Great Science and Technology Podcasts

I've had a few people asking me what podcasts I consume so I thought I'd put it in a post.

I've been a heavy podcast consumer since about the time I bought my first iPod (a first generation back 2GB ipod nano, bought in 2004 or 2005). I've always listened to podcast's on my run (a few times a week). When working on my research, I used to go for an hour long walk each day for lunch and consume. These days, I'll consume on my daily commute to and from my day job.

In no particular order of priority, here are the awesome podcasts I consume:

Science
I removed Science, and the Naked Scientist feeds from by diet about 2-3 years ago, there was far too much redundancy in the science stories when listened in conjunction with Nature, The Science Show, SciFri, and Science Times.

• Nature. Weekly science news, and interviews with authors from nature articles. One of the best science podcasts around!
  
• Science Show. Australian science show with a veteran science reporter. My favourite because it's great quality with a local twist.
  
• Science. Similar format to Nature, although not quiet as good. Format may have changed as I haven't listened to it in quite some time.
  
• The Naked Scientists. Great format with 'live' experiments at schools, science news, and interviews. At the time when I was listening to this (a few years ago), there was a lot of overlap with nature, I think because some of the same people were working on both podcasts. Things may be different now.
  
• NY Science Times. I am really into the format of this brief podcast. They have science news, health information, and reporting with columnists for the science part of the NYTimes. They also don't just focus on hard science and include health and social sciences.
• NPR Science Friday. A callback science show on NPR with another veteran science reporter. I have always enjoy this show because of the mixture of hard and softer science shows. This weekly show typically consists of interviews with the scientists involved with the breaking science stories of the week or upcoming science books and shows. The call in questions are typically cringe-worthy.
  

Technology

• ITConversations. This is a fire hose of technology conferences. I subscribe to the master feed and filter ruthlessly with my skip-track button. I've also back-listened on many of the O'Reilly conferences. Some (weekly?) fixtures I enjoy the most include: Jon Udell's Interviews With Innovators, Phil Windley's Technometria, and Moira Gunn's tech nation.
  
• Robots. News and interviews in the field of robotics. I'm not a huge robot freak, but I really do appreciate the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques in physical systems. These guys are a little amateurish (English as a second language?), although the science is hard the way I like it and their intro soundtrack is awesome!
  
• Software Engineering Radio. Interviews and discussions on software engineering topics. I'm new to this one, so I cannot accurately comment. It seems good so far, although sometimes a little dry or textbook (maybe a little too close to my undergrad).
• CSIRO HAIL Seminar Series. CSIRO is a premiere government research institution in Australian and HAIL stands for Human Factors, Artificial Intelligence, Language Technology. There are occasional gems in this stream on AI and interesting research, although many lectures are in topics I am not that interested in listening through on a run. CSIROpod is a new podcast on the scene from the same organization and I'm itching to give it a try.
  
• Singularity Summit. Talks from the annual conference on the technological singularity. The talks provide interesting insight into the current frontiers of Artificial Intelligence and I always get a lot out of them! They can be slow at releasing the audio for the talks, but here are links to the files for 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Other

• The Boyer Lectures. An annual lecture series delivered by prominent Australians. The 2008 series by Rupert Murdoch on the changes to journalism where particularly interesting.
  
• A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson (check itunes or amazon). This is an excellent book, and an excellent audio book on the history of science. I used to get through a chapter or two on a long run, and I think I've listened to it at least twice.

I also remember listening to a few semesters of biology lectures one year. I can't remember which school, but it was likely somewhere in the mess of MIT Open Courseware. I remember the content being very detailed and learning a lot about plant reproduction, genomes, and detailed critique of Darwin's origin of species.

There may be others, but these are all the great one's that come to mind. If you listen to any similarly awesome podcasts on science or technology, please spreed the word!