My favourite podcasts

I love listening to podcasts while I sew. If you know of any good ones, please leave a comment and let me know what you love about them!

You can listen to podcasts on a tablet, ipad, smart phone or just on the computer. I have provided links for you to the iTunes Store but I'm not sure if they will work for you cos I use Australian iTunes.

My absolute number all time best ever favourite comes out every Friday and I look forward to it every week, it's called "Confessions with Simon Mayo". It's a radio show on BBC radio2. Simon Mayo reads out four hilarious "confessions" that audience members have sent in, and then a panel decides whether the person is deserving of forgiveness. It really is a hoot. There are many tales of parents playing tricks on their kids, workplace misdemeanours, holiday hijinks - really there is nothing else out there quite as funny, at least, to my warped sense of humour.

Here's an example.

One family on holiday in Scotland. The dad told the kids in the backseat "see those sheep up on the hill? Those are haggis. They have two short legs on the uphill side and two longer legs on the downhill side, so they don't roll down the hill." Of course mum and dad were winking at each other and holding back the giggles unbeknownst to the kids in the back.

Fast forward a few months and the kid's at school. The teacher says  "can anyone tell the class what a haggis is?" Of course, you guessed it, her hand shot up and she told everyone about the wonkylegged Scottish sheep that are bred specially so they don't roll down hills. 

You can imagine what embarrassment that caused the poor child.... 

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/simon-mayos-confessions/id505408244?mt=2

Another of my favourite is "Stuff you should know."

This is highly educational. A different topic each week and I have learned about so many amazing parts of our world that I would never bother reading about. The hosts Chuck and Josh do an excellent job. Many of their episodes are US centric though.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/stuff-you-should-know/id278981407?mt=2

"Stuff you missed in history class" is also good and along similar lines. I do find the voices of the hosts ever so slightly annoying, but I still want to listen and learn and find the show very interesting.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/stuff-you-missed-in-history/id283605519?mt=2

"Saw bones" is a newish podcast, hosted by a married couple, the McElroys. The wife is a doctor and the husband is  a bit of a doofus, he pretends to want to know about all sorts of ailments. They explain the history of the treatment of that disease or problem by the medical profession through the ages. It's gory. I love it. It's a bit like the segment on "horrible histories" where the Egyptian doctor tries to treat a modern patient using ancient techniques. It's very funny and easy to listen to.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/sawbones-marital-tour-misguided/id665149280?mt=2

"Dr Karl" is a weekly radio segment on Triple J (Australia wide youth radio station run by the ABC) about science, it's a talkback show so people dial in and ask Dr Karl questions. People ask the weirdest questions. He has a twitter feed too which is a hive of information.

Disclaimer: Dr Karl is an evolutionist so his answers come from that world view but I still find his show informative and fun to listen to. For example, if someone rang up to ask "why do we have armpit hair?" Dr Karl would most likely reply that it is because we are descended from apes. Personally I don't get all het up about that kind of thing - I would say well, you might be an apeman but speak for yourself! 

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/dr-karl-on-triplej/id73331325?mt=2

"A history of the world in 100 objects" from the BBC was awe inspiring and marvellous - I was very sad when I got up to the one hundredth object and then there were no more. Each episode featured a different object from the British Museum and together they make a massive timeline of the entire history of humanity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/ 

For Christian history I enjoyed listening to "Communio Sanctorum" which is a weekly podcast on church history.  

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/history-christian-church/id435665417?mt=2

I like to listen to Chuck Missler preaching his way through the Bible in "66/40" but for this one I tend to tune out and miss too much if I'm sewing, so it's one for when I'm listening properly. If I can't sleep st night I put this on and zzzzzzzzzzzz. Out like a light.

I figure if I'm listening to Bible teaching in my sleep I must be absorbing some by osmosis, right?

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/chuck-missler-66-40-radio/id105618703?mt=2

For a while I listened to many and various quilting podcasts but I gave up on those, they got boring after a while. And they made me want to take on more quilting than I could ever possibly get done in one lifetime!

Spelling with Flickr

G'day.
I came across a website called "Spell with Flickr"
You type in a word and it gives you the letters, each a photograph from Flickr.
If you don't like the random letter it throw up, you can click to replace with another photo.
I tried it with Banana Orange Apple, and here's the result








I could have lots of fun playing with these letters! I am not sure if I like the colour combination though.

This reminded me of one of my favourite websites for introducing practically any topic: Tag Galaxy.

Tag Galaxy pulls Flickr photographs relevant to any topic you type in.
Of course, it only goes by the tags.

But try searching "Romeo and Juliet", Science Fiction, Horror movies - you name it and all the pictures will come up.

I put in U2 as an example for you. Here's the result:

You can see U2 is the main topic, and all the other subtopics float around in orbit, like some kind of spacey mind map. The size of the planet represents the amount of photos available.


Let's go click on "music" and see what comes up.

Oh look! Another planetary mind map! I love this way of representing ideas. How about we click on the blazing sun at the centre.

23072 photos are available. Of course, you can't see all of them at once, the globe displays 234 at a time, and you can rotate the globe, zoom in, click on the interesting ones to go through to Flickr etc.


A photo of a road caught my eye - it was titled "Where the streets have no name" and when I clicked it showed me the original photo on Flickr which had a link to a youtube clip of the band performing at halftime at the first Superbowl after September 11. Here it is if you have seven minutes to spare.

So you can see how it is fun to get sidetracked sometimes!


Caution - not all images uploaded to Flickr are suitable for children, exercise caution please. And there can be mistagging - the program has no way to tell if a photo tagged with U2 is actually the Irish band or just someone's backyard.

Give it a try with a topic you are interested in. You never know what you might discover!
And please let me know what you find...