A few weeks ago, Larry interpreted Nadine Gordimer’s “Some are Born to Sweet Delight” as a call to political awareness: we cannot afford our innocence, he argued.
How, though, are you—an already overstretched college student—going to find the time to absorb political knowledge? If you have a digital music player and an hour of free ear-time a week, I can suggest a few podcasts that might just stave off that endless night:
- Slate’s Political Gabfest (iTunes). Slate magazine prides itself on unconventional news analysis, an attitude it often takes past the point of perversity. In a recent Gabfest, for example, one analyst attacks a chocolate chip cookie recipe as an inefficient use of political intelligence; the other 95% of the time, thankfully, their analysis is smarter than that of cable news and more pointed than that of NPR.
- BBC Radio NewsPod (iTunes) is a global news summary: it offers American and other news through an outsider’s lens, and better explains political developments in Europe and Asia than do American news sources… Plus, this news is delivered in beautiful UK accents.
- Guardian Daily (iTunes) if you prefer your international news with left-leaning commentary, this is probably the podcast for you. It’s more Britain-centric than NewsPod, but also more fun.
- Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! (iTunes) is NPR’s weekly comedy news quiz: they line up a panel of comedians to answer questions about and comment on political and social happenings.
- Slate’s Culturefest (iTunes) offers political and aesthetic analysis of cultural events: movies, magazines, music, and so on. If you’ve enjoyed thinking through the subtexts of short stories and movies in Larry’s lectures then you will find more of the same in the Culturefest.
- Science Times (iTunes), by The New York Times, discusses recent developments and discoveries in science and technology in a way that can help humanities majors stay science-literate.
(My favorite podcasts du jour are the two Slate -fests: I tend to listen to them almost as soon as they’re updated. Their commentators are opinionated and even at times contentious, but they are always amusing and deeply thoughtful.)
Tags: 2008
