Some Podcasts I Have Sampled - Five

TED talks audio and video feed - Often compelling and sometimes inspiring lectures from the TED (Technology Entertainment Design) event TED ("is an event like no other. It brings together more than 1000 thought-leaders, movers and shakers... in Monterey, California every year... for four days of learning laughter and inspiration.")
A couple of the lectures that excited me were Cameron Sinclair (founder of Architecture for Humanity talking about Open Source Design and Architecture - and the DIY ethic) and Nicholas Negroponte (on One Laptop Per Child and how it will be done - and what it means for education). Other interesting casts were David Pogue and Arctic explorer Ben Saunders. I've got to listen to and watch more of this stuff. The site says "For best effect, plan to listen to at least three, start to finish. They have a cumulative effect." I agree - that's what I have just done. I am excited.

The Show with Ze Frank - is what I've been watching a lot of recently. (There's over a year to catch up on to) (And then a few days later I saw his thang mentioned on the 3rd episode of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe BBCPage WikiPage (series 2)).
Watching Ze Frank is compulsive watching, it has echoes of Armando Iannucci's stuff... I'm trying to find a way to describe it (if you haven't watched it already)- a face to camera talking about "the knowledge", reading something from the comments, provoking viewer interaction rearranging his perceptual architecture...

And then there's TWIT. Which is all good. MacBreak Weekly, and TWIT are my favourite, due to the informal, looser and "rathole"-y nature of the show (they refer to their veering off topic moments as ratholes) and their reliable characters - Leo Laporte and his voices and accents, Merlin Mann and his joshing, John C. Dvorak the grumpy old man etc. net@nite is interesting cos it's has live listener interaction (people phone in) and I like the back and forth between Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte.

I'm thinking of creating a deli.cio.us tag - podcasts I like - or something - can I be arsed? After listening to those TED talks with all those go ahead and do stuff people I feel incredibly lazy. But my reasoning is - I am a duck, ducks laze and doze a lot, I'm the only duck I know that can understand human language. But that's a very specious argument.