Archive for the ‘Beer’ Category

Podcasts

April 26, 2020

These are the podcasts I listen to, at least occasionally. Within each category they are roughly ranked. Since many people have more spare time during the pandemic, it seemed like a good time to write this.

In case anyone cares, I almost always listen using an app called Podcast Addict on my phone. It lets you download episodes to listen where reception might be spotty, keep a playlist of episodes you want to hear in the order you want to hear them, and have fine-grained control over the playback speed (I generally listen between 1.2 and 1.5 times normal speed). I used to listen primarily while driving, when I drove enough for that to make sense. Since retiring, and even more so during the pandemic, I listen mostly when running, using bone conducting headphones so that I can still hear my surroundings.

[Originally published on 4/26/2020, and updated on 5/14/2020]

Running:

  • Trail Runner Nation: The two hosts don’t take themselves too seriously, but still get real often enough to make it compelling. They also generally have good guests.
  • Running Stupid: This podcast is published pretty irregularly, and is often more stream of consciousness than planned, but I’m happy to say that the host is a friend.
  • Ultrarunner Podcast: The host has some obsessions and opinions that he has a hard time imagining anyone disagreeing with, but the range of guests is quite good.
  • Endurance Planet: I started listening to this before the current hosts took over in 2011, and before I found the other options above. Still, though, there are good nuggets often enough to keep me listening to most episodes.
  • For the Long Run: I wasn’t going to mention this one since I rarely listen to it, but since the host’s coach is David Roche, I do listen when he’s the guest. He (Roche) might be the most awesomely positive person I know of. Just today (4/26/2020) I was listening to him when I took a fall on a sidewalk, and right after that happened, Roche talked about saying “yes, thank you” when something bad happens.

Politics:

Movies:

  • Filmspotting: One of the if not the first podcast I started to listen to back when podcasts first came to the iPod in 2005. Filmspotting was called Cinecast back then, and had only been around for about 9 of their now 774 episodes. They review current movies, though definitely not all of them and with a focus on ones expected to be good. They also look back at older movies, and almost all episodes have a top five list, in the spirit of High Fidelity (which was set in Chicago, where this podcast is based).
  • The Next Picture Show: This is a spin-off of Filmspotting, and each pair of episodes compares and contrasts a current movie with an older film, such as Marriage Story with Kramer vs. Kramer. There are frequently spoilers, so don’t listen if you haven’t seen both movies and think you might want to someday.
  • The Treatment: This KCRW podcast almost always interviews people involved in a current movie or television show. Elvis Mitchell is the host, and often finds connections that the guests had never considered before.
  • Film Reviews: This KCRW podcast has short reviews of current movies.
  • Unspooled: The hosts review the AFI top 100 movies of all time. Sometimes one or both of them will not have seen the movie before, but they often have interesting guests who were involved in making the movie or have an interesting perspective on it.
  • Movie Crush: The host has guests (celebrities, to one degree or another) talk about their favorite movie in depth.

Money:

  • Planet Money: I first became aware of this podcast because of a 2008 episode of This American Life (see the “Other” category) called The Giant Pool of Money, about the financial crisis. The people who did that particular episode went on to create this podcast.
  • The Indicator from Planet Money: This is a spin-off from the main Planet Money podcast, runs every weekday, and is a short (under 10 minutes) look at some current financial story.

Growth:

  • The Happiness Lab: This is a Pushkin podcast (like four podcasts in the “Other” category), from a Yale professor who created a class about how to be happier. She uses actual science to point out ways that our brain often makes choices that make us less happy. She did one season, came back with many extra episodes to help people get through the pandemic, and season two has started.
  • One Extraordinary Marriage: I was looking for a podcast about improving marriages, and this is the best one I’ve found so far. The hosts are far more religious than I am, and it emphasizes sex a bit more than I would have chosen, but there are almost always good nuggets in every episode.
  • Unlocking Us: This is a new podcast from Brené Brown, which I heard about when she was on 60 Minutes recently. It’s not up to the level of her TED talk or her recent Netflix special (watch those if you haven’t already), but it’s still worth listening to.
  • Crooked Butterfly: This is done by a former special forces military guy, and is also tangentially about running. I originally heard him interviewed on Trail Runner Nation, and find his philosophy interesting, if a bit absolute/extreme, at times.

Beer:

  • The Beerists: This podcast seems good, though I’ve only listed to a couple of episodes so far.
  • Craft Beer Radio: This was a great podcast, but hasn’t published any new episodes since July 2019. I hope it returns someday.
  • Beer Guys Radio: This podcast is merely okay, but there aren’t many choices out there if you are not in the industry and don’t homebrew.

Other:

  • 99% Invisible: My wife turned me onto this Radiotopia podcast to listen to a couple of basketball-related episodes, about the introduction of the shot clock and the 3-point shot. But it’s so much more than that.
  • Against the Rules: This podcast by Michael Lewis (author of many excellent books including Moneyball and The Big Short) is from Pushkin. Season 2 recently started.
  • This American Life: If you know podcasts, or even public radio, you probably know this one already. I might have put it at the top of the “Other” list, but I wanted to give the first two more visibility.
  • Revisionist History: This podcast from Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers, The Tipping Point, etc.) is usually excellent. It’s part of the Pushkin family of podcasts.
  • Cautionary Tales: This is another Pushkin podcast, and is about things that went wrong. The host is Tim Harford, who is a frequent guest on other podcasts I listen to. Some parts are done as audio reenactments.
  • Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me: This should probably be higher, since my wife loves it. But for that reason I’ve mostly not listened to it so we have something to share for road trips. But now that we’ve moved to Hawaii there won’t be many of those, especially during the pandemic.
  • KQED Forum: I used to listen to more episodes of this, from the primary Bay Area public radio station, but still listen on occasion when the subject is one I want to learn more about from people I trust. The regular host, Michael Krasny, is a very good interviewer.
  • Twenty Thousand Hertz: This is a podcast about sounds, like the Wilhelm scream, which you should learn about if you haven’t already.
  • Solvable: At first I was really a fan of this Pushkin/Rockefeller Foundation podcast, about how to solve problems that seem unsolvable, like homelessness. But for whatever reason I haven’t listened to it recently. If I do, it could easily rise on this list.

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The Beers of Cinequest 2014

April 20, 2014

Cinequest wasn’t just a good time at the movies last month. I also took advantage of my time in downtown San Jose to try a bunch of new beers. First I’ll list the places I had beer during Cinequest (Yelp links, in alphabetical order):

  • Good Karma: The food is vegan, and while I enjoy the taste of animals as a part of most lunches and dinners, the one time I ate there it was quite tasty. And the beer selection seems quite good, especially including the bottled beers which I did not take advantage of (yet).
  • ISO Beers: This place is brand new as of February 2014. Their selection seems very good, though so far their traffic is not enough to allow them to change often enough for my taste. Their largest pours are only 12 ounces, which is actually a feature since it allows tasting more beers. They serve no food but because of that, they allow you to bring in outside food. They also have a nice and growing selection of bottled beers that you can drink there or take out.
  • Original Gravity Public House: This is my model for how to do a beer bar, though it’s not quite perfect. My favorite feature is that their web site is automatically updated from the same data that drives the display in the bar itself, so the web site is 100% up-to-date. My second favorite feature is that they change what’s on tap often enough that there’s is always something new, even if you drink as many new beers as I do. The minor drawback is that the wide selection sometimes leads me to beers that I don’t actually like all that well. Their second drawback is that the food they serve (mostly sausages and fries) isn’t very healthy.

And these are the beers I had during the festival (ratebeer links, in chronological order, GK=Good Karma, ISO=ISO Beers, and OG=Original Gravity; the ratings are out of 5 stars):

I actually had a couple of others not listed above, but these are the ones I checked into on Untappd (a cool social beer tracker site and app—let me know if you sign up and want to connect).

With my highest rated beers generally being imperial IPAs, imperial porters, barley wines, and a sour, it seems safe to say that I like beers with a ton of flavor.

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