Over the past 18 months or so, I've turned into quite an active podcast listener, mainly at the gym and when just out wandering around. Herein, my recommendations...

Israelisms

It's a wacky country... and we prove it!

Carol and Charley are an American couple who moved to Israel about 20 years ago and now live in a town outside Jerusalem with (previously) their 2 daughters, and a dog or two. He's a stand-up comedian and writer, she's a nurse, they are both relatively moderate politically, but one leans somewhat right and the other leans somewhat left. Their podcast covers Israeli news - mainly politics - from a viewpoint of a semi-local, and tries to give a picture of what it's like living in Israel, beyond the politics and news headlines. Carol and Charley are very much real people giving their views of the real world, and it tends to be pretty funny quite often, as well...

Publishes: Weekly, Friday morning Israeli time, normally less than an hour

LugRadio

A British radio show that takes a relaxed, humorous look at Linux and open source.

A magazine-style show, separated into segments, featuring 4 relatively normal British blokes talking about Linux, Open Source, and beards. Very much a community, grassroots thing, even if a couple of the blokes are now employed by Canonical, leading to a bit of an Ubuntu bias. Has the slight problem that it leads me to either laugh out loud or shout BOLLOCKS at my audio player at random intervals. It's very funny, at times, with a slight reliance on in-jokes and British humour which some people may miss, and it does contain some very strong language at times - including, but not limited to, references to chins, raccoons and jokosher...

Publishes: Every two weeks, on Monday, normally between 1.5 and 2 hours

TWiT - This Week in Tech

Your first podcast of the week is the last word in tech.

One of the more popular podcasts, generally, TWiT has been going for almost 2 years now, and is normally a round-table with a number of professional techies and pundits discussing the week's tech news. Tends to vary from relatively hardcore stuff to much softer tech, is generally very entertaining, does have a few in-jokes, is somewhat US biased at times, but is well worth a listen. Most of the regular guests have previously worked together on TV in the US, and there's an obvious camaraderie between them.

Publishes: Monday morning US time, with occasional breaks, normally around an hour long

The Penguin Podcast

Book extracts, author interviews and features

Produced by Penguin UK, this is a short literary magazine in the form of a podcast. The content tends to be pretty eclectic, depending on what books and authors are around for them to talk about or to, but it's generally interesting, high-quality stuff, and well presented.

Publishes: Every two weeks, in theory, but they don't tend to hit that schedule very well, between 20 minutes and an hour

Podictionary

Listen to the surprising histories of words you thought you knew

A slightly tongue-in-cheek audio word-of-the-day, examining random, mainly everyday words and looking into their history and often an associated story and/or quotation. Geeky but fun...

Publishes: Daily, reliably, about 5 minutes long

Comedy4cast

Comedy in 4 minutes... or less.

A bit variable, but it does do what it says on the tin - it's a short comedy sketch in 4 minutes or less. The guy who makes it has a stable of characters and voices he does, some of which are funnier than others - when it's good, it's very funny, but when it isn't, well, you've only wasted 4 minutes on it...

Publishes: Once or twice a week, normally about 7 minutes long, including the non-comedy stuff

The Economist

A political, literary and general newspaper

The Economist is a very high quality weekly news magazine (however much they may want to call themselves a newspaper) with over 160 years of published history. They have an open and clear interest in promoting free trade and markets, but their news coverage is excellent, varied, global in scope, and as such is consumed by political and commercial leaders all over the planet. They publish regular surveys, looking at countries, markets and other issues in detail, and have starting publishing audio interviews with the authors or subjects of the survey, alongside their regular "In this week's Economist" summary of some of their headline stories and opinion pieces.

Publishes: One regular weekly podcast, on a Friday, and occasional interviews, both around 7 minutes long

An honourable mention has to go to FLOSS Weekly, a podcast from the TWiT stable, covering Linux/Open Source in the form of a an interview with a well-known person in the community. It's a pretty good podcast, but calling it FLOSS Weekly is nothing but a joke now, since there's only been two editions this year, and there's no sign of things improving in the immediate future.