Back in March I was full of fire to keep blathering on about the few podcasts I recommend these days, the ones from a few years ago mostly ran out for me, only On the Media remains. I feel I’m caught up enough to promote the parent show which led to the splintering off of Stuff You Missed in History Class, it’s the long-running, often in the Top 20 via iTunes…Stuff You Should Know.
SYSK is a must have show for trivia fanatics, NPR devotees and wanna be Cliff Clavins. Several times a week hosts (these days) Josh and Chuck pick a random topic to discuss: how to survive a plane crash; what are temper tantrums?; can you outrun an alligator if you zig-zag?; etc. Most of the research is done by other writers at Discovery in Atlanta (where they’re based) and some freelancers their publisher farm the material out to.
The show is truly informative despite Chuck getting caught up in fits of giggling or Josh editorializing his center-right views (he originates from Ohio which is mostly northern Kentucky). Due to their high rankings, they have had a few surprises. My favorite was when they recorded from San Diego’s Comic Con and John Hodgman dropped by. It was the future version of John. He wanted to warn them about upsetting Joss Whedon. A rather fitting gag to squeeze in with the topic the duo was covering, is time travel really possible?
Being a completist, I’m plowing through every episode from the beginning (2008) but much like SYMiHC, it has grown time-consuming since this began as a short show and has exploded to an average of 25 minutes each. Currently I’m at May 2010 with sprinkles of recent installments. Another advantage to having an iPod in the car!
I highly recommend the show. Go through the archives, see the topics and go from there. I find their coverage to be more complete and thorough unlike Cracked non-humor pieces. I do have a bone to pick on how D&D works, it relied too heavily on one of io9.com’s hacks.