I’ve been listening to and enjoying this podcast for a couple months now, and it hit me the other day that others at DLP might also get something out of it. The podcast is “Stuff You Missed In History Class” and is made by the folks at HowStuffWorks. I have it set up to automatically update through iTunes but I’m sure you could go and download the podcasts several ways.

In general, the podcasts are between 15 and 30 minutes long, which I’ve found is long enough to get further into a topic than just piquing my interest, but not so long that I lose interest even on a topic I might not care much about in the first place. The average length turns out to be pretty good for my commute to and from the office.

There are now 215 podcasts in my iTunes library dating back to June of '08, though I’m not certain that this is all of them. Some examples of recent topics are “The Golem of Prague”; “How the Opium Wars Worked”; “Bungled Attempts at One-Person Flight”; “What was Saturnalia” etc. Granted, some of the podcasts won’t tell you much you didn’t already know – for example, I don’t think there was anything in their Houdini episode that was news to me – but by and large, I’ve found it to be a really nice use of drive time and even sometimes when I’m doing rote or mindless tasks around the house or at the office.

The hosts are two young women who work for HowStuffWorks in Atlanta, and although they do seem to get a little spacey at times, I realized I’d much prefer that to a very serious and dry retelling of events. The two are friends and clearly enjoy the uncovering of little-known facts and events, which allows them to have fun with the podcast.

Anyway, I enjoy it and hope that a few of you will as well. You can search for it on iTunes or, I'm sure, on the HowStuffWorks website.

 

Seeing as your second post has an extra line and tags, I believe this one needs to be deleted.

I've always liked the TV Show How Stuff Works, but listening and not seeing* what they talk about might be a bit weird for me; I'm a visual person.

*That is what a Podcast is, right? Just talking?

 

DAMMIT. I thought I was Previewing, not Posting! Can a mod help a brotha' out and delete this eff-up?