This was a Jason Snell recommendation on a recent episode of The Incomparable that I nearly skipped; I’m glad I didn’t, though, because this was a fascinating book. The premise—that humanity suddenly learns about and how to access parallel worlds to either “side” of Earth—is a fascinating one. In fact, this is the kind of great science fiction that starts with a wild concept and plays with it as long as it can.

I was already enjoying the actual play podcast Worlds Beyond Number, but once the phrase “pro bono rules lawyer” was uttered, I knew I was totally in.

Almost immediately after finishing yesterday’s post, an idea occurred to me that I wanted to chase a little further. I’ve mentioned before my admiration for Thomas Römer, a Germano-Swiss Bible scholar who teaches at the Collège de France and whose lectures are freely available in podcast form. I’ve listened to a lot of those lectures, and I remembered that Römer had made some comments about the rhetorical purposes of the Abraham story that seemed relevant to my wrestling with the story of the Binding of Isaac.

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a post about an important part of RLDS history that I mostly love but also get slightly annoyed by. In short, Wallace Smith, who was then prophet-president of the RLDS Church, was put on the spot by a local seminary professor, who asked the following question: If our mutual studies of Christianity and the RLDS Church were to discovere that there was a discrepancy between what Jesus taught and what Joseph Smith taught, which would you accept?

I checked this out from Libby after hearing about it on The Incomparable, where all the panelists had good things to say about it. The premise of the book is fun: an orc warrior in a D&D-type adventuring party retires to start a coffeeshop, coffee here being a gnomish delicacy that isn’t well known. I don’t drink coffee and I don’t really patronize coffeeshops, but this book kind of made me wish that I did!

I read (and listened to) a lot in the early months of this year and have hit a wall recently. This audiobook was a nice way to get back into reading; I’ve felt a hunger for Star Wars media recently, and this book came recommended on a podcast I’ve sampled. It’s fun to get more into the new canon: I thought this did a good job of setting up some of the Episode VII worldbuilding, and it reminded me of the fun I had reading through the old EU growing up.

I recently finished a relisten of my favorite Star Wars actual play podcast, and now I want to start a Star Wars FATE game.

I’ve enjoyed reading Alice Marwick’s work in the past, and I really enjoyed her appearance on the EFF’s podcast here. link to ‘Podcast Episode: So You Think You’re A Critical Thinker | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

Happy to hear podcasts aren’t working out for Spotify, because I was always upset about Spotify trying to wall off this garden. link to ‘Sometimes Open Systems Beat Those Who Try To Lock Them Up: Spotify’s Podcast Colonization Flops | Techdirt’

I grew up in a faith tradition that—with the exception of major holidays like Christmas and Easter—didn’t follow the Christian liturgical calendar. So, shortly after I began attending Community of Christ regularly (and, given the circumstances, virtually) in 2020, I decided I was going to learn more all of the seasons and holidays that I wasn’t familiar with. A few months earlier, I’d heard an interview with the Swiss abbot Urban Federer on the Babel podcast by Radio Télévision Suisse.

Recently, I was listening to a podcast episode that was touching on deconstruction. It was chiefly concerned with the term as it’s used in religious contexts, but to do so, it was going back to its intellectual roots, with Jacques Derrida and Ferdinand de Saussure. As the host, Jared Byas, summarized the ideas of deconstruction: we can’t ever escape language and the meaning of language depends on other parts of that language.

Ce matin, j’ai couru mes cinq petits kilomètres sans écouteurs—un évènement rarissime. Je dis pas que je vais faire comme ça tout le temps, mais je suis content de savoir que je peux laisser les podcasts et la musique chez moi quand je veux.

Yesterday, I listened to a new episode of the Project: Zion podcast, the semi-official podcast of Community of Christ. This episode was an interview with Shandra Newcom, one of two apostles-designate who will begin their service after the April 2023 World Conference of the church. It was a delightful episode, and I posted something to the Community of Christ subreddit that I wanted to repeat here: What a great episode!

Over the past few days, I’ve been relistening to the One Shot podcast’s October 2018 Kids on Bikes episodes (which starts here). There’s so much to love about this six-episode series. I remembered enjoying the characters and the players, but it wasn’t until this morning that I remembered the perfect moment where one player describes the biblical Jacob as “history’s best angel fighter” and summons him to help a science teacher fight off a terrifying seraphim (which I promise makes sense in context).

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Lexi Lishinski, a good friend from grad school, to appear on an episode of her podcast The Unlistenable Podcast. To quote the About page for the podcast: It’s not called that because it has dreadful audio quality, although that may be true. It’s called that because you can’t listen to it, because I’m not going to release the episodes. This solves literally every issue that ever stopped me from recording a podcast.

Grâce à une conversation avec une amie (celle qui m’a donné une pièce de 5 CHF), je me suis souvenu ce matin de l’émission RTS « Gare à vous ». J’en profite pour découvrir Romanshorn en rangeant la maison cet après-midi.

I am a big fan of the Book of Mormon. It’s one of the reasons that I stuck with Community of Christ when transitioning out of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I know the book is problematic, and I doubt its historicity, but I’m still an advocate for making some religious meaning out of it. There are diverse opinions about the Book of Mormon in Community of Christ, and while there’s plenty of room to believe lots of different things, the default institutional view tends to be either indifferent or suspicious of the text.

This may be the most fascinating episode of Mormon Land I’ve ever listened to. It’s amazing how much the Latter-day Saint understanding and practice of temple rituals has changed over time. link to ‘Streamez l’épisode A law professor explains “temple divorces,” and how they changed through the years | Episode 246 du podcast Mormon Land | Écoutez en ligne gratuitement sur SoundCloud’

This summer has been a good one for getting back into tabletop roleplaying. I played a lot of the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars RPG in middle and high school and have been spending most of my life since then wishing that I were still that involved with RPGs. I’ve compensated some by listening to actual play podcast: Total Party Kill rotates through several great D&D campaigns, the original Fantasy Flight Star Wars run of Campaign is so good that I’m listening to it a second time, and Penny Arcade’s Tales from the Loop campaign blew my mind when I listened to it a few months ago.

Compelling podcast episode from Mozilla highlighting morally dubious uses of AI. It’s really important that we be more reflective about this instead of trying things and seeing where they lead. link to ‘The Tech We Won’t Build — The Internet Health Report 2022’

Content de voir le retour de Culture BD sur France Culture !

Comme je reprends la course à pied, j’augmente aussi le nombre de podcasts que j’écoute; il y a des podcasts fancophones à ne pas rater ?

The title of this post is a bit misleading. My wife and I aren’t really big on “Parent’s Day” celebrations: Years of Latter-day Saint “all women are mothers” (read: motherhood is the most important part of womanhood) Sunday services grated on us during our years of infertility, and even now that we are parents (and aren’t practicing Latter-day Saints—though my current denomination certainly isn’t immune from a cringeworthy celebration of parents either), it’s just not a thing we do.

Kid just called me out on a No True Scotsman fallacy, which makes me feel a lot better about all those episodes of Smash Boom Best we let her listen to.

Il y a trop peu de monde qui aime les podcasts et apprécie aussi RSS pour d’autres fins.

I’ve been a big fan of audio-only media for a big chunk of my life. I grew up listening to NPR radio shows like Car Talk and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me on Saturdays while my dad drove us around to do errands. TV wasn’t allowed in my family on Sundays, but the NPR Sunday Puzzle was—depending on what time church was that year, we’d listen to it on our way to Sunday meetings.

Great news for a tough Monday! This is one of my favorite comics, I love podcasts, and North is writing scripts. Perfect combination. link to ‘Marvel Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Podcast Milana Vayntrub Ryan North’

Even if Spotify could demonstrate it isn’t a publisher here, platforms don’t get a free pass on content. Also, podcast platforms run counter to podcasting, so Spotify’s trying to be successful there is just as troublesome as the costs it’s willing to pay to do so. link to ‘Spotify CEO Daniel Ek defends Joe Rogan deal in tense company town hall - The Verge’

I have not (and do not care to) read a lot about the Spotify thing, but podcasts are meant to be a platformless, open medium—one of the few left on the web. If you’re going to make one exclusive, you absolutely take responsibility for content moderation.

Podcasts are one of the last bastions of the open internet, but that evidently comes at a cost. So long as Apple and Spotify are trying to corner the podcast market, they should be moderating their content. link to ‘Election Falsehoods Surged on Podcasts Before Capitol Riots, Researchers Find - The New York Times’

What a great episode. link to ‘#181 Absolutely Devious Lick | Reply All’

I am only peripherally aware of Joe Rogan and don’t get great vibes from what I see, so I don’t really have any investment in how his podcast is doing. That said, this does speak to my concerns that Spotify’s attempts to land exclusive podcasts are threatening one of the last (and best) parts of the open web we’ve managed to hold onto. Also, very interesting use of digital methods here!

Great conversation in this podcast about the danger of dismissing comics as simply “easier to read.” I appreciated the discussion of the literacies needed to understand a comic. link to ‘Ariol, vingt ans d’un héros de la bande dessinée jeunesse’

Thinking about how D&D has druids, bards, and magic potions and wondering if anyone has ever done an Astérix-themed campaign (or, preferably, actual play podcast).

Was there a moral panic about radio? My kid is enjoying podcasts, and while parent-me feels like that’s somehow better than TV, tech researcher me is wondering about history.