Hodgepodge 251/365 - Listening to Words II

Back when I started this second year of my daily blog, I wrote about podcasts, which I enjoy listening to when I cook. The other evening, for example, I listened to an installment of Malcolm Gladwell's excellent Revisionist History, this one juxtaposing Elvis Costello, Picasso, Cézanne, and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"—an interesting mash-up that totally makes sense in Gladwell's handling of it. As he explains, the episode "is about the role that time and iteration play in the production of genius, and how some of the most memorable works of art had modest and undistinguished births."

I just now ran across a list called "11 Podcasts Guaranteed to Make You Think," from an ongoing blog called discoverpods.com. (Bookmarking that.) A quick glance tells me it's worth repeating here for my own reference, and perhaps yours as well. Because . . . who doesn't like to think? (Okay—rhetorical question that I'm just going to leave dangling there in the air.) I bet Revisionist History will be on this list. It already was on my first one.

Okay, here goes:

• 99% Invisible, about all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about—the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world. [this was on my earlier list, but no harm in repeating]
• Twenty Thousand Hertz: the stories behind the world's most interesting and recognizable sounds.
• Revisionist History (there ya go!), which looks in part at why we perceive some things the way we do.
• Criminal: "Stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle," including an examination of motives and psychological reasons behind some people's actions.
• The Memory Palace, looking at events that happened in the past to learn something new or revisit something old through a different analysis.
• Reply All, which typically looks into a specific topic in technology and/or pop culture. "If you have even the slightest interest in tech and oddball internet topics like memes, conversations, and standards and want to understand why the internet is the way it is now, this is a podcast for you" (quoting discoverpods).
• Invisibilia, featuring the invisible forces around us, whether emotions, ideas, thoughts, assumptions, that exert an influence on our world.
• Ungeniused, quick (10–15-minute) stories about random, quirky stuff, like moon landing conspiracy theories and selfie-related deaths, to (randomly) choose two recent podcasts.
• Hidden Brain, on the unconscious motives, the biases and triggers, that shape human behavior. 
• Liftoff, about space, the universe, and everything, told in a very accessible fashion.
• Science Vs, which "takes on fads, trends, and the opinionated mob to find out what's fact, what's not, and what's somewhere in between."

 There's more than enough to last several lifetimes there. I'd better get cracking!

P.S. Pursuant to yesterday's post: today was a gorgeous sunny day and I took Milo to the beach where he battled the waves, dashing back and forth, in and out, stopping occasionally to dig furiously in the wet sand and bury his entire head, or else roll ecstatically on his back, long legs flopping. If that isn't enough to conquer the blahs, I don't know what is. Dogs are such good teachers.