- The Kermode and Mayo film review. The original podcast on my feed. First listened whilst travelling through Thailand, lying in a hammock on Ko Phi Phi which was then only a couple of years out from the tsunami. I suppose that qualifies me as a long-term listener.
- The New Books Network. Interviews with academics about their recently published books. Patchy quality, as the interviewers and interviewees are both academics with varying levels of skill and technical expertise. Occasionally very good. They scratch my itch for extreme variation in what I know.
- Ottoman History Podcast. Again, an academic podcast, but a much better produced one. I don’t listen to every episode, but it does have some fascinating episodes on a part of the world and history that I knew little about.
- The Beef and Dairy Network. My favourite kind of comedy. Perfectly straight, unselfconscious and short.
- In Our Time. Despite my occasional irritation with Melvyn Bragg and his uselessness with science subjects, it remains one of the main reasons to pay a license fee.
- Talking Politics. The best politics podcast, hosted at Cambridge University. Insightful, intelligent. My only complaint is that with all of Cambridge’s academic resources they don’t talk about politics in countries other than those that David Runciman, the host, knows about, ie the US, UK and Europe. The three elections I’ve been following this year – Pakistan, Lebanon and Malaysia – never get a look in, despite being extremely interesting in their own rights.
- Pod Save America. To be honest, this is largely to fulfil my ‘share in the jollies’ itch for American politics. I usually listen to it on double-speed and stop about 1/2-3/4 of the way in. Occasionally I listen to its sister podcast, Pod Save the World, when they have a clearly qualified guest and when I am not profoundly annoyed by the US foreign policy perspective.
- Lebanese Politics Podcast. This properly did my head in when I started listening to it, but it has been very instructive on how politics here works, in conjunction with the Robert Fisk book.
- The Irish Revolution. This is a series of lectures, actually, not a podcast. I am making my way through it quite slowly because compared to the other histories I’m following (Lebanon, Pakistan, etc) it’s not what one might call gripping.
- How to Pakistan. This has sporadically released episodes by two hosts I generally agree with but find profoundly annoying, in particular Mosharraf Zaidi who lives up to his Islamabad-wide reputation for pomposity. But there’s not a perfect audio source of Pakistan analysis out there so it will have to do.
- The New Mandala. The last of my academic podcasts, this one is on SE Asia. It had a good set of interviews with a scholar of Malaysian politics after the election, for instance.
That is a lot of academic podcasts, but that is where my taste currently lies. Light relief largely comes from the film review, which has very long episodes indeed, and the Beef and Dairy Network which has very short episodes indeed. Sometimes I add on More or Less and Desert Island Discs when additional relief is required.