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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/
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.
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
are these
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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?"
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.
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.
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.
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:
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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/
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.
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.
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
Tech Nation with Dr. Moira Gunn
http://www.technation.com/
...while you're driving, doing dishes, exercising or walking your dog.
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.