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So I find myself working on a podcasting solution for an old client that now wants to share a weekly 30 minute talk with the world and it got me thinking.

Podcasting is something that is so simple, but so often misunderstood. I remember only a little more then a year ago talking to otherwise intelligent, tech savy, people who asked me how a podcast was different then a mp3. I tried to explain to them about the metadata and subscription aspects of podcasts but I rarely convied the true power of podcasting.

Wikipedia says:

A podcast is a media file that is distributed by subscription (paid or unpaid) over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers.

Okay, fine - but what podcasting really does is allow the masses to simlplify the distribution of content they’ve created. The xml file that describes the media file allows everyone - itunes, thisblog, technorati - to learn about the latest mashup that you created in GarageBand, why you did it, when you did it, and where one might subscribe to the other media files that you are going to publish in the future.

Get a decent rss aggregator or podcast specific app ( even itunes ) and subscribe to a few active podcasts.

That being said, here’s a list of my favorite ( mostly ) talk radio type podcasts - try one or two, almost all of them are better then the standard mainstream media swill.

1. Free Talk Live - while not a pure-play podcast, this is easily the most important podcast on the net today imho.
2. The Onion Radio News - The Onion Radio News is a daily newscast from The Onion’s award-winning news team.
3. DiggNation - Diggnation is a weekly tech/web culture show based on the top digg.com social bookmarking news stories.
4. Coverville - A Podcsts about cover songs. How can that be good? Tune in, find out.
5. Movies You Should See - Brtish movie reviews - an amazing amount of detail about the movies discussed even though they stray off topic so often.
6. The RU Sirius Show - A MondoGlobo Production…
7. Common Sense with Dan Carlin - Sometimes topical, sometimes historical, always worth listening to.
8. Rubyfruit Radio - Where it’s all girls, all the time.
9. MacNation - One Nation Under Pod.
10. Red Bar Radio - Listen to MIke D. harshly judge pop culture .