Science Podcast Recommendations

I had planned to write a nice rant about the rampant bureaucracy in academia but I think I'll save that for a day when I'm more irritated. I'm sure an opportunity will soon arise now that the semester is starting. Instead, I will comment on the science podcasts I have listened to so far (see Jan 8 blog post). I have sampled the following: NPR: Science Friday , Science Talk (Scientific American) , Science Update Podcast ,This Week in Science Podcast , NOVA scienceNOW Podcast , The Naked Scientists and Astronomy Cast . While I don't feel I have listened to enough episodes of each podcast to make a completely fair evaluation, I'll go ahead and comment anyway just because I can.

While I enjoyed all of these casts, I think my favorite so far is Science Talk by Scientific American. Each episode lasts from about 25-45 min and is generally concerned with one or two topics of current interest. I've listened to a bunch of these podcasts. Here's a great one where you get to hear old geezer scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project as well as bits of an opera about Robert Oppenheimer: (Science Talk December 31, 2008 ). At the end of each show is a "game show" called "Totaleeeeeeeeeeey Bogus!" where we hear 4 or 5 current science news headlines all of which are true except for one which is ... of course ... "Totaleeeeeeeeeeey Bogus!" The listener is supposed to pick out the false story. Despite the lame name, I enjoy hearing the headlines along with the brief commentary about each after we try to guess which is the bogus one. Most of them are quite bizarre and interesting (kind of like me).

I also have listened to a number of the NPR: Science Friday podcasts. I find these slightly more focused on laypeople (as opposed to jeniuses) than the Science Talk podcasts. They are also usually a bit shorter (10-25 min). Like all things I've listened to by NPR, this is a high quality and well thought out show. Here's a recent one I enjoyed: (Study Shines Light On Existence of Dark Energy ).

Of all of these podcasts, the one most likely to take the place of the journals I would read to stay current would be the Science Update podcast. This is not surprising since Science Update is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science who also publish the journal "Science". AAAS puts out a weekly as well as a daily edition of Science Update ... I've only listened to the weekly so far. It's about 5-10 minutes long and briefly covers 5 current topics in science news. I've actually only listened to one of these but liked it very much: (Science Update Podcast January 2, 2009).

This Week in Science podcast is an actual radio show broadcast by a station out of the University of California at Davis. It's an hour long show that I found a little rough around the edges but entertaining. A guy/girl team hosts the show. The guy (according to the website) is a car salesman/armchair physicist while the woman is a PhD neurobiologist who also happens to be a black belt in tae kwon do and is kind of hot to boot:(Dr. Kirsten Sanford). But were talking about mental stimulation here right? The one show I've listened to was lacking in this area: (This Week in Science - 06 January, 2009).

The NOVA scienceNOW podcasts are very brief (2-5 min) but high quality and interesting. The perfect podcast for a trip to the bathroom. Here are the two I have heard so far: (Finding Other Earths and Tiny Black Holes).

All of the hosts in The Naked Scientists podcast have British accents which as we all know makes people sound like jeniuses no matter what they say. Haven't had a chance to listen to a complete episode yet.

Finally, the Astronomy Cast was (oddly) concerned only about astronomy. Again the cast is hosted by a man and woman team (I don't know if this woman is hot or not) and the shows are about 30 min long. The episode I listened to was a bit dry: (Ep. 122: How Old is the Universe?)

I know I need to listen to more episodes and other podcasts before I can make serious recommendations for wanna be jeniuses, ... but this should get you started.