everywhere in la takes 20 minutes

or so said cher's father in clueless. for the most part, it's true. what is also true is that many of us may work in la, but we live just outside. i live in santa monica and work in hollywood, my commute to work is about 30-40 minutes. luckily for me, it's not in stand still traffic, that would drive me nuts. with half an hour spent in the car, what should i listen to?

when i first moved out to la i tried seacrest in the morning, it seemed like the "la" thing to do. i quickly got really annoyed and switched to the npr station. sadly the time i'm in my jeep splits up morning programming. i catch the end of one segment and the beginning of another, no resolution, grrr. sirius satellite channel flipping it is. until a wonderful thing happened on tumblr.

via tumblr

i follow author john green on tumblr. he's whitty, nerdy and writes moving teen fiction i wish had been around when i was growing up. (tho if i'm honest, i probably would have still been reading the fear street series) so when john green suggests a podcast, i'm inclined to check it out.

sadly (sort of) my job doesn't allow for much active listening at my desk. i can sometimes have music on very low so as not to annoy co-workers, but nothing i can focus on. also, ear buds just don't look good from a professional standpoint, even if you're collating/filing. because of this, any podcast lasting longer than 30 min, gets put off until i've got a long drive/flight ahead of me. but enough, oh whoa is me, back to the start of this post.

commonplacebooks.com

welcome to night vale is a twice monthly, roughly 27 minute podcast described as "npr meets the twilight zone." it's what would happen if my radio and my netflix cue made a baby. set in the fictional (?) desert town of night vale, radio host cecil palmer (voiced by cecil baldwin) brings you local news, community updates and the weather, in a place where all your conspiracy theories are true. it takes a few episodes to get the story rolling, it'll seem totally random at first, some of it is, but there is a real heart to the story of our dear radio host cecil. it took a few months but i'm finally caught up. on to my next listen...

thrillingadventurehour.com

thrilling adventure hour is a staged production in the old radio format here in la at largo. as if you were watching a prairie home companion live (also a fav of mine). the full hour is broken up into segments including story, announcements, fictional sponsor commercials and musical numbers. each podcast is one of these segments. i find the easiest way to catch the story is listen to all the matching segments in a row. i'm currently on sparks nevada, marshal on mars. my favorite segment is beyond belief, featuring a boozing socialite couple who can speak to the dead.

both shows have had a variety of quest voices and, as if having nathan fillion and on screen daughter molly quinn appear in both podcasts isn't enough, night vale and thrilling adventure are teaming up for emerald city comicon. i can barely control the squee! if you're in the seattle area next week, please go and enjoy it for me.

stgpresents.org

question for the peanut gallery

any podcasts you like to listen to on your drive/commute or while you're "working"?



side note: if you enjoy podcasts and just nerdy awesomeness in general, please help crowd fund nerd hq. in addition to access to tech demos, games and parties, the nerd machine spends the week of san diego comicon raising money for operation smile by hosting panel discussions with special guests like nathan fillion, tom hiddleston, cast of doctor who, the thrilling adventure hour and more. nerd hq has raised over $415,000, that's almost 2,000 surgeries.

click the image below to go to the crowd fund site. $5 (or more), can't beat that. all the events are live streamed so even tho i prob can't make it to comicon, they can have my money and i'll watch from home. it's like diretv but without commercials and programming i actually like.

www.iwantmynerdhq.com