fav was Wonderworks

At times, I miss the far reaching, less socio-political subjects that were more common in years previous, but overall what a wonderful resource.

You will never run out of episodes. This is a great contribution to intellectual history.

This is my library, I got to it to keep up with new academic books, it saves time and introduce the listeners to the authors behind the books.

A collection of all the network's other channels, everything from neuroscience to history to religion. The result is a firehose of interviews with researchers, academics, authors, and others who talk about their latest publication or project in detail. The publications range from high-level academic minutiae to work oriented towards the general public. Any inquisitive listener is guaranteed to come across something fascinating and possibly wind up going bankrupt buying books. The podcast updates in chunks but averages around an episode a day.

I love this podcast and am very grateful for it. I have purchased so many books I have learned about through this podcast. I was thinking the other day as I went to purchase a book I learned about here that there should be a code we can type as opposed to having to click through the links or whatever in order to give credit where credit is due. Because if I scroll through my podcasts, see a title of a book on the podcast app, I click right over to amazon and put that book in the cart or buy it now, etc. I figured I would mention it if it was in fact important, maybe it isn’t and at this point the NBN is aware of how much they impact sales based on the correlation of when the post is made and when the books are purchased. On another note, I do get the distinct impression that sometimes the interviewer has not read the book at all and when this happens it is quite obvious for the audience and the author. I think authors of academic books maybe just go with the flow because they are obligated by their big academic publishing house, first, and also would rather be in that type of interview than no type of interview. But in those cases, I think it would be better if the author was given the opportunity to do a presentation for an hour or so without the terrible questions with no follow up and the absolutely dreaded “I think it is so interesting that you [insert partial sentence from the second paragraph of the introduction]; will you elaborate more on that?” Incidentally, “interesting” is a concept for the crowd, not the critic. Big ups to Marshall Poe, though, that he remain touched by the light of Clio.

I learn SO much from this

I’ve listened to several channels for a couple of years now, and I’ve learned a lot. As a busy academic, I appreciate the opportunity to hear about new books that I may not have time to read. The usual length is about 45 minutes, which allows for the author to go into the book’s main arguments in some detail. The audio quality does vary somewhat, but I’ve noticed that it’s improved over the years. Find a channel or two that fit your interests and give it a listen!

Every interview allows an expert to talk about what they know, at length, with just a few questions to keep it going. Totally different from most other podcasts, where the host dominates the conversation. You can learn a lot. If you find the sound quality for one interview is poor or the subject too narrow, just move on to the next one. There are hundreds, many first rate.

I love the books but most of the interviews are painful to listen to. I would hate to stop listening but really can’t tolerate the bad sound—there is no excuse for this.