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Podcast Recommendations

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I feel like I can comfortably call Hey Riddle Riddle one of my absolute favourite podcasts now; one of the ones I’m genuinely excited to see update every week. It also may very well have my favourite theme song of any podcast.

Also, the current season of Nightvale has completely restored my enthusiasm for the show by focusing on the comedy aspect of their weird horror comedy town. You could always get an accurate telling on how much I liked an episode based on how spooky or dramatic it doesn’t try to be.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Marvel by the Month is a historical look at literally everything Marvel published on a month by month basis starting with Fantastic Four #1, and how it all connects to what they’d later do, and what was happening in the news at the time. Each season also has an extra long recap episode so you don’t have to listen to every single episode. Which is very helpful for the first season, since the audio quality on the first few episodes is rough. And it’s hard to stretch out discussion about Miracle Man or Thor’s weirdly Jingoistic hatred of commies to a full length episode, y’know?
 

Falselogic

Lapsed Threadcromancer
(they/them)
OMG everyone should be listening to You're Wrong About hosted by journalists Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes. Every episode they reconsider something from our past that has been mostly, if not completely, misunderstood by society.
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
The hosts of that show are so great, but I can't listen to too much of it in a short time period because their choice of subject matter is so consistently pitch dark, and it really bums me out. And this is from someone who listens to like seven climate change podcasts.
 

Falselogic

Lapsed Threadcromancer
(they/them)
Their topics are dark, but what I find comforting, is that often the world is not as dark as it seems. So many of the things they cover they debunk and it turns out the world is not the dark place with evil just waiting to pounce on you that we think it is.

This is not to ignore the dark that IS in this world. Just that it isn't always as dark as it seems.
 
OTOH I liked their episode on sex offenders from which one takeaway was that things are bad and very unlikely to change. But at least the hosts had a thoughtful perspective...? I have not tried to binge this series.
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
Yeah, I think I tried to listen to the whole thing in a row, and it's just a little too intense for that approach. I do plan to check out their Electoral College episode with Jamelle Bouie, eventually. And I want to double down on how great Michael and Sarah are as hosts. They are such fucking curious people, and it's both admirable and infectious.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I felt like it had to be; it seemed a bit too constructed to be improv.

Started listening to 20 Sided Stories, only two of the shows seasons are available through Apple (plus the current one) but they’re the two I was hoping to listen to, so it’s okay. Each season is a Bespoke home-brewed tabletop game with a relatively short campaign based on an existing property. The ones out presently are based on Pokémon and the MCU.

Ive listened to the first couple of Pokémon episodes and I’m really l8king it so far.
I was coming here to recommend this but it seems that I already did. Good for me!

I’m fully caught up on the show now, except for the most recent episode and it’s absolutely a keeper. Though the season I was most excited for (the MCU one) wound up being my least favourite. Not through any particular failing, I just had a hard time following the story and telling the characters apart.

Season 5, however, is all hour-long one-shot stories and that is definitely the best way to introduce someone to the show. Cant heap enough praise on the Pokémon season, though, even if the story drastically shifts gears near the end
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Oh dang, 20 Sided Stories updated

Oh dang, it’s Dragonball Z this time

OH DANG, it’s a multi-parter
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Two podcasts I've discovered in the last few days that are... easy to conflate but radically different in subject and tone;

Worst Movies Ever Played is, despite what the title implies, NOT a movie review show, it's actually an Actual Play podcast where, instead of dealing with dungeons and/or dragons, the characters are playing bespoke one-shot adventures that take the form of forgotten direct-to-VHS horror and action movies from the mid 80s. It's only a couple of episodes old so getting through the archive is REAL easy.

Random Number Generator Horro Podcast No. 9, despite sounding like it's about movies and D20s and the like, actually IS a movie review podcast, featuring Cecil Baldwin from Nightvale, and Jeffrey Cranor, also from Nightvale. The former loves the horror genre and the latter, surprisingly, does not, so they're letting the roll of a dice determine how Jeffrey dips his toes into the genre. Just listened to the first two episodes (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Psycho) but it seems pretty darn enjoyable.

And Cecil cusses WAY more on this show than on the other one, so that's some novelty
 
Been listening to The Sloppy Boys podcast recently. It's a riot. Sloppy Boys are a comedy rock band made up from birthday boys members, and the podcast is ostensibly about making and rating cocktails but the real joy is just from three very funny dudes being funny. The highlight is generally a song parody that happens in every episode, and i think the clear best is Mike Hanford's beautiful Village People rendition. About 51 minutes into this
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Season 5 of Mission to Zyxx is starting in two weeks!

It’s also the final season.

And this is possibly my favourite podcast overall, so this make-a me sad
 

Bulgakov

Yes, that Russian author.
(He/Him)
Hi all,

We just launched our new website today (www.alzabosoup.com) and would love it if people would check it out. If you like Gene Wolfe and would like to hear me and Loki ramble on about his books for hundreds of hours, please consider listening! If you haven't read Wolfe yet, we have a bunch of suggestions on the site about where to start. Also, we'd love to hear your feedback if you have any.

Thanks, and I apologize for directly shilling my own podcast!
 

JBear

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer
(He/Him)
Also also the merch is cute and funny and Loki drew fish heads.
 
Mortal Podkast is my new fave

Each ep a deep dive of a single character against, comics, multiple endings and multiple game kanon timelines. But the host is describing it to a non-plussed guest. They often respond to "So they rule in hell as a necromancer" with a "yeah.. sure"

I love MK Lore, and I love taking the piss out of things, so this is a great mix. I'm starting from #1 so next ep I have is guest Ron Funches talking about Kano
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
PSA for anyone whose a Max Fun donor; the drive starts today and the Donor Feed is live... and for me at least it went directly into my spam folder.

So you may yet have oodles of unlistened-to podcasts and not even know it!
 

I had heard good things about this podcast and listened to it over the course of the pandemic, in a way that my catching up with the show was serendipitously in synch with the final episodes where they finished up the series. It was a really funny, thoughtful, and critical read through of the Harry Potter series and the awful culture built up around it. If anyone else was interested in this show but was waiting for it to be over... now it seems extremely over, for the time being. All of the series proper and the movies are covered in the free episodes, so it's totally free unless you want to support them out of the good of your heart or want to hear the goof-off side episodes.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Two shows I’ve started listening to; and both with pretty small backlogs;

We Die First is a movie review podcast for horror movies, by and for black people. And it’s a really fun one with super enjoyable hosts. Only a few episodes in but it’s got the ol’ Octo Approval.

Voice of Latveria is a comic review podcast that has a really fun premise that it doesn’t really do enough with (to be fair; if they went all in on it, it wouldn’t work well as a comic analysis podcast) each episode is presented as a chapter in the biography of Dr. Doom (laid out in chronological order, based on when Doom experiences things), interspersed with fictional Latverian propaganda.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
The makers of Rude Takes of Magic have a brand new show, and it’s about star treks instead of wizards!

It’s called Oh These, Those Stars of Space, and I haven’t listened to it yet but it’s pedigree alone tells me I should be bouncing up and down on my feet going “ohboyohboyohboyohboy”
 

jpfriction

(He, Him)
The makers of Rude Takes of Magic have a brand new show, and it’s about star treks instead of wizards!

It’s called Oh These, Those Stars of Space, and I haven’t listened to it yet but it’s pedigree alone tells me I should be bouncing up and down on my feet going “ohboyohboyohboyohboy”
Haven’t listened to it yet either but I’d imagine it’s a continuation of their Joe Lepore DMd “Lasers and Feelings” games that have showed up a couple of times on the patreon feed given the teaser. If so, should be some good uns, although I do kind of prefer Taylor to stay behind the scenes. He gets to be a bit much.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
One of the characters describes herself by saying “she has hair like a waxed floor”

So… this is definitely in the spirit of Rude Tales
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
I started listening to Final Fantasy Weekly. The hosts are two brothers, who do basically the same thing I do at the moment - playing through all the Final Fantasy games, and talk about them.

The nice thing is, they don't try to make lame jokes about the games, or whatever, they really try to do an interesting analysis. They explicitly aren't trying to bash these games, and the love for the franchise clearly comes through. They do a bit of criticism, of course, but not in a mean way, more like "This didn't work for me". They also don't lose themselves as much in minutiae as I do, and have generally a faster pace, but I'm curious how that will change, when they get to the more story-focused games.

Also, they seem to do not only the main games, but also related stuff, like Chrono Trigger and Mystic Quest.

So, if you enjoy two people talking analytically about a series they clearly love, give it a listen.
 

Patrick

Magic-User
(He/Him)
Also, lots of great History Pod content these days between both of these guys and their new books!
I started Revolutions recently. I liked History of Rome better, but then again Rome is just way more interesting than England. Hopefully the American Revolution is more compelling.
 
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