This was originally posted to spine-health.com in 2018. The spine-health.com forums no longer exist, so posting here for posterity.

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I am about two weeks out from an L4/5 laminoforamintomy for right leg sciatica.  The short version is that I achieved instant, near-complete relief of symptoms.

I’m cautious about being too optimistic early in recovery, but this forum has been very helpful to me in researching this surgery and a prior surgery, so I wanted to share my story ASAP.  Despite all of our best intentions, I think sometimes this forum ends up biased toward the difficult recoveries or surgical disasters, because the success cases so often want to get back to living our lives and not worrying about surgery.  But when we’re at low points and considering surgery, we need success stories more stories of caution and concern, so I encourage everyone with success stories to come back and post!

I am a 40-year-old male; I have had one prior disc surgery (C5/6 laminoforaminotomy in 2016, discussed in another post).  That surgery was a rocky recovery for a few weeks, but overall a complete success.  In the time between then and now, I’ve been at full activity, running about a half-marathon a month, swimming, etc.  I had made some lifestyle adaptations to keep my neck healthy – most notably a standing desk – but overall, life was normal…

…until November of last year (2017), when right-side lower back pain emerged with no particular trigger.  After a couple weeks, I saw a PT, who suspected a bulging disc, but (correctly) stated that most bulges resolve with time and activity, so I started on PT.

Before I talk about the degradation of this case, a bit about the underlying causes… for a while I racked my brain about what exactly caused both of these disc issues – posture, too much activity, not enough activity, something that happened on a playground 30 years ago, etc.  And while all of those things may be contributing factors, in this case, I’m about 99% sure that the root cause is genetic, and that if anything I’ve been lucky to have as few issues as I’ve had, at only two surgeries by age 40.  My family history of disc disease is simply bonkers, with 4 out of 6 adults on one side of the family having had surgery, for a total of 22 (!!!) discs operated on, with zero risk factors across the entire family.  So, I no longer dwell too much on causes, and focus on what I can do to make the most of my genetic hand.

Back to my story… PT started in December of 2017, and after about two weeks, the back pain was gone, and was replaced by two symptoms in my calf, which would get worse over the next few months, but basically would be the same in their overall description.  The two symptoms were:

1. Pain.  I had an ache in my calf that would initially set in around 5pm every day, then it became 4pm, etc., until eventually it was about 9am.  It would always resolve when I lay down, so I could sleep, but after a few months, I had to lie down about once an hour in my office to make it through the work day.
2. Tingling.  When we say “tingling” to folks who haven’t had serious disc issues, it sounds innocuous… but many folks on this forum will know that when I say “tingling”, or “foot falling asleep”, those are just the best words we have, but “feels like my foot is on fire from the inside” is maybe more accurate.  This would happen for me only when I stood up from sitting for more than about five minutes, so I basically didn’t sit down for six months.  This would also happen to a lesser degree when I stood up in the morning.  It would only last 10-30 seconds in either case, but this was rough, and scary.

MRI in January confirmed a bulge at L4/5 and possible tiny bulge at L5/S1.

Here are all the things I tried over the course of six months:

1. PT.  I tried various forms of PT, including McKenzie-style postural exercises, nerve flossing, etc.  None particularly helped.  If I had to choose one that seemed to provide some mild benefit, I would choose the nerve flossing, but overall, PT was unsuccessful.
2. Meds.  The aching responded pretty well to a combination of Tramadol and Tylenol, so I stuck with that.  But there was a period near the end when I was on a totally unsustainable dose of Tylenol.  A brief experiment with gabapentin was a total disaster, which severe withdrawal after only a few days of a very mild dose.
3. Acupuncture.  No response.
4. Injections.  I had three different visits for L4/5 injections, one of which included also included an injection at L5/S1.  The last injection gave me about three days of glorious relief, but it was really the cumulative effect at L4/5, not the addition of the L5/S1 injection.  But overall, I did not respond to injections.

I wasn’t exactly miserable during this period.  The Tramadol had no side effects for me, and I was able to swim and generally stay active.  I was working at probably 75% productivity.  But I was on an unsustainable dose of Tramadol and Tylenol, the pain was creeping earlier and earlier in the day, and I had given up all sitting-based activities, e.g. playing the piano.  Right at the end, even swimming became a challenge, with calf ache creeping in after a few minutes. So I started to consider surgery, and unlike my last experience where I talked to five doctors who gave four different surgical recommendations, this time I went straight to the surgeon who did my C5/6 foraminotomy two years earlier, and he recommended an L4/5 foraminotomy.  For those unfamiliar with this procedure, my layperson’s summary is: the surgeon goes in and removes a little bit of bone and other tissue to decompress the nerve.  The disc stays where it is.  This leads to faster recovery (no bone plates to heal) and no change to spinal mechanics.  The downside is that you’re still living with a bulging disc, so it’s possible that you’ll end up back in surgery later if the disc keeps moving.

The surgery was on a Monday afternoon.  Sunday I took my usual combination of a zillion Tylenol and a half-zillion Tramadol to get through the day.  Since I didn’t take any meds the day of the surgery, I was a little unhappy when I arrived for surgery.  But everything went smoothly, and I woke up at 5pm basically symptom-free, other than some mild incision pain.  I’ve been around the block now enough to know that this relief could have just been the local anesthetic at work, so I didn’t make much of it.  I worked a bit from home that evening, and went to bed on schedule.  Standing up the next morning and not feeling my foot on fire was a good sign.  I was back at work and feeling basically 100% that day, other than pain in my throat from intubation, which was a good problem to have as my worst problem.  But still, I knew this could be the cortisone at work.

Three days later I had to travel, which I expected to be unbearable.  I had a prescription for Oxycodone that I filled just in case.  But not only did I not take any painkiller – not even Tylenol – I was symptom-free on the flight, and walked miles on a hot day in Philadelphia with my family during the trip.  Complete relief!  I could still feel a “ghost” of some of the tingling, and every once in a while I would bump the incision and groan, but basically, life was good.  Traveling home gave me some mild incision pain, but no nerve pain.  After just under two weeks of nearly-symptom-free, totally-painkiller-free time, I started swimming again (the incision had healed very quickly).

And now I’m just over two weeks out, with almost no symptoms, and I still haven’t opened the bottle of Oxy.  I wouldn’t say I’m near 100%: I can tell that if I went running, or did a bunch of push-ups, it would be a total disaster.  Yesterday I sat a little too much in meetings (I usually stand), and I could feel the tingling a little bit in the afternoon.  I also know from my previous surgery that there will be a little waxing and waning over the next few weeks.  But I’m at 100% productivity, and life is… finally… normal!

So, to everyone suffering from sciatica, (1) there is hope, and (2) please post your success stories here!

And on a more nuts-and-bolts level, I’m not a doctor, but I really believe we’ll start seeing more and more foraminotomies as alternatives to fusion over the next few years, so ask your doctors about it.  There will always be a need for fusion, and when the disc is soft and still moving, a foraminotomy is not going to solve the problem.  But now that technique has advanced so far, I expect we’ll see more and more minimally-invasive foraminotomies as at least a first approach to addressing bulging discs, when non-surgical therapies fail.

2.5-months-post-op update

Update @ ~2.5 months out.  Pain continues to be at zero.  The recovery from tingling symptoms plateau’d somewhat after about a month, so I’d say I have 100% pain alleviation and 60% non-pain (tingling) alleviation.  Overall a huge success, though the remaining symptoms are frustrating, and still prevent me from sitting for extended periods in some postures, and still prevent me from running, which is making me a little crazy.  Still, I can’t complain.

2020 update (two years post-op)

Nearly two years symptom-free! Well, symptom-free within reason. I still almost completely avoid prolonged sitting, and when I have to be in a car for a long time, for example, my right leg still feels… fatigued? Not quite pain, but not pleasant. But in the grand scheme of things, this is very rare, and otherwise life is totally normal. Fully active, no problem lifting heavy things (including dogs and kids, because, you know, sometimes your large dog doesn’t want to go where you want her to go), so cautiously optimistic that things are stable.

This was originally posted to spine-health.com in 2016. The spine-health.com forums no longer exist, so posting here for posterity.

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I’m almost a year out from a C5/6 foraminotomy; in my decision-making leading up to surgery, I found this forum to be quite helpful, and more than anything I was seeking information about cases similar to mine, so I’m posting to pay back the Karma by sharing my story, which hopefully will be useful for the next person making the same decision.  

Short version: I am extremely happy with my laminoforaminotomy for a posterior C5/6 herniation, with relatively easy recovery and almost complete resolution of symptoms, though my gut says it isn’t a lifetime fix and I haven’t had my last surgery.

Long version…

I’m male, now 39, 150 lbs, very active (except that I work at a computer all day).

In 2010 (I was 32 at the time), I started having shooting pain radiating into my right arm when I bent my neck in certain ways, particularly bending my neck backwards when I was otherwise bending forward, e.g. when bending over to tie my shoes, reach into the laundry machine, etc.  I had no persistent pain and no weakness.  MRI confirmed a significant C5/6 protrusion.  There was no root cause I could point to; I built up some theories about a bike accident five years earlier, a fall I took when I was a kid, etc.  But basically I think it was years of bad posture while working at a computer, and some genetic predisposition (a PT has called me “cartilage-challenged”).

I was treated with an injection, and was fortunate to respond well to the first injection.  There were a couple weeks of crushing disappointment, even though everyone told me it can take a few weeks for the injection to work, then about two weeks later everything resolved.  I did some PT, and made some lifestyle adjustments, in particular (1) standing instead of sitting at work, and (2) avoiding extensive periods on an exercise bike.  I think these changes were hugely important, and the next five years were likely the most active of my life, and – silver lining – because I couldn’t ride the exercise bike any more, I discovered running for the first time, and in those five years I ran three marathons.  Thanks, neck injury!

One thing that didn’t go away, or maybe even developed during this period, was a persistent tightness in my neck and upper back, and in particular a frequent desire to crack my neck.  It’s hard to say whether this tightness caused the disc issue or vice versa, but they are certainly related.  I knew enough to avoid getting my hands involved, but if you hung out with me, you would notice me moving my head around a lot.  This was mild and not really a big deal, until ~late 2015, when it got really intense.  Not painful, just an intense desire to crack my neck.  In retrospect I wish I had been stronger about resisting it, because by early 2016 I was indulging it a little too much, and I believe this led to a regression in the disc situation.

In 2016, I started experiencing some aching in my right shoulder and arm.  In particular, *sitting* was a disaster.  I could still run (running was great therapy, in fact), and I could sleep fine, but I couldn’t sit in a chair for more than a few minutes.  I had to take breaks on drives longer than 20 minutes, I could no longer play piano, and I couldn’t have my kids sit on my lap.  The couple of flights I took during this period were absolute torture; I felt like someone was trying to pull my right arm off.  PT didn’t help, and this time around injections didn’t help.  MRI showed the protrusion had gotten a little worse, and in particular there was some spinal stenosis that was not causing any symptoms, but was utterly terrifying.  I literally dreamed of the MRI slice that showed the stenosis most clearly.  The surgeon who ordered the MRI this time around immediately recommended disc replacement, which of course freaked me out even more.  While he wasn’t way off -base, and this was a legitimate option, I know now that on the spectrum from “conservative” to “cut now, ask questions later”, he definitely leans toward quick recommendations for surgery, and in particular toward disc replacement.  I’m glad I continued to seek conservative treatment while talking to other surgeons as well.  All the non-surgeons I spoke with recommended waiting, because as long as I wasn’t sitting, I was pain-free, and it’s hard to recommend surgery for someone who walks into your office active and pain-free.  Even the other surgeons I spoke with said that surgery was not urgent.

Conservative treatment included PT, two injections, and dry needling, none of which helped at all this time around.  The pain continued to progress, though there was still no weakness or issues with sensation.  My decision to have surgery came when the pain started occurring when I was lying down, and sleeping became difficult.  Right up until the day of my surgery, I was still pain-free when standing and even running, but I could see things were headed downhill, the functional limitations around sitting were adding up, and as many of us on this forum know, poor sleep has a profound impact on quality of life and on the injury itself.

I spoke to several surgeons, and opinions were split among disc replacement, fusion, and foraminotomy/microdiscectomy.  Mostly on the grounds that (1) I really trusted the surgeon who recommended foraminotomy, and (2) foraminotomy was the least invasive option available, and had little or no bearing on the eventual success of fusion/replacement if I ended up there, I decided on the foraminotomy.

I’m fortunate to have a surgeon in the area who does minimally-invasive foraminotomies (I’m not sure I would have chosen this option otherwise), so the surgery was very mild in terms of amount of tissue torn up.  You wouldn’t notice the incision if I didn’t point it out.  The only disappointment wrt the procedure itself was that he was hoping he might get some access to the disc; in fact, there was no way to safely remove any portion of the disc via posterior access.  But we know this was likely going in, and the widening of the foramen and removal of some of the lamina were routine and successful.

The first couple weeks of recovery were difficult, and the pain was somewhat worse than before surgery.  There was no pain around the incision, but there was a constant aching in my arm and some tingling in my hand, which I had never had before.  I was freaking out, of course, but everyone assured me this was a normal consequence of all the surgical irritation around the nerve.  That said, despite some pain, I was back at work in about three days with minimal painkillers (I think I averaged one Vicodin a day for about two weeks, then none after that).  After about three weeks, the pain started to subside.  Once I was cleared for some physical activity, the pain went away within days.  So in the grand scheme of surgical recovery, I was really fortunate; this is of course a major advantage of the foraminotomy compared to anything that requires bone healing.

I was running again at three months out, and running long distances at full speed by four months.  I got greedy at about 4 months and overdid it with activity (not running, which has never been a problem, but other more bend-y twist-y activities), resulting in a mild setback.  Once again, I freaked out, but the pain completely subsided again within a couple weeks.

Now at almost a year out, I’m still at 100%, more or less.  The surgeon was honest about not being sure whether the surgery would resolve the tightness/neck-cracking issue; unfortunately, it did not, and I still have tightness and some desire to crack my neck.  But it’s mild compared to pre-surgery.  I can sit again, which means I can read to my kids, play piano, see movies, travel, etc., though I still experience discomfort (though not quite pain) if I sit for a long time, or sit with my head turned.  Every once in a while, I get a very slight hint of pain in my arm or tingling in my finger, just enough to remind me that the herniated disc is still there, we’ve just made some more room for the nerve.  Consequently, I don’t think I’m finished with this issue, and may well end up at fusion at some point (which I would choose over disc replacement if I had to do it today).  But for the low cost in damage and recovery, I feel really good about the decision to go with a foraminotomy first.  And it may just be paranoia worrying about future surgeries; with luck, I’ll live a long and active life with the same very tolerable symptoms I have now.  And even if I do end up in surgery again at some point, with disc replacement technology continuously advancing, a minor surgery that delays the major surgery by a few years may pay off on the basis of available options.

Hopefully this story is helpful to someone either (1) considering similar surgical options or (2) recovering and worrying that things aren’t going to improve.  I have chosen not to mention specific doctors by name here; I live in the Seattle area (in Bellevue), and I’m happy to discuss providers via private message.

2020 update (four years post-op)

2020 update: I continue to be nearly symptom-free, although that partially reflects the minor lifestyle changes (rarely sitting) that I mention above. I.e., I think if I sat at a desk for a couple days, my arm might get a little tingly. My neck is maybe a tiny bit stiff once in a while, but no radiating symptoms.

…how I stretch each NFL weekend to a full week of fitness and entertainment.

I f’ing love NFL football. I cry a little when I hear the Sunday Night Football theme for the first time every year (now, strangely, on a Thursday). It’s hard to concisely explain just how much I f’ing love football, but I’m going to try, by giving you a weekly football-enjoyment schedule, which you too can parlay into both happiness and fitness.

The TFIP (Total Football Immersion Program) assumes you have no “free” time, i.e. that you have no time to just sit and watch football, and also assumes that you aren’t able to actually watch football on Sundays even if you do have time, because… kids and stuff.

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The goals of this program are as follows:

• Use football to make exercise interesting for about five days a week

• Use football-related podcasts to make all mundane tasks (driving, laundry, etc.) and all cognitively idle time (e.g. dog-walking) interesting for about five days a week

• Use football as our sole source of digital entertainment when small bits of non-exercise-related free time are available (e.g. while cooking dinner)

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To achieve those goals, we’ll need to:

• Have a way to watch football when there’s no football on

• Have a good setup for exercising while watching football

• Avoid football spoilers basically all week

• Have football-related content available when we can’t watch football

This post will help you do all of those things.

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First, here are the things you need to do before the season starts:

• Subscribe to NFL Game Pass, which lets you watch hella football. Roughly speaking, you can watch each game as soon as it’s over. It’s $100/year at the time that I’m writing this (2019), which I encourage football fans to compare to the cost of (a) cable, (b) the phone you’re probably reading this on, (c) other streaming services. IMO it’s an insanely good value.

• Have some way of exercising while you watch football. I like a treadmill or bike with a TV/laptop/tablet for this; specifically, I mounted a tiny screen right in my face above a treadmill. The only downside of treadmills and exercise bikes is that they’re boring, and this won’t be a problem, because football. Game Pass on a PC or Mac is significantly preferred over the mobile-device version, because a big part of what will make this work is your ability to fast-forward between plays, which is much easier with a keyboard, and which is much better-supported in the Game Pass web thing (compared to the mobile app) anyway. If you follow my recommendation and go the PC/Mac route here, I recommend getting a tiny wireless keyboard like this one, which you can hold in one hand and easily operate a single button on, even on a treadmill.

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2023 update: I’m out of playoff games, what do I do?

This page is mostly about my approach to in-season football+fitness. During the off-season, I typically watched playoff football, but I’m about to catch up to present-day in my viewing of historical playoff games, and the main reason I have never watched old regular season games is that with no information about team records, it’s hard to decide which games I should care about, but every site that shows week-by-week game info with records also shows spoilers (typically sites just show the record after each week when showing that week’s games).

So, I created this page, which (a) shows records going into each week, and (b) if you want to see them, also shows little emoticons for what I think might be “good” or “bad” games (using “highly scientific” heuristics). E.g. see the no-spoilers-at-all version of a random week from 2009, and the “no spoilers, but hints about which games might not be terrible” version of the same week.2020 update: handling lots of new UX bugs introduced in Game Pass for the 2020 season

Game Pass changes introduced for the 2020/2021 NFL season created several problems for me. I would argue these are all just bugs in Game Pass, but hacking around them was easier than getting Game Pass to fix them, so here we go…

1. Game Pass now tells who won playoff and week 17 games. You can block “scores”, but there is a useless widget that pops up any time you move the mouse that tells you the schedule for the most recent week (not the week you’re currently watching, the most recent calendar week), which is equivalent to telling you the scores of the previous week once you get to week 17:

   

   I guess Washington won this game, I don’t need to see the end!

   Solution: I now use the uBlock origin Chrome plugin to disable this useless widget permanently:

   

   Take that, useless widget!

2. Game Pass no longer lists games in chronological order. For example, here’s a week from the 2012 playoffs:

   

   In fact, the Seahawks/Falcons game happened before the Texans/Patriots game.

   This is a huge issue for me, because every game introduces some risk of spoiling other games, so I need to watch early games first, especially during the playoffs, when there’s a 100% chance that other playoff scores will be discussed by the announcers.

   Solution: I wrote a Python script that prints games in order for any NFL week (including, just for fun, very old seasons when playoff rounds were totally different), optionally generating direct links to Game Pass. From 2021 week 8:

   

   No more accidentally watching late games early. Take that, obvious NFL Game Pass bug!

3. Browser-based Game Pass now only sort of supports advancing time. Game Pass not only no longer supports keyboard shortcuts, but shows you a dark overlay if you let your mouse hover over the button you would click to advance 10 seconds. I.e., this never goes away:

   

   …which makes football a little unwatchable. Of course, moving your mouse around every time you want to advance 10 seconds technically works, but is clearly not the right solution, and is essentially impossible when exercising.

   Solution: I installed this free macro recorder tool to bind a hotkey (I use F1) to the sequence “move my mouse to where that advance button is, click it, then move all the way to the upper-left corner of the screen”. Voila, one-key advance. Take that, debatable NFL Game Pass UX bug!

Other hacks I have to do that aren’t Game Pass’s fault

1. Watching part of the games that aren’t my favorites was impossible on the treadmill. That is, I usually watch my favorite games on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning (more on this below) while I exercise, but then even if I’m out of games I’m really excited about, I like flipping through the other games that at least aren’t terrible, to watch the last quarter of whichever games turned out to be interesting. This is especially important when upsets are brewing. Was I planning on watching Raiders/Chiefs? No. Would I watch the fourth quarter if you told me the Raiders were winning? Definitely. But it’s really tough to page through 13 games with my tiny keyboard. More specifically, it’s nearly impossible to do with sweaty hands on the tiny touch pad.

   Solution: I got the lightest game pad that Amazon has to offer (not the best, the lightest) (at the time it was this one), and installed Keysticks, which lets me map gamepad events to arbitrary keyboard/mouse events. More specifically, I mapped the two sticks on the gamepad to high-speed and low-speed mouse control, and I mapped buttons to left-click, right-click, up/down/left/right, control-tab, and control-f4. If you are a Game Pass fan and a browser-tab enthusiast, all of those will make sense to you. The point is, I can now seamlessly switch among games while I run. I wouldn’t say I could do this at full speed, but it’s perfect for my last run of the week (before starting up again with the next week’s Thursday Night Football), when I can run a little slower and wrap up the previous week’s games. For the price of a knockoff gamepad, I bought myself another day of fitness every week!

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Also, some general tips to emotionally prepare yourself for the NFL season:

• Be prepared to avoid social media entirely between September and February.

• Be prepared to avoid discussing football with any other human beings between September and February, except for possibly a brief window on Saturday evenings. This is a lot easier if you’re not really into interacting with human beings. Did I mention that this plan is for anti-social loners? Well, I’m mentioning it now.

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Football season has arrived!

With all those requirements out of the way, let’s get to the first Monday morning of the season. Let’s pretend for a second that the season doesn’t start on a Thursday, we can come back to that later. In general, our football week will begin on Monday mornings.

Monday morning

Monday morning is the most important moment of the TFIP week. Really, I want you to imagine the feeling of staring at a complete slate of NFL games and knowing that you can watch any of them… is this not like Willy Wonka’s factory for grown-ups?

At this point, we have probably not watched any of the Sunday games, so block time to exercise as early as possible. If you’ve never been a morning person, reconsider whether a 6am workout is more appealing when football is involved (hint: it is). I recommend that you hit that treadmill while watching the most interesting early game that’s available; it’s important to remember that if you start with late games, you run a much higher risk of spoiling games you haven’t watched yet. Occasionally I will watch the Seahawks game first even if it’s in the afternoon; I’m not particularly a Seahawks fan, but the name of the game here is going the whole week without hearing any scores for games that you haven’t watched, and I live in Seattle, so the risk of Seahawks spoilers is very high.

I strongly recommend blocking the bottom of your screen in some way, to avoid other scores (not necessary for Thursday night, Sunday night, or Monday night games). I’ve gone the masking tape and cardboard routes before, but if you are using Windows, I highly recommend an advanced piece of technology called “ScoreBlocker” developed by Neel Joshi. The advanced technology here is – in a nutshell – a big black rectangle.

I recommend watching with the tiny keyboard in-hand, as per above, and skipping filler time. The Rii keyboard fits just right in my hand such that my thumb is over the right arrow, which conveniently advances the Game Pass web client by 10 seconds. This means I can mostly skip time between plays without missing anything, and only watch replays when I want to. Because when you’re a few miles into a workout and having trouble breathing, time-filling announcer fodder and replays of unremarkable inside runs are not going to cut it. At this pace, a good workout is about one half of football.

One of the great things about watching football in non-real-time is that if a game gets boring, you can move on. Typically if there’s a three-score differential, or two scores in the fourth quarter, I’ll fast forward (using the touchpad-y thing on the tiny keyboard) to somewhere near the end of the game to make sure I’m not missing something awesome. If it’s still a blowout, on to the next game.

Monday evening through Saturday evening

For the heart of the week, it’s more of the same: watch your favorite morning games first, then your favorite afternoon games, then the Sunday/Monday/Thursday night games, in that order. Typically you’ve got more than enough football to power daily workouts, plus any other time you have where you can plausibly watch football (e.g. while putting laundry away). This requires about 3-4 games that you care about (for me I’ll watch anything on SNF, plus 2-3 other games of interest).

On Thursday morning, or sometimes earlier if I’ve finished the Sunday night game, I sync my two favorite football podcasts, specifically the Monday morning episode of Golic and Wingo and the weekend-preview episode of The Dave Dameshek Football Program. It’s important to sync these episodes after you’ve finished watching the Sunday night game (and ideally the Monday night game, if you’re interested in that week’s MNF), but before the Thursday game happens, to minimize spoiler risk: while you have the podcasts open, you will almost inevitably see an episode title called something like “Big Trouble in Big D” or “Fly Eagles Fly”). These podcasts are great for the car, for walking the dog, etc.

Whenever you’ve finished your games of interest

One of my favorite parts of the TFIP is when I’ve finished all the games I care about, and I can – in 10 minutes or less – browse the last couple minutes of all the games I don’t care about, to make sure I see all the exciting finishes. This is hard to do while exercising, so typically I save this 10 minutes for, e.g., while I’m cooking or eating dinner on Wednesday or Thursday night.

Sunday

Sunday at 9:30am PT is a great time to hit espn.com; it’s the last ESPN you’ll have for a few days. Catch up on the week’s storylines, get excited about specific games that you can’t watch yet, etc.

The rest of Sunday will be the most difficult test of your ability to avoid football scores. You will become a pro at this. My football-avoidance Everest: I have walked through SeaTac airport during a prime-time Seahawks game without finding out the score.

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In conclusion…

Now we’re ready for the next week of football! Be prepared for creativity during the playoffs (great time for long runs, since every game is worth an hour of real time during the playoffs). Also be prepared to get really out of shape after the season is over! When you get there, check out my Call of Duty Workout.

…how I got myself up to 100% productivity while 0% vertical.

Contents

1. Overview
2. Display: how do you look at a monitor while you’re lying on the floor?
3. Input: how do you type and click while you’re lying on the floor?
4. Display: post-COVID, WFH update
5. Recap

Overview

At some point in 2017, I found myself with a herniated lumbar disc (my extended story here). I eventually ended up with a relatively minor surgery with fantastic results, but there was a period before surgery when I was, in scientific terms, a total f’ing mess. Aside from the egregious doses of Tylenol and Tramadol I was taking, I was good for about an hour of standing up before I had to lie down on my back to let the pain subside. Sitting was not on the menu at all, as it resulted in almost-immediate tingling and pain in my leg. The sitting issue wasn’t a big deal, since I was already working at a standing desk, but the fact that I had to stop working every hour and lie down was a huge intrusion on productivity.

I tried taking calls while lying down, or reading useful things on a phone, but there are only so many calls to take (and nearly every call I take requires me to be at a keyboard), and absolutely nothing useful happens on a phone. So I was at maybe 60% productivity.

After a month or so of this, without knowing how far off the end was in terms of either healing or surgery, I started thinking seriously about making myself actually productive while lying on an office floor. And with a little effort and a few gadgets, I was able to get myself up to 100% productivity lying down. This post will describe said gadgets, and hopefully be useful to the next person fighting one back issue or another.

I’ll first talk about how I dealt with the display issue, then how I dealt with the input (keyboard/mouse) issue.

Display: how do you look at a monitor while you’re lying on the floor?

Assuming you’re working at a desk, no need to build a special contraption to put a monitor in front of your face: I opted to just mount a monitor on the bottom of the desk. Especially if you’re at a sitting desk, but even at a standing desk, your monitor won’t be that high off the floor, so you neither need nor want a huge monitor. In particular, it’s suboptimal to have a heavy monitor fall on your face. So I searched Amazon for the lightest monitor available that would do full-HD resolution (which by 2018 standards isn’t particularly high-res). I ended up at a Dell Ultrasharp 24″, at 8.7 lbs. We’ll use a mount rated much higher than this, but be safe, please, and keep it under 10 lbs. This monitor is currently selling for about $80 on eBay.

Mounting the monitor under the desk is as simple as using a flat wall-mount; I used this VideoSecu mount, rated for 65+ lbs (admittedly rated for wall-mounting weight, not upside-down weight). These are under $15. On a wall, I might be a little lazy about putting screws in every available hole; for this application, I put the longest possible screws (i.e., just shorter than the depth of the desk) in every possible hole on the mount). It was definitely overkill, but it's basically free to max out the load-bearing capacity of the mount with lots of long screws.

The result: a perfectly viewable monitor mounted at almost exactly the same distance I would see a monitor on my desk. Not just great for working at, but a surprisingly Zen way to get into a desk-cave and watch Netflix.

All of this assumes a large desk in an office; said office ceased to exist post-COVID. See below for a 2022 update on a different monitor configuration.

Input: how do you type and click while you're lying on the floor?

The mouse part of this equation ended up being trivial; it's quite comfortable to just put a USB touchpad on the floor, near your hip. I had a Cirque device lying around; these go for about $25 on eBay, and there are lots of others like this.

The hardest part of this project was figuring out a way to type while lying down. I took the ergonomics of this pretty seriously; laying a two-piece keyboard on the ground and typing with my wrists twisted was not going to cut it. In fact, some early experiments with mounting a two-piece keyboard vertically – but basically on the ground – was an informative disaster, in that reaching for the keys closest to the ground was super-awkward, to the point of not being useful.

The trick was finding a way to get the keyboard split, vertical, stable, and at least a few inches off the ground, and of course to do it in a way that didn't require me to assemble a human cage around myself every time I lay down.

So with the help of my mechanical-engineer friend Chris O'Dowd (and by "help" I mean "he designed and built everything"), we put together this 80/20-based rack to hold a Kinesis Freestyle Bluetooth split keyboard, at an adjustable height and angle, but typically about 12" off the ground.

Admittedly, I have the benefit of already using a split keyboard even when I'm standing, but FWIW, it took me zero seconds to get used to the floor setup, and I was immediately typing at normal speed and normal comfort. And by "normal comfort", I mean "as comfortable as my standing setup", i.e. a zillion times more comfortable and more ergonomic than a laptop.

More shots of me comfortably and happily in my productive ergo-cave:

The keyboard is not cheap (currently around $100 on eBay), but there's not an easy substitute that I know of. The required 80/20 materials are:

• 4 x 4132 (10-series 2-hole gusseted inside corner bracket)
• 2 x 4136 (10-series 4-hole tall gusseted inside corner bracket)
• 1 x 4136 (10-series 90-degree left-hand pivot bracket plate)
• 1 x 4137 (10-series 90-degree right-hand pivot bracket plate)
• 1 x 3501 (2-pack of 5/16 x 1/4" shoulder bolt with washers)
• 28 x 3382 (1/4-20 slide-in t-nut)
• 26 x 3061 (1/4-20 x 0.5" button head socket cap screw)
• 1010 rail, specifically 2x12" (feet), 1x19" (crossbar), 2x24" (legs), and 2x4" (keyboard mounting bars)

Total 80/20 cost around $75.

For this blog post, I'm glossing over the mounting plate that actually attaches the keyboard to the 80/20. If you've gotten this far and are really going to build one of these, mail me to ask about that.

Display, take two: 2022 update

Permanently affixing the monitor to the bottom of a desk was a good idea at the time, but it turns out that desks are big and don't really move with me from office to office, or - post-COVID - from office to home. So in 2022, rather than mounting directly on a desk, I built basically a larger version of the U-shaped keyboard mount, that could mount a monitor. This is tall enough to sit comfortably above the keyboard mount, and short enough to fit comfortably under a standing desk.

The required 80/20 materials are nearly identical to the parts required for the keyboard mount, just with different rail lengths:

• 4 x 4132 (10-series 2-hole gusseted inside corner bracket)
• 2 x 4136 (10-series 4-hole tall gusseted inside corner bracket)
• 1 x 4136 (10-series 90-degree left-hand pivot bracket plate)
• 1 x 4137 (10-series 90-degree right-hand pivot bracket plate)
• 1 x 3501 (2-pack of 5/16 x 1/4" shoulder bolt with washers)
• 28 x 3382 (1/4-20 slide-in t-nut)
• 26 x 3061 (1/4-20 x 0.5" button head socket cap screw)
• 1010 rail, specifically 2x16" (feet), 1x29" (crossbar), and 2x34" (legs)

Then last but not least, this 80/20-friendly VESA mounting plate, to attach the monitor to the crossbar.

Recap

This setup was incredibly useful to me while I was deciding whether or not to undergo surgery for my L4/L5 disc herniation; I was able to go from a miserable 60% productive to a strange-but-pleasant 100% productive thanks to this approach. In many cases, this would have been equally useful for recovery, but my recovery was remarkably fast and I was able to put this whole mess behind me relatively quickly. But I've got this setup stashed away in case I smash my body again (I probably will), and I still occasionally chill out and watch football under my desk.

Hopefully this concept is useful to at least one person out there struggling with back issues. At present, this setup is not cheap (totaling around $500), but it's cheap compared to being miserable, and it's cheap compared to losing 50% of your productivity, and if the concept is useful, certainly there's a way to package all of this up for much less.

Happy horizontaling!

Listening to podcasts is a surprisingly central element in my life… I used to despise running, then I discovered podcasting, and voila, I’m into running. I used to severely despise swimming, then I discovered the underwater iPod (easily the greatest technological achievement in the modern age, just edging out the moon landing and the Manhattan Project), and voila, I’m into swimming. Chores? Podcast. Kids are playing at the playground? Podcast.

So, I thought I’d share with the world my take on every podcast I’ve given a serious listen to. Because the world needs my opinion.

Table of contents

My current rotation

Heed the Call (sports)

Without a doubt the podcast I most look forward to. When the Around the NFL Podcast shut down, those were dark days. But – at the risk of jinxing perfection – HTC feels like ATN. They say their flagship show is the Sunday show, and while I like the Sunday show, it doesn’t literally impact my life. The Thursday preview show is my anchor.

Small Town Murder (comedy true crime) (yes, you read that right)

I thought that the true crime podcast craze would never get to me, but… I never thought there would be a comedy-first take on brutal murders.

Real Time with Bill Maher (politics)

Funny and insightful, and generally lives up to its billing of allowing conservative voices to speak “in the lion’s den”. Although this isn’t exactly why I listen, I’m not sure there’s a person alive with whom I agree on more issues, especially the ones he takes the left to task on. In particular, much more than most left-leaning pundits, he’s willing to prioritize issues (yes, it’s true, climate change and the threat of nuclear armageddon are in fact more important than transgender bathroom access or whether Ann Coulter is offending someone today).

I personally like the “Overtime” portion of the show even better than the show itself, and I’m glad they found a way to work that into the podcast.

The Infinite Monkey Cage (science, but in a fun way)

Still working through the archives, but this is the first science podcast I’ve been able to stick with. Ever.

Carolla Classics (comedy)

This became indispensable because (a) even when the show was still good, there were only like 10 hours of new Carolla every week, and (b) the main show is not what it used to be, and I have to skim a bit.

Your Stupid Opinions (comedy)

It’s bananas that no one thought of this idea (mocking random online reviews) sooner, but I’m glad they didn’t, because this is executed just about perfectly.

Court Junkie (true crime, but the part that other podcasts think is boring)

If the mechanics of the court system interest you eleven times as much as the actual crime, this is the true crime podcast for you. NB: I picked this one up from the beginning, and I’m still in 2016, so if it’s terrible now, or the best podcast ever, I wouldn’t know it.

Swindled (true-crime-ish)

True crime isn’t quite the right description… it’s more like “stories about people doing sometimes-illegal bad things”. His voice is intensely, deliberately, obstinately monotone, which threw me at first, but it’s grown on me. And when he says something funny, it’s super funny.

Crime in Sports (comedy true crime) (yes, you read that right again)

I admit to hand-picking episodes with athletes I’m familiar with, or at least sports I care about (read: football), but with that caveat, this is addictive.

This Week in Machine Learning and AI (computer science)

An excellent way to keep up with current trends in ML, but also just an example of how much more informative shows get when interviewers ask good questions. He consistently asks “can you give a concrete example?” at just the right time, and generally plays the role of an educated listener who wants concrete understanding, not buzzwords. I confess that I pick and choose episodes: the more technical episodes are really educational; the more philosophical episodes – and any episode where a CEO presents – are not quite as engaging. He still does a fantastic job on those episodes, there’s just so much interesting information about AI that you can squeeze out of a senior executive who hasn’t written code in three decades.

Endless Thread (long-form stories)

I’m pretty hooked on this… when you want something that’s not just entertainment, so you feel like you’re a mature adult, but you also have a limited attention span, because you’re not really a mature adult, it’s hard to beat “totally random stories about random stuff”. Skip the “snacktime” episodes, skip anything where you get a woke vibe from the episode title (you will find that you are not wrong).

Red Collar (true crime)

When there’s really a white collar element to the stories, they’re great. Sometimes she stretches the definition a little, and it’s just a story about someone doing something violent, with no particular hook, which is suboptimal. But when there’s some check fraud or pump-and-dump or ponzi-ing or whatever, it’s gold.

Lateral (puzzles)

Finally, a podcast I can share with my kids, since it’s (a) clean and (b) not about stuff they don’t care about! The format is great (lateral thinking puzzles presented to a group of D-list podcast celebrities), the host is great, the puzzles are great, and the guests are… hit or miss, which can make or break individual episodes. But overall I’m really into it.

The Adam Carolla Show (prior to 2024)

The Adam Carolla Show (now)

Carolla is the IMO sharpest comedian who has ever lived, as well as an excellent interviewer, and the production quality of the show at its peak was unparalleled. At his peak, he was so sharp that most of the criticism he got was a result of listeners taking him seriously and treating his rants as engaging debate, which would indeed cause one to dislike him and/or discontinue one’s enjoyment of the show. Remember: this is a comedy podcast, and IMO it was the best of the lot for almost 15 years. With the 2024 format changes, it’s often just a “people talking” show, not the radio-style variety show that it used to be. And when it’s that, it’s not a particularly good “people talking” show, it just seems redundant and angry now. But… if you are tuned in to the rhythm of the show, and you know how to quickly skip the “Adam talks about his day” part at the top, and you know to skip the more political guests where nothing interesting is going to be discussed, there is still a A+ 30-minute show hiding in a mediocre 60-minute show, with the same games and bits and interviews and news that have worked so well for 15+ years.

Scamfluencers (true crime, but not in the violent sense)

True-crime-ish, but generally avoiding violent crime, and somehow stays light and upbeat despite being most about Really Bad People.

The Ponzi Playbook (true crime, but not in the violent sense)

There’s something about white collar crime that satisfies both my desire to hear good stories and my desire to think about boring mechanical engineering stuff.

How it All Went South (true crime)

I would describe this as “the best I’ve seen of the totally vanilla variety of true crime stories”. Interesting enough to be in my regular rotation, but not usually the first podcast I’m listening to when I sync.

Pretend (true crime, but not in the violent sense)

It seems like I’m one of many who started with the “Stalker” season, and wow, that was an adventure. I binge-listened five years of this show after I finished that season. True-crime-ish (though generally avoiding violent crime), but somehow stays light and upbeat. Unfortunately most seasons don’t live up to that, but big props for going into each season without being totally sure whether it’s going to be another huge story, even when it doesn’t quite work, you feel like you’re on an investigative adventure with him.

Favorites that may or may not still exist or are otherwise in limbo

Godcast (comedy)

I didn’t think there was any way this could stay funny when the novelty wore off… but it has! (As of 2023, I’m not sure whether this podcast still exists.)

The Ron Burgundy Podcast (comedy)

Exactly what you think it would be, and worth every minute. It’s almost too good to be true that Will Ferrell takes the time to make a podcast. (As of 2023, I’m not sure whether this podcast still exists.)

The Ron Burgundy Podcast (post-COVID live episodes)

After COVID, this podcat came back as a series of live shows, and it was funny, but not remotely as funny as the more scripted studio version. Hoping they get back to the studio format.

Old favorites (that are static and/or no longer exist and/or stopped being good and/or I got bored despite them staying good)

Around the NFL (sports)

I discovered this in the wake of the DDFP‘s demise, and I now can’t fathom how I lived without this in seasons past. In-depth breakdowns of every game, before and after, and they don’t talk about their fantasy teams. This was made for me! From September to February, this is the most important podcast in my life. And I never thought I would listen to a football podcast in the offseason too, but this is now my offseason fix. Early 2024 update: well, f(*&#. If I had to name a single “favorite podcast ever”, this was it. But it’s no more as of July 24. Late 2024 update: we’re back! We’re just Heed the Call now.

We Didn’t Start the Fire

This podcast is such a clever idea that it didn’t really need to be good, and yet it’s great. It’s the “Stacey’s Mom” of podcasts. A very upbeat way to learn sometimes-very-not-upbeat postwar history.

Wild Animals (conservation)

Specifically this Wild Animals; there are several. I think you might have to be pretty into wildlife to enjoy someone talking to conservation biologists about animals, but I am, so I do.

Sustainababble (sustainability)

The only sustainability-related podcast I’ve come across that is informative but not a total bummer. Sadly, I literally discovered this amazing podcast on the day it ended. Sigh.

Brought to you by (aka Household Name) (long-form stories)

I binge-listened in 2023, great reporting without the heaviness of most long-form journalism.

Story Pirates (kids)

They must have a team of Oompa-Loompas recording music for them every week, because the music is spectacular, and the humor is somewhere between SpongeBob and 30 Rock… sets the standard for kids podcasting.

Handel on the Law (legal advice)

I can’t decide if this is actually informative or just a mind-numbing guilty pleasure, but I could listen to him provide “marginal” legal advice and mock is callers for days. Not, not I could, I do.

CrossBread (comedy)

Optimal binge-listening comedy even without the Australian accents, so like 5.5 stars when you factor in the accents.

Serial (season 1) (long-form journalism)

Very little commentary necessary, since everyone who has heard of podcasting has already listened to Serial. This is investigative journalism at its absolute best, brought to a medium that suits it. This season revolutionized the medium.

99% Invisible (long-form stories)

The online summary of this podcast talks about “design and architecture”, but – in a good way – I don’t get that from the content at all. It feels like random, interesting, not-too-heavy long-form stories.

The Coldest Case in Laramie

I’m mentally filing this as an extension of Serial, a notch below the original, but a notch above Seasons 2 and 3.

Serial (seasons 2 and 3)

As per the opinion of the rest of the universe, I found season 2 “pretty good” and season 3 “very skippable”, though I do appreciate the ambition of what the tried to do in season 3.

Limetown (season 1) (fiction)

I devoured this… easily the best fiction podcast I’ve come across, in fact it sets the standard for audio fiction. Likely an indicator of where the audiobook/podcast format will end up.

Limetown (season 2)

As per the opinion of the rest of the universe, I found season 2 a little hard to follow and generally less interesting. Hey, media universe, the science is in on whether extending dramatic sci-fi series past their logical ending is a good idea (remember the last season of Lost?).

The Dave Dameshek Football Program [retired] (sports)

This is obviously only relevant from September to February, but if you’re looking for a way to extend your NFL enjoyment from Tuesday morning until Thursday afternoon, look no further. I love technical NFL commentary, but I can’t stand dry recounting of stats or lengthy recommendations about who you should pick up for your fantasy team; the DDFP doesn’t take itself too seriously, and mixes in just the right amount of personality and in-depth analysis. Two episodes a week, a recap episode on Tuesday and a preview episode on Thursday. This is probably the only podcast on this list for which I find myself clicking “refresh” when I’m eagerly awaiting a new episode.

The Best of Mike and Mike [retired] (sports)

During football season, I couldn’t wait to finish watching the games somewhere around Wednesday (I really stretch my football out), so I could listen to the Monday episode of M&M. FWIW I’m giving this five stars on the basis of 1 episode a week for ~20 weeks a year; I had no interest in the other 95% of the show. That said, I was surprisingly emotional during the last week of the show. I wouldn’t say I “cried”, but I was definitely a little teary.

Running from Cops (long-form journalism)

A documentary about “Cops” (the show). Super-compelling, at times funny, reasonably balanced (though definitely taking a narrative stance). I would listen to this production team narrate anything. Conveniently, I’ll get to do that, since this is sort of one season of a larger show.

A Very Fatal Murder (comedy)

Most would read this as a parody of Serial, I would say it’s actually a parody of all the true crime podcasts that Serial inspired. In any case, it’s outstanding. Admittedly, it’s meant specifically for people who (a) have listened to Serial and (b) spend an exorbitant amount of time listening to and discussing other podcasts (including browsing iTunes for podcasts I’m not even going to listen to), so maybe a niche target that I’m right in the middle of, but I’m like 90% sure it’s awesome even if you meet neither criterion (a) nor criterion (b).

Dan Snow’s History Hit (history)

Dan Snow’s enthusiasm for anything related to history is infectious. I won’t say that every episode is enthralling, but the great episodes are great, and even when I’m not 100% into the material, he shows so much excitement that it’s hard to not be engaged. And among all the history podcasts I’ve tried, History Hit does the best job tying history in to current events when it’s appropriate, without plastering unnecessary historical context all over every current headline (maybe 1 in 8 episodes really addresses a current topic). Significant bent toward WWII history, which happens to be of particular interest to me. But basically he’s one of those people who could make you excited about anything.

I’m giving a 0.001 point deduction for the intro music/montage change from 2017 to 2018; the old intro got me totally fired up, and the new intro sounds like it could be the introduction to a middle-school textbook. But it still rounds up to five stars.

Warfare

I consider this an extension of History Hit (some episodes are HH rebroadcasts). But instead of caring about 70% of the episodes, here I care about 100% of the episodes. All are as good as HH.

How and Why History [retired] (history)

I consider this an extension of History Hit (some episodes are HH rebroadcasts). But instead of caring about 70% of the episodes, here I care about 100% of the episodes. All are as good as HH.

Key Battles in American History

When I stopped listening to this, through no fault of the podcast, it was just a long series about the Pacific Island Campaign, which is enough for five stars from me.

30 for 30 (long-form journalism) (pre-2020)

I think the jury is in re: the quality of the “30 for 30” TV series, and whether you’re into sports or not, it’s fantastic storytelling. Yes, there’s always some link to sports, but saying you have to be “into sports” to appreciate the 30 for 30 TV series is like saying that you have to be “into monarchy” to enjoy Game of Thrones.

The podcast is clearly an appendix to the TV show, and you might think “that sounds boring if I don’t watch the TV series”, but the podcast completely stands on its own. The “core” episodes that tell a story are significantly more interesting than the “bonus” episodes that interview the storytellers and are a bit more “meta”, but since those are clearly marked in the episode titles, I see no reason to count those against the podcast.

30 for 30 (2020)

At some point ESPN started abusing this podcast feed to literally provide commentary on each episode of the 30 for 30 series, which got silly and unlistenable. Hoping they go back to the old format where the podcast is closer to a documentary unto itself.

The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel (kids)

Scripted thriller for kids, and I mean “thriller” in a totally kid-appropriate sense. For my now-9-and-8-year-olds, this was binge listening at its best.

History of WWII before he decided to make it a full-time gig

History of WWII after he decided to make it a full-time gig

This podcast is a serious investment, but I think of this as an effective audio adaptation of a good popular history of the war. Somewhere between textbook detail and unscripted.

At some point, he jumped back in time a bit to catch us up on the Second Sino-Japanese War, which I was on board with. But around the same time, he announced that he’s making this a full-time gig, and it clearly occurred to him that if he kept up the same pace (which, BTW, was not fast, he was on track for probably a 500-episode series), he would eventually run out, so it slowed to a painful crawl. I think I’ll pick and choose episodes going forward. If you want to spend some time immersing yourself in WWII history, I recommend the first 100 episodes.

Wild Things: Siegfried and Roy

Pretty thorough, unbiased reporting on two of the entertainment industry’s most bizarre characters.

Dark Air with Terry Carnation (comedy)

This isn’t called the “Dwight from The Office” podcast, but let’s be honest, that’s what it is, and it’s fantastic.

How to Save a Planet (sustainability)

I normally avoid sustainability-related podcasts, because I only need so much bummer, but this one has really stuck for me. Upbeat without sugar-coating.

Twenty Thousand Hz (sound engineering)

If we throw out the ~20% of episodes that basically try to convince me that “sound is important”, and focus on the other 80% that are more technical and have facts in them, this is fantastic.

Science Vs. (science)

For a while I tried a whole bunch of “how stuff works” kinds of podcasts, and felt I was neither learning something nor enjoying it, which is like eating cardboard-flavored candy.  This is the “how-stuff-works-y” podcast I’ve been waiting for.  Informative, balanced, and legitimately funny (as opposed to “funny for a science show”). And their Australian accents totally make my day.

The Ancients

I consider this an extension of History Hit, but instead of caring about 70% of the episodes, here I care about 40% of the episodes. All are as good as HH.

Fall of Civilizations

Really thorough, and oddly soothing. For a while I liked listening to this while I was falling asleep, so in practice I’ve learned a lot about the rise of ancient civilizations.

History Unplugged

Though there is some irony in this podcast self-describing as “unscripted” despite being the most scripted podcast on this list, it’s quite good. The short episodes don’t work as well for my listen-to-sleep approach, but I really like falling asleep to the 20-episode series on key battles of the Civil War, for example.

Planet Money (economics)

Less technical than EconTalk, but still informative, and bubbling with enthusiasm about all things economics and finance. Occasionally there’s a dud, almost always when they do an episode that’s not at all about economics, in which case it’s almost always about technology (see “Your cell Phone’s a Snitch”), but the other 99% of episodes are fun, painless education about macroeconomics, finance, and current events in money.

I’m not doing a separate rating for “The Indicator”, which started out as a version of Planet Money where they focus on some specific number for each episode, but they quickly realized the number things was absurd, and you could make up a number for any episode about anything (I could do a podcast about dogs and say “today’s indicator is five, which is the combined number of legs and tongues that dogs have), so they dropped that, and now it’s just mini-Planet-Money, and IMO it’s slightly worse than Planet Money (just too short to be informative), but still fun.

Impact Winter (fiction)

Compelling serial fiction with excellent production and a fantastic cast. I binge-listened. Fresh take on vampire universe rules.

American Hostage (narrative non-fiction)

Compelling serial non-fiction with excellent production and a fantastic cast. I binge-listened.

Detective Trapp (fiction)

Compelling serial fiction with excellent production. You have to be into detective-noir stuff to be into this. I binge-listened.

Hunted (fiction)

Also compelling serial fiction with excellent production. Less noir, a little faster-paced. I binge-listened.

theNewsWorthy (sic) (news)

For just a while, this was my news podcast. Not blowhardy like The Daily, not slow like everything from NPR. This is basically someone reading the AP headlines (with a few extra puff-piece headlines to keep you from getting too bummed out) in an upbeat voice. Just what I would want from news, although I no longer listen because I realized I don’t need to hear the news every day, I see why the Internet makes people go bananas.

The 36 questions (musical fiction)

Somewhere between “cute” and “excellent”. An all-around solid podcast-listening experience, and only three episodes, and musical. Worth the three episodes of your time. I’d say it’s really more like four stars on quality, but a half-point bump for originality.

The Daily Show

I don’t know if this is the funniest podcast out there, and it doesn’t offer nearly the insightful discussion that, say, Real Time does, but by definition it has the production budget of a TV show, and it’s good fluff content for exercising that makes me feel slightly more like a responsible citizen than just a pure comedy podcast would. I skip almost all the interviews, which I find blowhard-y and preach-to-the-choir-ful.

Hardcore History (history)

Dan Carlin is the recognized leader in history podcasting, and for the most part I’m on board with this assessment. He has a conversational tone and includes just the right amount of detail: never bogged down in army-group-x-moved-this-way-then-that-way, but always goes deep on the big-picture discussion. Favorite episodes: Blueprint for Armageddon (WWI), Ghosts of the Ostfront (WWII), The American Peril (Spanish-American War), Destroyer of Worlds (atomic bombs), Prophets of Doom (totally random). Half-point off because some of the episodes are insufferable, but usually you know pretty quick, so I just skip those. The one about the fall of Rome whose title I can’t remember, for example, and the one about ancient Persia whose name I can’t remember. Interesting topics, really boring coverage.

Tuner (music)

The Tuner podcast breaks down one song a week, discussing some aspect of harmony, production, genre, etc. They walk a tricky line between talking to folks who know about theory and trying to present tutorials for novices, and I think they handle it about a well as one could.

What Really Happened? (medium-form journalism)

He talks about one interesting story each episode, under the guide of uncovering “the truth”. I sort of wish he would drop the “what really happened?” bit and just call this a podcast full of interesting stories you probably forgot about, since some of them can’t plausibly be cast as “what really happened?”, e.g. the story about Britney Spears’s meltdown. It was just a good story about Britney Spears. But overall, this is good, one-story-per-episode journalism.

The Butterfly Effect (long-form journalism)

This is an excellent, in-depth, season-long look at… well, I’m pretty sure this is an excellent podcast regardless of topic, so let’s start with words like “excellent” and “in-depth”. It’s not ideal that his first season was about bizarre corners of the porn industry; it gives the podcast a bit of a “listen if you like kinky stuff” vibe, and it’s hard to say this is an “important” topic. But the quality is excellent, so I both recommend it and eagerly await season 2.

Bubble (post-apocalyptic comedy-action?)

Semi-plot-oriented comedy about… actually, it doesn’t matter what it’s about. There might be monsters and aliens. But while TV is full of satirical, odd-premise comedies, this is fairly unique for the podverse. I.e., we don’t really have podcast sitcoms, so this is a unique take on the medium.

The Horror of Dolores Roach (semi-comedic horror?)

I binged this one, and while I’m not sure I was really able to suspend disbelief as much as the writers wanted me to, it was a unique use of the medium, in that it was fairly immersive in its use of the first person, despite the narrator demonstrating some… pretty extreme behavior. Somewhat slow to get to the point, but solid.

More Perfect (educational)

A friend told me that this podcast was doing a musical season (Season 3: The More Perfect Album), in which one song would be presented to describe each of the amendments to the US Constitution. “Musical infotainment?!”, I said, “I’m in!”. It turns out the songs were terrible… like, really, really, terrible. But they didn’t get in the way of the show, which was a super-informative, highly-listenable tour through the Amendments, including one… OK two… OK almost all of them that I forgot even existed. So then I went back and took a look at the other seasons, and with a little picking-and-choosing, really enjoyed those as well. Planet-Money-esque in the “look at this little story we discovered” vibe, but those little stories here in some cases have sweeping consequences that they make clear without losing focus on the little story.

The Price of Paradise (vaguely true crime, but really just an interesting story)

I think it’s to this podcast’s credit that at first I didn’t want to listen because I was sure it was fiction.

Love, Janessa (long-form journalism)

Great one-off series about bizarre cons that happen on the Internet. Really well-produced and deeply investigated.

Wow in the World (kids)

Science adventures with just the right amount of potty humor.

Criminal Conduct

Significantly above average true crime stories, with a much more investigative vibe than most true crime podcasts.

My Fugitive Dad

A significantly above average true crime story, with a much more investigative vibe than most true crime podcasts.

Hoaxed

A significantly above average true crime story, with a much more investigative vibe than most true crime podcasts.

Sweet Bobby

A significantly above average con-person story, with a much more investigative vibe than most true crime podcasts.

Hysterical

I like the concept of limited-run, season-long stories, and the premise was interesting, but it didn’t exactly come to a thrilling conclusion, the story sort of just faded away.

Love Bombed

I’m generally into “con-person” podcasts; this podcast is to other con-person podcasts what the Arena Football League was to the NFL. It’s not bad, and definitely better than nothing in the offseason, but not quite the real thing.

A Very British Cult

I’m generally into “con-person” podcasts, and this falls vaguely into that category, but it was a little bland as con-person podcasts go.

Everything else

Aftershock (thriller)

Normally non-fiction podcasts have to jump through some hoops to explain why you’re listening to so much expository text, or create awkward expository dialogue. This podcast did an amazing job making the dialog feel natural, with fantastic production and high-caliber acting. And the story was interesting… until it jumped a bizarre woke shark and went off the rails.

Chompers (kids)

~Four minutes of content for toothbrushing and flossing and a little left over. Nominally ages 3-7, but the novelty of listening to a podcast in the bathroom keeps even my nine-year-old interested.

Strawberry Spring (horror)

Good use of the first-person format, professionally produced. I generally don’t get Stephen King, but with that caveat, this is solid.

Dead Man Running (true crime)

Vanilla but perfectly binge-able con-artist story.

Drowning Creek (true crime)

Vanilla but perfectly binge-able true crime story.

Happily Never After (true crime)

Vanilla but perfectly binge-able true crime story.

In the Shadow of Princeton (true crime)

Vanilla but perfectly binge-able true crime story.

Mr. Ballen (true crime)

I was really into this for a while, but now I can’t remember why, it’s just a guy slowly reading a true crime story. So, four stars because I liked it for a while?

Outliers (fiction)

Compelling serial fiction with excellent production and a fantastic cast, but the monologue structure is maybe a little too ambitious, and it gets a little boring.

Golic and Wingo (sports)

Mike and Mike ended during the NFL season, so I tried to replace it immediately with Golic and Wingo, which is sort of the same show. It’s good, but it’s not the same. You can’t easily flip a switch and get the same chemistry that M&M had, but I’ll give it time.

Gaslight (fiction)

Compelling narrative, and not taking points off for the fact that it suddenly stopped after 10 episodes and is showing no signs of resuming.

Borrasca (fiction)

It’s hard to make audio fiction, and this did about as well as one could in Doing Smart Stuff with the format, creating a really interesting narrative structure to justify all the narration. They definitely ask the listener to believe some absurd character behavior, which I like a lot less than having to believe an absurd premise about the universe. For example, characters go to a party every few weeks where someone inevitably disappears and presumably dies, such that literally every kid in their high school would be dead if the listener actually did the math, but no one in the down makes a big deal of this. Nonetheless, good pod.

I Don’t Know About That (comed…ucation?)

Through all his vulgarity and generally-excellent humor, Jim Jeffries is actually a super-smart dude who asks insightful questions. This would be five stars for me if one of the following happened: (1) they cut the 30 minutes of rambling nonsense at the beginning of each episode, or (2) he upgraded the staff a bit; it feels like a bunch of college kids giggling.

History that Doesn’t Suck (history)

The best narrative history podcast I’ve encountered; I can’t wait until this gets up to the modern history I’m actually interested in. But even a great narrative podcast can’t really keep things interesting between, e.g., 1789 and 1860. Yes, America, everything in between 1789 and 1860 is really boring, even when a podcast is good.

Stories Podcast (kids)

If you have kids who are between 5 and 7, and you spend any time in the car, download every episode of this podcast. The stories are excellent, with a broad tonal variety (from fairly tale to humor to kid-action), and the songs are quite good. I used to have this at five stars, until I discovered Story Pirates and realized what a high-budget kids podcast sounds like.

Hooked on Pop (music)

The more technical episodes are fantastic, whether they’re about chord-theory stuff or production-mechanics stuff. When things get all musicology and they talk about lyrics and how one instrument is some kind of historical innuendo, I lose the thread.

EconTalk (economics)

It’s refreshing to hear a super-smart person interview other super-smart people, and even more refreshing that he disagrees with every guest no fewer than three times. It’s a fantastic dialogue, and the clear winner on this list in the “makes me smarter” category. Into 2019, I find that this show is drifting away from quantitative economics and more into philosophy, and I’m gradually reducing my rating accordingly.

Conversations with Tyler (economics)

This also falls into the “makes me smarter” category (like EconTalk), and also falls under “it’s really great to heart smart people ask thoughtful questions to other smart people”. I’d say if you like Ted talks (which I don’t, FWIW), you’ll like this, and if you skipped econ 101 in college but want to know what you would be able to understand if you took it, this is also for you. A little less accessible than EconTalk, and a little less engagement in debate between host and guest. I also definitely have to pick and choose episodes; when it gets philosophical, I tune out.

S-Town (long-form journalism)

It’s hard not to compare this to Serial, and… well, that’s how life goes. Whoever steps in when Brady retires is going to have a lot of 11-5 seasons that get called “disappointing”. The production on S-Town was great, the reporting was great, but it just never drew us in the way Serial Season 1 did, and it never felt as important as Serial Season 2.

Terms (fiction)

This is a fictional story about White-House-level political intrigue. It’s almost impossible not to listen to it as a way-too-on-the-nose telling of “what if Barack Obama decided to prevent Trump from taking office?”, but I’m placing a lot of stock in the writers’ claims that the story was written well before there was a Trump. If you can look at it as fiction, instead of weak satire, it’s quite compelling.

Pants on Fire (kids)

For my currently-eight-and-seven-year-olds, this is just the right balance of fun, educational, and interactive. Guess who is the expert on [kid-friendly topic of the day], and who is just pretending to be an expert.

Steal the Stars (fiction) (the first 13 episodes)

Steal the Stars (fiction) (the last episode)

Original narrative and excellent production; this was a solid five stars going in to the last episode, but it came apart so badly in the last 30 minutes that I wanted back the time I had invested in the whole season. Uck. Five stars for the first 90% of the season, negative one star for the last episode.

Homecoming (fiction)

Wow, this show is full of itself. A 20-minute podcast with a 10-minute weekly aftershow to go behind the scenes? But it’s good nonetheless, and the production quality possibly even exceeds that of Limetown. I can’t say I really care about the story; I wish they had channeled their energies into something a little more hard-hitting… stealing a submarine, zombies, etc. But the plot is basically an acceptable scaffold for good acting, good production, and good dialogue. Update: the Amazon Prime adaptation was IMO better than the podcast.

ML podcasts that aren’t TWiML…

Data Skeptic (computer science)

Linear Digressions (computer science)

As someone who has veered in and out of ML throughout my career, I found both of these to be a useful, very listenable terminology review.  Pretty surface-level coverage, but I think they both approach the limit of depth one could really address in a podcast. Once they ran out of core ML topics, both became a little less appealing to me.

BBC History Extra (history)

This is like five stars if you hand-pick episodes, but like three stars if you listen blind and get buried in esotera about the British monarchy.

Last Known Position

High-quality production and solid acting, but the story got comic-book-level silly pretty quickly.

Double Threat (people talking)

In a world with the Adam Carolla Podcast, I don’t need podcasts that are just slightly-less-funny people talking.

Bananas (people talking)

In a world with the Adam Carolla Podcast, I don’t need podcasts that are just slightly-less-funny people talking.

Dana Gould Hour (people talking)

In a world with the Adam Carolla Podcast, I don’t need podcasts that are just slightly-less-funny people talking.

About Last Night (people talking)

In a world with the Adam Carolla Podcast, I don’t need podcasts that are just slightly-less-funny people talking.

The Edge of Sleep (fiction)

Great production, great start, but this completely came apart when it got supernatural.

Crypto-Z (fiction)

Good production, great start, but the villains were so over the top they seemed to have teleported from a ’40s Broadway play, and at some point I stopped caring.

Blood Ties (fiction)

Exceptional production and one of the most substantial casts in the podverse, and it got off to a great start… mysterious plane crash? Yes, please. I was fully primed for international espionage, jewel heists, etc. But then the “truth” they discovered turned out to be just dull crime stuff. Wasted opportunity IMO.

Sawbones (medical non-fiction)

Lots of people recommended this to me, so maybe I just don’t get it, but this felt like it was mostly just two people talking. Somewhat prepared, but compared to the standards of modern podcast production, this was just two people talking about weird medical stories. Medium-interesting at times, but generally just two people talking.

Exeter (fiction)

As well-produced as anything in the fiction space, even Limetown. That said, I just didn’t care enough about the plot to stick with it past ~4 episodes.

Carrier (fiction)

Really well-produced, and a unique solution to the challenge of legitimizing narration in a fiction podcast (in this case, the protagonist is a truck driver and her CB is the narrative device). As well-produced as anything in the fiction space, even Limetown. That said, I just didn’t care enough about the plot to stick with it past ~4 episodes.

The Daily (medium-form journalism, news)

Firstly, I like this WordPress theme but that clearly comes out looking like “The Dally” (rhymes with “Sally”) rather than “The Daily” (rhymes with… shit… whale-y?).

But more to the point… this is about as good as daily long-form journalism could possibly be, and it’s the first thing I listen to every day. This is basically the New York Times in a tiny box, except I can read it while I walk my dog. My favorite part is hearing Barbaro quote Trump’s most insane tweets in his very calm, journalistic, almost soothing voice. But really, as left-leaning at the Times may be, this is not a leftist political podcast, of which there are plenty, a few of which I’ll slam below.

Example: just before typing this paragraph, I listened to an episode in which he interviewed Scott Pruitt. As a hippie socialist, I feel that Scott Pruitt is a demon sent to the Earth because Satan likes deserts. But during this interview, Pruitt was allowed space to make a very reasonable legal argument about the way he runs the EPA, and I came away thinking “I still despise him, but the things he said were more right than wrong.” The fact that the interview could go that way is a testament to (oh-so-rare) balanced journalism.

FWIW after he made those points he basically went on to denounce climate science. So, fuck him. But his legal arguments were sound.

Update: sometime in 2018, this really did turn into a leftist political podcast. IMO it jumped the shark somewhere around lost immigrant children, where facts were left safely behind in favor of firing up the base. I’m not really against that, we need to fire up the base, but I don’t personally need it in my podcasts.

Update: sometime in 2019, I knocked off another half-star for continuing on the same trend. This has fallen out of my daily rotation now, and has become more frustrating than informative.

The Last Days of August (long-form journalism)

His deep interest in the subject shines through, so – as is the case in “The Butterfly Effect” – you feel like you’re along for a journalistic ride. At the same time, he’s trying so hard to take a side in some places that he asks the listener to make absurd leaps of faith to support his point. I don’t need deep journalism about porn, but he does try to make a case that he’s being fair, and while I think he legitimately came into the story with an open mind, he’s basically painting some conclusions – in the interestof narrative clarity – that are not supported by the facts he shows us in some places.

The Dream (long-form journalism)

High-production-value long-form journalism; season 1 focused on multi-level marketing schemes. When it got into details, it was highly informative without being boring; the episode on the nuts and bolts of the Amway decision was outstanding. But a bit too much time was taken up talking about feelings IMO. Similarly, a reasonable allocation of blame for the MLM industry could be 95/5 industry vs. victims or their parents; this show put the blame 100.00000% on the industry, and didn’t really even dabble in the personal responsibility angle, ergo it got a little preach-y and a little tired.

Gone (history)

Tells the story of unsolved mysteries, but not in the “girl’s body found in the woods” way.  Criminals who got away, missing Nazi Gold.  All the things people like about dark crime stories, but more or less without the violence and bummerism.  Double-speeder, but good. Not to be confused with a different podcast called “Gone” that is exactly the “girl’s body found in the woods” sort of podcast.

Everything is Alive (mockumentary?)

Every episode is an extended interview with an inanimate object… Coke can, pillow, etc. I’m not sure I “enjoy” it, but as a piece of art and an interesting use of the medium, full marks. Strangely sad and poignant at points for a podcast that’s an interview with a Coke can. 4.5 stars for creativity, 3 stars for actual entertainment.

The Amelia Project (fiction)

This felt really clever for the first episode, but the clever premise was really only a single episode worth of content, not enough to carry a multi-episode podcast series. And with nothing really happening, at least within the first few episodes that I listened to, this got boring fast.

Talking Machines (computer science)

This is like five stars if you hand-pick episodes, but like three stars if you listen blind and get buried in esotera about the British monarchy. The interviews are generally very scripted, and it’s hard to tell whether the interviewer is even listening to the answers, or just working down the list. In a world where we have History Hit, I’m not sure this podcast has a place. That said, it’s still concise and sometimes-interesting history.

Caliphate (long-form journalism)

Caliphate (from the New York Times) has been a real disappointment… the first three or four episodes were fantastic (I originally put it at 4.5 stars), with a very clear and compelling narrative about a former ISIS fighter who returned to Canada to more or less lead a normal life, plus some meta-story about the life of the reporter interviewing him. Episode 5 tried to stun us with some conspiracy theory about whether he was really who he says he is, but the conspiracy theory was really hard to follow, and was clearly a weak excuse to “get the reporter to Iraq”, which I put in quotes because it’s obvious her trip to Iraq had nothing to do with the story of said ISI fighter, and I’m pretty sure it at least partially pre-dated the interview in question. Now it’s just the reporter wandering around terrible places in Iraq, with no clear narrative, and I don’t need a podcast for generic news about Iraq.

Science Friday (science)

I’m really skeptical about science podcasts… I feel like I should want to listen to more science podcasts, but I think the assumption there is that science podcasts will make me smarter. So far, in my experience, science podcasts all sit somewhere in the uncanny valley between “useful information but too technical for anyone unless you have a PhD on that particular topic” and “so high-level that no useful information is transferred, so you feel like you’re learning, but at the end of an episode, you can’t say what you learned”. I tried the Science and Nature podcasts, and they both sat around the same level of detail as Science Friday, but in comparison, they felt like slow, scripted interviews. So I’m calling this best-in-class, but I remain unconvinced that time listening to science podcasts isn’t better spent listening to comedy podcasts.

Partially Derivative (computer science)

Entertaining, though not super-focused. I’m not sure I learned anything from this, but it pleasantly passed the time in a vaguely productive way.

The Message (fiction)

Another decent docudrama sunk by the existence of Limetown. It’s OK, but the plot gets a little abstract and silly for my tastes.

Fitzdog Radio (comedy)

He’s a fantastic interviewer, but at the end of the day two funny people talking about not that much just isn’t enough to keep my attention. When he gets into someone’s life story, he has a Stern-esque ability to get people to open up, but for the most part he’s just getting comedians to open up, which is a pretty narrow slice.

The Black Tapes (fiction)

I got really into this for a while, great production, great acting, and solid scripts. But the story definitely took a turn for the silly and poorly thought out… without spoilers, it left the “interesting supernatural with rules” and ended up at “mystical nonsense”.

I do like that the Internet is intensely confused about what level the fiction starts at… is the network real? Is Alex Reagan real? Is PNWS real?

Reasonable Doubt (comedy, and sometimes law)

Really interesting when Geragos talks about cases, really boring when they do their 20-minute rants and/or motivational speeches. If they expanded this to an hour and basically made it “Adam interviews Geragos about an interesting legal case”, this would easily be five stars.

Gangster Capitalism (long-form journalism)

Well-produced, but pretty blowhardy, and makes the college admissions “scandal” seem like a way bigger deal than it is, tearing at the very fabric of society and class and yadda yadaa, which I find somewhere between dull and irresponsible.

Unwell (mystery fiction)

Well-produced and creative, but way too slow for me to get into it, dropped after 2 episodes. Three stars, or – more appropriately – 0.5 Limetowns.

The Seventh Daughter (fiction)

Over-the-top acting and dialogue straight out of 1940s radio… I tried, but after ~1.5 episodes, it felt like a terrible high school play.

Earth Break (post-apocalyptic fiction)

Well-produced and creative, but way too slow for me to get into it, dropped after 2 episodes. Three stars, or – more appropriately – 0.5 Limetowns.

Science Rules! (science)

Bill Nye is a legend, but sometimes even great entertainers just aren’t destined for podcasts. This was surprisingly lazy, with a lot of repeating of the words “Science Rules”.

Against the Rules (sports… sort of)

Really well-produced, and Michael Lewis is a fantastic writer and a great narrator, but I wish they had just done an “interesting sports stories” docuseries with lots of numbers, instead of this grandiose, loosely-held-together parable about fairness in America.

The White Vault (fiction/thriller)

I wanted to know what was going to happen, i.e. what the big secret is, but not enough to push through the cliché, cartoon-ish characters.

Deadly Manners (mystery/comedy)

Well-produced, and I like the “darkly upbeat” vibe, but I found myself just not caring who did what, and I quit early. It felt like I was listening to a particularly good high school play, but still a high school play.

Direct Current (science)

I tried a bunch of science podcasts in a flurry of science-podcast-downloading, and basically all of them fell in the uncomfortable gap between “enough detail to actually teach you something” and “enough accessibility that you don’t need a PhD to follow along”. Sadly, this podcast also fell in that gap, but I’m giving it a bump for:

1. The idea that the US government (the DOE) made a well-produced, lively podcast
2. A fantastic 2.5-episode piece on the history of the Manhattan Project. Five stars for those 2.5 episodes.

Atlanta Monster (long-form journalism)

It turns out that “A Very Fatal Murder” was mocking this maybe even more than Serial.  This is, in fact, a terrible clone of serial.  High production value, and a really interesting and important case that I didn’t know anything about (hence about three episodes of total engrossment), but excruciatingly long, excruciatingly self-congratulatory, and often willing to favor what people felt about the facts over the actual facts.

The Dropout (long-form journalism)

Good production, but really superficial treatment of the story, leaving really basic things unexplained in a way that made their narrative feel untrustworthy. For example, you can’t in the very same episode say that their tests don’t work well and that they run all their tests on other people’s machines. In a multi-episode podcast, there’s room for nuance and clarity there.

Penn’s Sunday School (comedy?)

Every once in a while, I search iTunes for something to supplement my comedy podcast needs, because there’s only so much Adam Carolla available.  And every time I’m reminded that there are lots of funny, smart people with podcasts, saying somewhat interesting things, but they’re just a couple of dudes talking into microphones about whatever strikes them at that instant.  I.e., there’s no show. Which in this case is super ironic, since he’s arguably the greatest showman of the last half-century.

American History Tellers (history)

This is a really nice controlled experiment… it’s a lot like Hardcore History in its topic selection, level of detail, and even in the details they choose to cover.  But it’s totally scripted, almost to the point where it feels like they’re being paced by a metronome and trying to nail the post at the end of each episode.  And, consequently, it’s super-boring.

Pod Save America (politics)

If I were really into liberals preaching to the choir, as most liberals appear to be, I think this podcast would be great. These are reasonably funny, reasonably well-connected, very intelligent dudes giving a slightly profane take on political news. That said, it just made me mad at liberals, so I’m done with it after two episodes.

WTF

I don’t understand why this is so popular, or why Obama appeared on this show instead of a zillion other podcasts. Maron is an excellent interviewer, but the monologue portion of the show is boring (like, it doesn’t seem to even be an attempt at humor, it’s just a guy talking for 10 minutes), and even when the interviews are good, it’s still just two people talking about not that much, and IMO he’s not even remotely the best interviewer on this list, much less in the entire podverse. See Fitzdog Radio and the ACS; both IMO ask more interesting questions and relate to guests more effectively. So WTF is up with its popularity?

The Walk (fiction)

Innovative, well-produced, and well-acted, but physically hard to listen to, because of its efforts to be completely immersive.  Oddly, they start it off by saying “best experienced out in the world, on a walk, etc.”, but IMO the only way I could really digest this would be in complete acoustic isolation.

Life After (fiction)

Props to them for starting a new story after The Message, but IMO this one is not as good. The whole season has the same plot as one episode of Black Mirror, and the episode of Black Mirror was better.

Machine Learning Guide (computer science)

Pretty practical walkthrough of ML concepts, but not particularly lively. Even though it’s not quite apples-to-apples, I’d recommend Linear Digressions and Data Skeptic over this.

Freakonomics Radio (economics?)

Hit or miss; avoid any episodes related to technology, avoid any episodes related to motivation or personal improvement, avoid any episodes that sound really abstract, and avoid any episodes that are just interviews with a luminary. But anything related to economics is always awesome, and freak-quently asked questions episodes are even better. I’ve rated this podcast based on the 2017 ratio of hits to misses… in 2014, it was basically 100% hit, in 2018 it was maybe 30% hit, and in ~2019 when they started interviewing luminaries instead of discussing interesting case studies in economics, 0% hit.

When Diplomacy Fails (history)

Great premise (each episode describes the diplomatic build-up in a conflict that eventually ended in war), but suuuuper boring, like a textbook being read to me.

The Grift (long-form journalism)

An interesting topic, and every time I’ve heard Maria Konnikova on other podcasts she seems like one of the most interesting people in the universe, but this podcast was super-disappointing, primarily for total lack of detail. It felt like every sentence was “and then he toooootally conned them”, sort of like watching MacGyver, except he just goes into a room with the plunger and the baking soda and then the cut to the villain saying “I just got totally MacGyver’d!”.

Talking Machines (computer science)

The interviews with ML rock stars were OK and generally not super-technical, but the half of the show that is more technical IMO went too deep, to the point where unless you already had a strong command of the material, there’s no way you could follow it in a podcast.

Norm Macdonald Live (comedy)

Second only to “Revisionist History” in the “disappointing” category. Norm Macdonald is a comedic genius with a completely unique voice, and when I heard he had a podcast, I was sure this would stand next to Carolla atop Mount Funny. But it was not to be. As of 2017, it was clearly recorded on someone’s iPhone (despite having two producers in the room… what are they actually producing?), it was crass without being clever… a letdown. The jokes at the end of each episode, very Weekend-Update-esque, are definitely a strong point; if there were a separate podcast with just those, I would be in.

Blackout (post-apocalyptic fiction)

The biggest disappointment in the 2019 podverse. Big budget, great acting, and an A-list cast, but eventually ruined by terrible, cartoon-ish dialogue and nonsensical, equally-cartoon-ish plot twists.

Klepper (not really a podcast?)

I got tricked, this isn’t really a podcast, this is a totally unnecessary behind-the-scenes for the show.

Daily Zeitgeist (politics)

See “Pod Save America”, except take Pod Save America, substitute “drugs” for “relevant political connections and insider insight”, and you’ve got the Daily Zeitgeist.

Serendipity (fiction)

Based only on the first episode, but I didn’t get it. Rambling nonsense. And why do people think it’s a good idea to have a 10-minute preamble about the episode before the episode starts?

Learning Machines (computer science)

This just felt like a recorded lecture, just one dude droning on about machine learning. Hard to focus on. Were there not other better podcasts in a completely-apples-to-apples sense, I could see some value here, but we have Linear Digressions, Data Skeptic, and TWiML, so…

Revisionist History (history?)

This was really disappointing, especially when it turned blowhard and stopped having anything to do with history. A huge name in journalism and storytelling is going to do a podcast that critically assesses a historical narrative? Sign me up! But what actually came out was a blowhard-y, uninformative, irritating outpouring of rich white male guilt.

Economic Rockstar (economics)

I started this in my fit of excitement when I discovered other economics podcasts (e.g. EconTalk, Planet Money), but this was horrible by comparison. Slow and boring, living up to every stereotype of economists talking to other economists. Ironic, given the title, no?

Darkest night (fiction)

Right out of the gate this felt like a high school play… except imagine a high school play where they had to narrate every minute detail because the audience has their eyes closed. “I’m picking up a screwdriver now”, “I’m walking through the door now”, etc.

Dealy Manners (mystery) (I think)

Felt like a play from the ’40s, dialog and acting were dismal.

The Leviathan Chronicles (fiction)

See “Edict Zero”, only it feels like more effort went into it, in a bad way.

Hey Riddle Riddle (puzzles)

A riddle podcast sounds like a great idea, but this felt like college radio. In a bad way. It’s “Lateral”, only done wrong, by unprofessional broadcasters.

The Cleansed (fiction)

See “Edict Zero”.

The Deep Vault (fiction)

Also felt very intentionally theatrical (like Edict Zero and We’re Alive), acting and dialog were rough enough that I didn’t take the time to discover the story.

Edict Zero (fiction)

Over-the-top voice acting, more like high school kids putting on a play than a professional podcast. I didn’t make it through an episode.

We’re Alive

I listened to this right after I finished Limetown, which made it seem even worse. The writing was just horrendous; I didn’t make it through one episode. As of right now, this is the worst podcast I’ve ever tried to listen to.

A few that I tried briefly…

…but don’t want to rate because IMO they were good but just not for me…

Mongabay Newscast (environment)

I’m trying out a few conservation-themed podcasts, and so far this is best-in-class. It’s somewhat biodiversity-focused, so if you want today’s pessimism about climate specifically, you may have to look elsewhere, but it’s a good mix of informative and interesting, and the way it leans within environmental news aligns well with my interests. A double-speeder; a little slow compared to, e.g., Science Vs. In the end I decided I couldn’t take any more bad news since I work in this space and spend my whole day immersed in terrible news, so I dropped this one pretty quickly. Spoiler: everything’s a mess and there’s no good news.

The Three Questions with Andy Richter

This fell into the category of “just two people talking”, which was a little disappointing, since childhood memories tell me that Andy Richter is funny. But I guess some people are into the “just two people talking” format, because for some reason Joe Rogan and Mark Maron are both really popular, so who am I to judge?

StarTalk Radio (science)

When I listened to it, I leaned toward 4.5 stars, but then at some point it felt like homework. Not because it’s about science (Science Vs. is also about science, and doesn’t feel like homework), but because it’s not quite “produced” enough for me. I.e., it felt a little too much like “just a super-smart and generally entertaining person talking about science”.

Welcome to Nightvale

Really interesting use of the medium, very smart, but not my bag.

The Truth

Had been recommended along with serial dramas like Limetown, and I’m just not into the format. Well-produced.

Intercepted

Excellent longform (emphasis on long) reporting on current events, but in my podverse I want reflective, less-current longform journalism / discussion (Serial, History Hit) and shorter reporting on current events (The Daily).

Up First

Good short take on the day’s news, but IMO made obsolete by The Daily.

The Wild

Really compelling narrator, and I feel like a worse person for not enjoying this, but (a) even I can’t get into an audio-based animal documentary and (b) I really can’t take any more bummer environmental news in my life.