The Reference Desk

Five stars for content. I recommend this to fans of oldschool You’re Wrong About. Unfortunately, I can’t listen: one of the hosts has a very high and sharp voice that, no matter how low I turn my volume down, literally hurts my ears. I don’t blame people for the sound of their natural voices, but I wonder if increased audio editing could help smooth out spikes because it is not usual for me to feel actual pain while listening to a podcast. I will try a second episode to see if it’s better—I hope so, because I really appreciate a well-researched discussion podcast on varied interesting topics.

In short this podcast features - two lovely, incredibly sweet, empathic women - librarians to exact - talking about a topic that they are currently enthralled by. Usually a topic they want to learn more about - pulling research from mostly books. They also offer up some recommend personal reads.

I loved the factual content, but it’s becoming more frequent that political views are presented as facts. Also, during serious topics (Duggars, Titanic, etc), too much joking and weird voices. I expected more serious presentation of such topics when educating.

One of my favorite podcasts! The banter between the hosts is delightful, my TBR stack is growing bigger and bigger with each listen, and I’m learning about so many bewitching topics!