Great Geeky Podcasts

Do you love comics? Gaming of every sort? Fantasy and science-fiction? And don’t you just hate it when you have to put all those good things aside to take the subway to work? Or when you go out for a jog or do a little clean-up around the house? Well, with this selection of podcasts, you don’t have to leave your fandom behind.

If you’re not familiar with podcasts (what kind of geek are you?), they are self-contained audio programs that are downloadable in mp3 form. They can then be listened to on your computer or any portable mp3 player. You can subscribe to podcast feeds through an aggregator like iTunes, or you can download them individually by visiting webpages. In this article, I’ll offer up some of the best “geeky” podcasts I’ve found and the webpages where they can be found.

Extra Life Radio (http://www.myextralife.com/)
Cartoonist Scott Johnson is the progenitor of this roundtable podcast that is “geek tested, nerd approved.” Johnson, along with fellow web cartoonists Brian and Obsidian and pop-culture guru Andrew, cover a wide array of subjects each week. Regular segments like “Crappy Movie of the Week” and “How Were the Graphics” coincide with discussions of gaming technologies, 80s nostalgia, and being a adult without losing the enjoyment of geeky-goodness. Having just celebrated episode 100, Extra Life Radio isn’t going anywhere. MyExtraLife.com also features links to Scott Johnson’s other podcast The Instance and Geek Food.

Michael & Evo’s Slice of SciFi (http://sliceofscifi.com/)
Each week, Michael Mennanga, Evo Terra and the Slice of SciFi crew feature news from the world of science fiction, fantasy and horror media. Not only are news items discussed, but the show features great interviews. Recently, the team has had a chance to chat with Sean Patrick Flanery and Anthony Michael Hall of The Dead Zone and Ira Steven Behr, producer of The 4400 among many others. Slice of SciFi encourages interaction from their listeners, and there is a second voicemail show each week. If you’re a geek with literary tastes, you might also want to check out Dragon Page: Cover to Cover also hosted by Michael and Evo. Past interviews have included authors George R. R. Martin, Robert Jordan, and Larry Niven. A link to that show can be found at SliceOfSciFi.com and all episodes can be found in the archive.

Escape Pod (http://escape.extraneous.org/), Escape Pod Classic (http://classic.escapepod.org/), Pseudopod (http://pseudopod.org/)
Enjoy fiction? The Escape Pod group has defined a great niche in the world of podcasts. It is one of the few paying podcast fiction ‘magazines’! For over a year now, Escape Pod has provided a short story each week as well as the occasional movie review. The production quality is outstanding and the authors featured are some of the brightest talents. Escape Pod Classic’s programming is oriented toward listeners of all ages, and Pseudopod, the newest of the group with only one episode thus far, focuses on horror.

These podcasts are all broad in their nature with subjects familiar to the geek population at large. If you’d like to find a podcast on a more specific topic (like Harry Potter, Serenity, or World of Warcraft), use your favorite search engine to check for related podcasts. Just remember: Podcasts, great for geeks on the go