While I’m one of those people who is perfectly fine with no distraction other than the noise in my head for long stretches of time, now and again it’s nice listening to someone else’s nonsense to keep from going fucking nuts. Music is dandy, got no problem with it, but it has never distracted from radio KFUK constantly playing in me wee little bean. More just a background soundtrack. Since the age of 12 or 13 spoken recordings have had the power of distraction and comedy was my first recorded love. Cosby, Carlin, Robin Williams, Bobcat, Sam Kinison, Pauley Shore, Dice, Dennis Miller, and others got stuffed into my Walkman to keep me company and distract from the not always pleasant reality of day to day life as the fat kid with drunk parents in a shitty redneck town.

Nowadays it’s Pandora set up with about 30 different comedians and a whack of different Podcasts. Podcasts!?! Surprisingly there are still folks who know nothing about this fantastic format, yer either balls deep or clueless. This is the golden age for podcasts, anything you’d want to listen to is out there.

Figured I throw up a list of good listening for long moto rides monotonous trail runs, or whatever you’re into and have a need to listen to some good chatter. I’m not into PC bullshit, right-wing bullshit, anti-free speech bullshit or any other kind of stupidity restricting the free expression of thoughts or ideas regardless of how any random group may feel at any given moment. Many of these are done by comedians I love, others by intellectuals I respect whether I always agree with them or not.

Hit these folks up! Lots of good listening to be had.

The best goddamn Podcast on the face of the earth for anyone with even a fleeting interest in history is Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. Fucking amazing, Not Hipster amazing, real amazing. Dude deserves an award.

My favorite comedian is Doug Stanhope. If you’ve never heard of him, he’s probably not your cup of tea. Hell, maybe he is. Check out the Doug Stanhope Podcast to listen in on the gang of misfits hunkered in Bisbee, AZ drinking their way to the apocalypse. If you’re afraid of stark reality and honesty, keep on looking. Want a good test to see if you can hang? Try the Nowhere Man and Whiskey girl 2 parter, episodes 10 and 13.

The Joe Rogan Experience is the one podcast most people have heard of, for good reason. 99% are decent to awesome, then sometimes he has Alex Jones on, gets him really high, adds a drunk Eddie Bravo for good measure and shit goes off the rails. Pure gold.

Marc Maron’s WTF is another long running high visibility podcast. Hell, Obama was on it! While I hate his interrogation, constant interruption to ask a new question of someone still trying to answer the last 3 questions fired at them, and seeming need for approval by EVERY guest, he does have some great folks on and occasionally isn’t irritating. Love his standup, tolerate the podcast, worth it for the guests.

Bert Kreischer’s Bertcast, Ari Shaffir’s Skeptic Tank and Duncan Trussel’s Family Hour are the other comedians I listen to.

Public Radio has a few winners including the fantastically popular Serial, Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me! for a humorous bit of fun, This American Life which you should already know about, Planet Money for interesting views into the world of money and my favorite, Radiolab.

The thinkers I listen to include Dave Rubin’s Rubin Report, Sam Harris’ Waking Up, Gadd Saad’s The Saad Truth, Tangentially Speaking by Christopher Ryan (Author of Sex at Dawn), and Josh Zepps’ We the People Live.

What do you listed to?