All the podcasts I need right now

Podcasts have been a thing for a long time now, and everybody has their own favourites. The wife loves true crime, but I get enough of that in the newsroom at work, and prefer my podcasts to be about pop culture. Sometimes I like a dose of heavy history, and sometimes I like listening to stories about modern hauntings, but mainly I just want to hear people talk about the best in comics and movies.

There are still eleven billion pop culture podcasts to choose from, and only so many hours in the day, so you have to stick to what you like. I have the ones I like to listen to while walking to work, or doing the dishes, or getting stuck into the garden, or on the weekly visit to the local library to pick up the latest huge pile of new X-men trade paperbacks.

Among them all, I've never missed an Wait What/Drokk/Baxter Building since Jeff and Graeme were rocking it for the Savage Critics. Their rambling chats are endlessly entertaining, no matter how many times I totally disagree with what they're saying. Especially when Jeff gets really high and reads all sorts of wonderful nonsense into his comics, or Graeme tries to argue that Steve Englehart is a better writer than Alan Moore, But I don't want to agree with people I listen to, where the fuck is the fun in that?

Also Drokk has the best theme music in any podcast ever and they are currently getting stuck into Dredd comics that nobody else ever talks about. And the addition of Chloe as semi regular guest is deeply appreciated, and I'm not just saying that because they are legit the best editor I have ever known.

And I've also long been an admirer of the discipline of House to Astonish from Paul O'Brien and Al Kennedy which largely sticks to a rigid and entertaining format. It's another podcast that I've been following for years - I remember driving around the UK listening to their exploits on a trip 10 years ago - and they are still have hit the sweet spot again with the recent Lightning Round, an issue by issue retrospective on the mighty Thunderbolts.

The only other podcasts I never miss are over at the Factual Opinion - both the Travis Bickle on the Riviera and Comic Books Are Burning In Hell podcasts are just so fucking funny, and talk about the kind of movies and comics that I want to know more about. I think they're more wrong more often than even the Wait What crew, but holy shit, when they're right about something, they're fucking right about it.

There's no more time for any more than that on the regular, but there are also plenty that I jump in and out of. I would probably listen to The Rewatchables more if they weren't so obnoxiously loud, and any new episodes of The Movies That Made Me or Adam Buxton's shenanigans depend entirely on the guest they're talking to.

For all my sins, I do like listening to a bit of Rob Liefeld, because he really does tell a good story, especially about how fucked up the 90s comic scene is, which is just my bread and butter. The only thing that is more in my wheelhouse is listening to Evan Dorkin and his pal talk about groovy old horror films on the Tear Them Apart podcast - they certainly sold me on Horror Express after their discussion of it.

There are occasional downloads of the 2000ad Thrillcast and the Hammer House of Horror podcasts, and I always find room for a good five-hour episode of Hardcore History - the wife's True Crime stories truly pale in comparison to the awful massacres and genocides of history

And there is always room for some more. I just started dipping into the Hypnogoria podcast, after going through the Zombi Zombi series and its cheerfully bloody descriptions of some very terrible zombie movies, and I've just found this one called Comfort Blanket from one of the dudes who made the excellent Rule of Three podcast about excellent comedy, which is all about smart people talking about their absolute favourite things like Wham and raiders of the Lost Ark, and sometimes that's all I need in life.

Podcasts fill the brain with useless information, but make doing the dishes less of a chore. And listening to people talk about the shit they like makes everything a bit easier.