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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?"
Very cool! But I have to wonder, on the picture featured on the Nature site, what is the woman with the open robe holding, and what is she about to do with it?? (http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/images/podca st2.gif) Call me prudish, but is this sort of thing really nature? :)
- ME -
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
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.
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
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/
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.
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
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/
Or "screamcast". Yeah...that's sweet.
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.