Podcasts on the iPhone, #1 of an Occasional Series.

I dropped the On the iPod section of my weekly Sunday Stats post a couple of weeks ago, because it didn’t fit with the format anymore; it started out as just whatever I happened to listen to on my Sunday long run, and turned into a list of everything I’d listened to in the past week, with links to individual episodes.  Also, the links were a real pain in the ass to do on a Sunday at the end of a post that might already have taken me a couple of hours to write.

But I like promoting the podcasts I listen to — I hardly ever listen to live commercial radio, and I want to spread the word about all of the good stuff that’s out there.  Also, it makes me feel like one of the cool kids in the social media space, or at least one of the kids who occasionally gets to hang with the cool kids.  So I’m going to do a separate post from time to time, linking to whatever I’ve been listening to lately.  It might not be every week, and it might not include everything I listen to (some weeks I listen to a lot of podcasts), but I’ll do my best.  If you’re not interested in podcasts, just skip it and I promise in my next post I’ll complain about not having enough time to run, write, spend with my wife & kids, or get my work done.

This week, I’m going to focus on the podcast fiction I’ve been listening to lately.  Next time, I’ll do the non-fiction podcasts I’ve gotten into recently, and I’ve picked up some good ones.

Serving Worlds:

I can’t remember exactly how John Mierau and I ended up following each other on Twitter — perhaps through the Absolute Write group — but after he made a crack about lawyers I checked out his podcast Serving Worlds. (Note: making unpleasant generalizations about my profession is not normally a good way to get me to listen to your podcast.  Yes, many lawyers are assholes.  I am often one of them.)  In Serving Worlds, John reads his own short stories.  I’ve listened to one story (three episodes) all the way through, and I’m three episodes in to another.  His stuff is good.  Check him out.  The first episodes of the stories I’ve heard so far are:

Serving Worlds, Episode #4:  “Marked Men,” Episode 1.

Serving Worlds, Episode #7:  “Harlan’s Wake,” Episode 1.

StarShip Sofa:

I am probably the last podcast listener interested in science fiction to subscribe to StarShip Sofa, so I’m sure you already know all about it.  I’ve only just started listening, but it has more of a “magazine” feel than Escape Pod does, with a combination of some or all of editorial, reviews, poetry, and fiction in each episode of its Aural Delights.  If you don’t already subscribe to Aural Delights and want to give it a try, I enjoyed this episode just today:

Aural Delights No. 79 (lead story, “Standing Room Only,” by Karen Joy Fowler).

Escape Pod:

Speaking of Escape Pod, it seems to be back on track, with founder and Escape Artist in Chief Steve Eley having delegated some of the responsibility for getting the show out to new managing editor Jeremiah Tolbert.  Escape Pod is working through what must have been a truly epic backlog of flash fiction — they pushed out a lot of it in January, and have sent more out on the feed in the last couple of weeks, which reminds me that I have a flash piece I’ve been meaning to submit.  EP is also in the process of publishing all of the Hugo nominees for short story.  I recently listened to, and enjoyed:

Escape Pod #194:  Hugo nominee “Exhalation,” by Ted Chiang.

Escape Pod #195:  Hugo nominee “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss,” by Kij Johnson.

Escape Pod Flash:  Grandpa? by Edward M. Lerner.

Escape Pod Flash:  “Chump Change,” by Pete Butler.

That’s all I have for tonight.  Now I need to go make sure my tux is clean; Junior’s school’s benefit is Saturday night.