I Cast, You Cast, We All Cast for Podcasts?

This just a small chronicle of my personal history with Podcasts.
I've been listening to "shows" on the internet since 1999. From listening to a Streaming RealMedia Show about Transformers(...y'know like about the old toys and cartoons before there were new toys and new cartoons, not to mention the movies) made in some dudes basement but which was amazingly well produced, to now listening to shows on an iPod which are now made professionally by well known comedians. I love the podcast format, I always loved radio talk shows and generally its like a Radio Talk show without commercials, and where people can can talk about anything...plus its free!

I started listening to Diggnation, TWiT, and Comic Geek Speak way back when, soon after I got my first iPod(4th Generation, right before the photo/color) and it was *magic*. At one point I had a job where was in a truck or walking by myself all day and I needed entertainment for about 9 or 10 hours a day. In which I got deep into the rich Comic Book Podcast community for a while, I was listening to Comic Geek Speak, Around Comics, Comic Book Page, iFanboy, WordBalloon, Uncanny X-Cast, Half Hour Wasted, Comic Timing, and even Fanboy Radio. There is no community in Podcasting better than them, there is so many, and so many good ones, and everybody knows each other, and all had really rich forums where they all try to get people involved in the shows. But that all imploded on me, I just burned me out eventually. Spending more time listening to people talk about comics than I had time to read comics.

Then I moved to an office job, and around the same time Adam Carolla started his podcast. A daily show, first doing one on one long form interviews and then moved to become a kind of combination "morning show" and "late nite talk show". And all this time I had been listening to Smodcast with Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, which was a great unbelieveably hilarious show. But once "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" was being filmed and then once it had come out and sadly bombed, that show changed a lot. Once Kevin started smoking weed, the show changed not necessarilly for the worst, but became a different animal. Smodcast expanded a lot, and eventually became a live show and that was the point, which I wasn't a huge fan of, just felt it became more of pandering to the audience. I now only listen to the non-live episodes on Smodcast. Through Carolla's show I found the Nerdist Podcast with Chris Hardwick, and Fitzdog Radio with Greg Fitzsimmons, both hilarious shows. For Video Game info I had been listening to Gamespot's Hotspot podcast with Rich Gallup, Jeff Gerstmann, and others for a while but hosts changed hands a couple times, and just became less fun. This all came to a head when Jeff Gerstmann got fired very publicly from Gamespot (if you followed that site, or gaming news at the time) seemingly for editorial reasons. Not too long after that a huge chunk of people left Gamespot because of what happened to Jeff. A few months later Jeff and some other former Gamespot staff launched GiantBomb.com, and with it the Giant Bombcast, which had all the fun of the old Hotspot show and more.

Next big change was unemployed for about 3.5 months, which got me way behind in all my shows, I had to start picking and choosing which ones were important to me, since at my new job I didn't have all day to kill listening to podcasts while I was working. So I've paired it down quite a bit from my haydays. The list I have now of shows that I subscribe to is:

- The Adam Carolla Show (Weekdays)

- Around Comics (Monthly)