www.newscientist.com/podcast
And it has been the locus of an amazing story over the last two months. Host Derek Colanduno, by no means a senior citizen (I'd guess he's in his early 30s), had a major stroke or aneurysm event at the beginning of September, that put him in intensive care in an induced coma for a week. For a day or two it was dicey whether he'd pull out of it. Co-host Swoopy broadcast an announcement, and then began posting Derek Updates on the show's blog. Collectively they form a detailed look at first slow, then rapid recovery from a brain injury. As of this writing, Derek has regained most of his physical ability and a good bit of his speech--he even recorded a brief intro to their latest podcast, released today. Good people, good site.
In Our Time on BBC Radio 4 explores a number of interesting science topics: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inou rtime_science.shtml
Ahhh, these new-fangled synonyms... one of 'em is comin' out every few days now! What's this new name for podcast? Radio?
Its a weekly round up of space news. Described as "NewsRadio's astronomy, space sciences and cosmology program, has the latest discoveries across the universe and space science news from around the world. Hosted by NewsRadio Science Editor Stuart Gary."
Its one of the best science shows Ive ever heard.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
Science Friday
Ockham's Razor
For energy issues such as peak oil, fuel cells, and hybreds check out http://thewatt.com/. They have a nice (PHPnuke) site. The folks behind it are a bunch of Canadian engineering Grad students
Star Stuff
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
Tech Nation with Dr. Moira Gunn
http://www.technation.com/
I will rip your fucking throat away.
The 50 year old UK-based weekly science magazine is about to start podcasting - probably this week. http://www.newscientist.com/
One show that I don't really like is the Infidel Guy. It seems quite dogmatic. The Infidel Guy acts like he knows why he has made up his mind but some of his questions show his varied ignorance at times. I am not saying that I am less ignorant, but I don't really like ignorant dogmatism very much.
Bill Hammack is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at University of Illinois. He has a weekly commentary on Engineering and life that airs on some NPR stations. An archive of about 250 of his commentaries are available at his website http://www.engineerguy.com/ See, for instance, this one on Linux http://www.engineerguy.com/comm/3344.htm
Unfortunately, they are in Real Audio format. Come on Bill! What kind engineer are you. Where's the podcast?
For the great science news in the form of video I recommend ScienCentral.
It's not entirely Science, but ABC's Ockham's Razor is pretty good, and often the topic is science.
t m
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/default.h
joe
Does anyone still remember Science International? I used to love watching that show when I was a kid...
For an indie production, try MedDot: http://www.genexpression.com/MedDot/Podcast/MedDot Pod.html Each podcast introduces 4 science papers and provides some of the details. It might be too detailed for dabblers. The parent site is slash-based http://www.meddot.org/
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
http://rss.salemweb.net/oneplace/ministries/podcas ting/526.xml
If you like a good, broad mix of Science - new science, hard science, pop science, historical science and very silly science, listen to Discovery.
Discovery is produced by a different subset of the team every week. We have the latest and most unusual in science news, science features and interviews.
The Discovery archives are hosted on archive.org. We put the http://feeds.feedburner.com/Discoveryradio feed to iTunes when they opened for business last week. People seem to like our production values. If you do listen and have a comment then please email us.
Personally, I download MP3 shows to CDRW and listen to them on my multi-codec CD player.
This post (the one I'm replying to) was mentioned on Dr Karl's show this morning. Dr Karl mentioned the comment about Mel particularly. Unfortunately she had clearly never heard of Slashdot.
At this point I'm getting really worried by the potentially mutually recursive nature of this thread and Dr Karl's show. We could end up sucked into one of those scary Dr Who type timewarps...
Daily Sonic has a funny science news bit usually: http://www.dailysonic.com/
_________
The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it?
I host a science radio show called The Inoculated Mind, which runs for an hour and a half, and my show recently had its first birthday. Since August, however, I have been mindcasting my show, and if anyone here is interested in checking it out, you can subscribe to it by entering http://www.inoculatedmind.com/audio/mindcast.xml into your aggregators. It is also listed in itunes and ipodder under Science. A bit about the show: I focus on what I find to be the most interesting and news stories about science from the past week, with emphasis on controversial topics such as genetic engineering, evolution, global warming, etc. Each show, I also choose a general topic for the last half hour to talk about more in-depth. Currently, I'm doing a series on the court case in Harrisburg Pennsylvania over the teaching of Intelligent Design in high school biology classes, called "Exorcising the Devil out of Dover." Guests are mostly professors from UC Davis, talking about west nile virus to evolution to agriculture, but I've had a few interesting non-UCD guests such as anti-GMO activist Deborah Koons Garcia, Anti-evolutionist Michael Behe, and most notably, composer Terry Riley. Also, I'm adding a nutrition segment to every show starting this week, focusing on dispelling nutritional myths and promoting moderation as a sensible diet principle. And each show is set to theme music from a science fiction movie or series... how can it go wrong? So that concludes my shameless plug. Myself, I also like to listen to TWIS, a funny radio show which is also produced in Davis, CA, but they are having technical difficulties and their podcast has not been updated in a month. One of my listeners considers their and my show to be like Star Wars and Star Trek, focusing on two different sides of science news. Skepticality is also cool, very popular, but I don't consider them much of a science podcast so much as a skeptical thought podcast, although they mention some science news. I've listened to a few professional podcasts, but I think I agree with Cliff that they don't quite satisfy. Quirks and Quarks is nice but spotty in its show topics, Dr. Karl got kind of boring for me, and The Science Show focuses on scientific issues more relevant to Australia than up here in the Americas. Does anyone notice a general problem with the fact that the professional science shows come from Canada, Australia, and the UK, as in, not the United States? That's why I got interested in science journalism - this country is slipping into scientific ignorance and there's something that needs be done about it. Karl J. Mogel
... that says "my glass is half empty!" when it is 3/4 full.
What about if scientists talk about what they are doing?
Or journalists with a heavy scientific background give their opinion or explanations about scientific matters?
You obviously have been under a rock the last, er, 10 years? The internet stopped been the real of bored teenagers exclusively some time ago...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Technically not podcasts, my site beconnected.org has some MP3s worth hearing on sci/tech. Haven't worked on it in a while, but I think there is quite a bit of stuff to keep you busy.
PNM is a bimonthly radio broadcast which is streamable and some of the programs are archived:
I'm "podcasting" my science broadcasts:
-Mysteries and Marvels of Cheese
-How People Come to Believe They've Been Abducted by Aliens
go to 4blacksheep.com/gino
feedback: science A T wort-fm.org
With any luck, the broadcasts will be archived on a regular basis.
Space.com just launched a great new (and cool sounding) podcast here. Space.com Podcast. Feels like a Disney ride!
There is a public radio station in Arizona that reads Science News articles on the air / internet.
y look at 5 pm
Caveat: they don't read the entire thing cover to cover, just selected articles.
The show is called Science of our Times
http://sunsounds.rio.maricopa.edu/schedules/sunda
I have a program, Replay Radio, which is a basic TiVo for internet radio. I just tell it to tape "Science of our Times", and it knows what to do and when to do it.