Pod people 001

,
Author information: Leon Terner , Project Manager , Post information: , x min read ,
Related post categories:

Resident podcasting expert Leon starts off this regular feature with a look at some of his favourites.

Guardian | Tech Weekly

Tech Weekly is a marvellous podcast that tackles topics tied to tech and new media and delivers insightful debate in an accessible format. Even the less techy among us can get into Tech Weekly.

To put this into context, why not start with the episode “Is the writing on the wall for Reddit” from the 16th July 2015.

Reddit is, at the time of typing these words, among the 10 most trafficked sites on the web, but recent turmoil lost Reddit a CEO. What is the role of social media culture on the web, or the role of social media in culture? And where is the line between free speech and blatant harassment?

Interviews with people in the know, and who are sometimes at the core of the site that proclaims itself “the front-page of the internet”, draw focus to different ways to improve or remove a slice of the internet where women’s voices are undervalued. Overall, an incredibly interesting episode of an already fascinating podcast.

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

All right, let’s have a look at a podcast episode that may be very relevant to some of you – certainly to many of our clients. At Torchbox, we work with a lot of charities and organisations, part of whose online presence concerns fundraising.

I was already going to bring up TORCH, the podcast of The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities for several reasons, but imagine my delight when on the 3rd August 2015 they released a lecture entitled “Fundraising through Digital”.

In this lecture, Michael Docherty, Digital Director at Cancer Research UK, talks through some of the perils that charities face in the digital age, but also how best to scale those obstacles, or at the very least circumvent them. With a healthy application of hacktivism, clicktivism, slacktivism (!) and game design, they did some very innovative and excited work. Docherty also talks about identifying digital trends and riding the right waves.

Well worth a listen, we think! TORCH already had a seat reserved on this shortlist regardless, though. First off, I’ll admit, as a member of an Oxfordshire digital agency and a resident of Oxford myself, I’m naturally biased. Secondly, TORCH (the centre) does fascinating work and TORCH (the podcast) gives people who aren’t able to attend their lectures in person an opportunity to listen in.

So whether you’re interested in fundraising through digital, check out the link here below – you can sit back and watch the lectures yourself, and there’s even an RSS feed for those of us who prefer subscribing to audio podcasts on iTunes.

The WIRED.co.uk Podcast

Here’s a podcast that a lot of you may already be familiar with. WIRED is a trusted source of tech news for a great amount of people. The WIRED podcast is no less worthy of mention.

As a show that reviews the past week’s tech news, it’s a podcast that’s well-worth subscribing to, but episode-specific recommendations risk quickly dating this blogpost or losing their relevancy.


Whatever, say we. Here’s an interesting one with which to introduce this podcast to your deeply appreciative ears. Episode 230, which dropped on iTunes on the 14th August 2015, entitled “Space salad, Alphabet and RIP to LOL” had some of us in stitches.

BBC Radio 4 | Digital Human

Count on the BBC to deliver. Digital Human is a great radio show on BBC Radio 4. And if you reject radio as a defunct technology, fret not – it’s also available as a podcast.

I have to admit, this one’s a bit of a personal favourite of mine. It covers both mankind’s approach to technology and the impact of digital culture on what makes us human.

No aspect of our regular, mortal lives is off-limits. Digital Human has tackled such diverse subjects as the environment and love, seduction and mischief.

Paradoxically, I find that the episodes of Digital Human that deal with the analogue are among the most interesting. Take the episode Language, for instance, from the 20th October 2014. In it, they discussed one of our oldest technologies, namely, language. They even interviewed people who invent and/or keep alive “made-up” languages like Lojban, Klingon and Dothraki. Mutce cinri!

(That’s “very interesting” in Lojban.)

,
Author information: Leon Terner , Project Manager , Post information: , x min read ,
Related post categories: