When Brian and I stared renovating houses for a living I found my brain had a lot of free time available.  I spend a lot of time painting or cleaning or scrubbing vinyl siding by myself. My brain is like an ADD toddler hopped up on Mt Dew and Pixie Stix…. if not kept entertained it’ll run rampant and cause all kinds of trouble… like planning a My Little Pony Circus birthday party for my Pomeranian (Brain didn’t think it was an amazing idea…. because dying ponies purple and gluing glitter wings on them was a “bad” idea…) or worrying about government/alien conspiracies (Brian told me to email Amazon and return all my Doomsday Prep supplies…. he’s gonna be sorry when the aliens invade and we have to forage for Gluten Free food!)

Since Brian doesn’t appreciate all my planning and genius ideas it’s just best to keep my brain entertained quietly.  Brian recommended podcasts.  He got me started on educational stuff…. which I enjoy… I listen to a bunch of shows from TWIT tv.  (This Week In Tech… it’s an abbreviation, not an insult…) I enjoy them…. there are tons of interesting things to learn…. but… you know… “educational.”

I’ve recently discovered story style podcasts and I’m hooked on several really good ones.

You can listen to podcasts in several different ways… iTunes, direct from the web, Pandora, but I like using the Overcast App.  There is a free version, but I opted to pay the $5.00 so that I could download podcasts using data instead of only WI-FI… I like to be able to download new podcast when we’re traveling and I don’t want to have to wait for a WI-FI connection.  (There are other benefits, but that was all I was after.)

Favorite Podcasts:

Serial  – Serial is a podcast from the creators of This American Life, hosted by Sarah Koenig. Serial tells one story—a true story—over the course of a season. Each season, we follow a plot and characters wherever they take us. We won’t know what happens at the end until we get there, not long before you get there with us. Each week we bring you the next chapter in the story, so it’s important to listen to the episodes in order.

The Black Tapes – The Black Tapes is a weekly podcast from Pacific Northwest Stories and Minnow Beats Whale, and is hosted by Alex Reagan. The Black Tapes is a serialized docudrama about one journalist’s search for truth, her enigmatic subject’s mysterious past, and the literal and figurative ghosts that haunt them both.

Lore – Lore is an award-winning, critically-acclaimed podcast about true life scary stories. The people, places, and things of our darkest nightmares all have real facts at their core. – Each episode of Lore looks into a uniquely scary tale and uncovers the truth behind it.  Sometimes the truth is more frightening than fiction.

Limetown – Ten years ago, over three hundred men, women and children disappeared from a small town in Tennessee, never to be heard from again. –  In this seven-part podcast, American Public Radio host Lia Haddock asks the question once more, “What happened to the people of Limetown?”

The Message – The Message is a new podcast following the weekly reports and interviews from Nicky Tomalin, who is covering the decoding of a message from outer space received 70 years ago. Over the course of 8 episodes we get an inside ear on how a top team of cryptologists attempt to decipher, decode, and understand the alien message.

Tanis – Tanis is a bi-weekly podcast from the creators of Pacific Northwest Stories, and is hosted by Nic Silver. Tanis is a serialized docudrama about a fascinating and surprising mystery: the myth of Tanis.  – Tanis is an exploration of the nature of truth, conspiracy, and information.  – Tanis is what happens when the lines of science and fiction start to blur…

Do you have a favorite podcast?  Share with me!