Favourite skeptical, rational, liberal themed podcasts?

[Tiberius]

The problem we had last time was how to do the actual recording. Since people are from different areas of the world, we were using Skype to talk during the podcast. We can either get people to talk through Skype and record their own voice (and then combine the voices later), or have someone be in on the call and record the entire thing.

[HeyItsZeus]

I see... you can do a video chat, save the chat, extract the video and convert it into an mp3 file and use that. No need to record on the spot.

[Angrboda]

I don't podcast, but the skeptics around here rave about the Skeptic's Guide To The Universe podcasts.

Again, I haven't listened lately, but much of NPR is available by podcast and the quality is usually consistently high. These aren't specifically skeptic oriented, but
NPR: Talk Of The Nation and NPR: All Things Considered are good places to start. (They have a science podcast or two as well; if npr has gone to hell in a bucket since I last listened, mea culpa.)

[theVOID]

My top pod casts:

Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot
Are We Alone (SETI)
Skeptics Guide to the Universe
Skeptic Zone
Morality in the Real World
Philosophical Disquisitions
Philosophy Bites
The Cusp

And the loony fringe one:

No Agenda.

[Tiberius]

I see... you can do a video chat, save the chat, extract the video and convert it into an mp3 file and use that. No need to record on the spot.

What we are aiming for is quality of sound though. Audio / Video chat clients are all programmed so that a loss of information over the Internet is largely ignored (for performance reasons). If we used video, that loss would be amplified, and would indirectly affect the sound.

I don't see the need for recording a video if we are only going to extract the sound anyway. It seems like one step too far...why not just record the audio on its own?

Of course, I'm not an expert on matters like this, but I can't see a reason why you'd think recording a video over the Internet (massive amounts of data) and then extracting the audio would be better than simply recording the audio...

[thesummerqueen]

Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Seriously. If you don't already listen to it, get off your ass.

I listen to Monster Talk and The Conspiracy Skeptic because I like folktales and urban legends. Monster Talk especially has had some brilliant episodes with highly entertaining interviews with people who know their shit. Right off the bat, I'd say "Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum!" (with Ken Feder), "Getting into the Spirit of Things" (with Dr. Steve Novella of Skeptic's Guide) and "Cthulu Rises" (With Bible scholar Bob M Price) would be pretty awesome for those on this board.

I love, love, LOVE Irreligiosophy. Two former Mormon boys, tearing apart religion. It's not high-brow by any means - in fact, it's barely above Beevis & Butthead at times, but only during the times when religion deserves to be treated as such. I also really, really like Reasonable Doubts, which isn't as funny but has a lot of good thinking stuff in it about religion.

Skeptoid. Nice 11 minute tidbits to round out your day, with hints of excessively dry humor. I'm on the Skeptoid e-mail list, and they've proved helpful as well as entertaining. Actually, it was Brian Dunning's podcasts on logical fallacies that helped me get my recent English class to understand a few of them, where my teacher failed to adequately explain them.

Bob Price has his own "Bible Geek" podcast, which is interesting if you feel like sorting through the dark shades of theology, and The Atheist Experience is good - it got me through a recent 6 hour drive.

Point of Inquiry has some good interviews as well. I spend a lot of time driving, so I guess I tolerate dry things when faced with repeated CD's or boredom.

[thesummerqueen]

Adrian, what would we do for a podcast for the forum? Just get a bunch of us together dicking around talking about what we usually do?

[Tiberius]

Adrian, what would we do for a podcast for the forum? Just get a bunch of us together dicking around talking about what we usually do?

No. The plan for the old one was to have a set outline to follow. We go over news items, talk about a specific subject (the theme for the podcast), maybe have a guest interview, etc.

Its relation to the forums would be only for external discussion, and to gain more members.

[MinusGod]

Sketpics Guide is great. The Atheist Experience is my favorite. Matt Dillahunty is a beast.