If you had to choose five podcasts to recommend to a person with a brand new interest in listening to podcasts, what would you recommend?
Here’s my top five (in no order):
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Slate Magazine Daily Podcast
Politics, popular culture, the arts and science. A daily selection of interviews and readings of some of Slate’s best articles.
4 to 10 minutes
Bernie DKoven, funsmith
Games and toys, ideas and innovations, people and events that enhance our capacity for having fun
3 to 5 minutes
Walk in the Word with James MacDonald
This is the pastor of a church I regularly attend. Very good sermons.
26 minutes
The Accidental Creative
Methods on how to find your creative voice and establish that as a rhythm in your life
5 to 15 minutes
NPR: Story of the Day
Funny, moving, exceptional, or just offbeat. The best of Morning Edition, All Things Considered and other award-winning NPR programs.
5 minutes
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What are some podcasts that you would recommend to the starting podcast listener?

I asked this same question over in the Chicago Podcast Meetup bulletin board.
Do I need to download iTunes to listen to podcasts?
You don’t need iTunes to listen to podcasts (although it’s my favorite program to use for this). There are many other programs you can use to subscribe to podcasts. Here’s a list: http://www.podcastalley.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=258 It’s a nice list, cuz it tells you which programs are more popular by page views. And I’ll give my list of five recommended mainstream podcasts, but with links to their info page, and a link to their feed. When you download a podcasting program other than iTunes, you paste in the feed url to subscribe to the podcast. Slate Magazine Daily Podcast info: http://www.slate.com/id/2119317/ feed: http://www.slate.com/podcast/ Bernie DKoven, funsmith info: http://www.deepfun.com feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Funlog Walk in the Word with James MacDonald info: http://www.walkintheword.com/Broadcast_Podcast.aspx feed: http://www.walkintheword.com/podcast.xml The Accidental Creative info: http://www.accidentalcreative.com/ feed: http://www.accidentalcreative.com/ac-feed.xml NPR: Story of the Day info: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=4819386 feed: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=1090
Matt, Here’s my current list with some comments. A bit cycling heavy, but I really like the In Our Time series and the podcasts from Mars Hill.
Whoops – forgot the url. http://www.fioritto.us/weblog/archives/001364.php