In his radio show, O’Reilly and the Age of Persuasion, Terry O’Reilly explores the countless ways marketers permeate your life—from art, media, and language, to politics, religion, and fashion—and he does it in a way that makes you crave episode after episode. You’ll never think about advertising the same way again.

I highly recommend you subscribe to the unofficial O’Reilly and the Age of Persuasion podcast.

Lately I’ve been enjoying The Unofficial Wiretap podcast (feed). Today I listened to the November 25, 2007 episode: The New Josh, in which host Jonathan Goldstein interviews David John Oates, the world leader in Reverse Speech studies.

I’ve never been a believer in Freudian slips or subconscious communication, but it’s interesting to listen to Mr. Oates speculate that these kinds of behaviour happen all the time. It’s true that reverse speech sounds like a foreign language and can often even sound like English, but it would take an awful lot of research to convince me his results are anything more than a combination of coincidence and wishful thinking—nevertheless, listen to the interview and form your own opinion.

Over the last few years I’ve been secretly dying to attend the annual new media festival in Austin, TX known as South by Southwest.

My trip to Punta Cana this year took precedence but alas not all is lost because the fine folks at SXSW are releasing podcasts of all the Interactive panel sessions over the coming months. They’ve already got a few of them up.

Subscribe to the SXSW Interactive podcast XML feed.

I just subscribed to the Guitar Noise Podcast. In the first episode, managing editor David Hodge goes through some of the basics of strumming. If you’re just learning the guitar, as I am—my parents gave me a guitar over the holidays, then I recommend you check it out.

I hope that, as they get a little more familiar with the technology, they will take advantage of dividing their podcasts into chapters and then show relevant “artwork” such as a JPG of the strumming pattern or chords that they want you to hit. But as it stands now, it’s still a great example of using podcasts for teaching.

(Yes, I realize in order to use chapters the podcast needs to be in AAC format instead of mp3, but as an iTunes user, it’s a trade-off that works for me… Perhaps they could have two streams, a normal podcast and an enhanced m4a version.)

Feed link.

I just listened to last week’s episode (#348 Tough Room) of This American Life.

This week we bring you backstage with comedy writers at The Onion. They start with over 600 potential headlines for their fake-news newspaper each week, and over the course of two days, in the very tough room that is their editorial conference room, they select 16 to go in the paper. Plus other people speaking their minds in very tough rooms.

One of the contributors, Malcolm Gladwell, relates some prankery from his days at The Washington Post. The mp3 is available on TAL’s website, and you can also get it on iTunes. For those not interested in digesting stories aurally, Gladwell wrote a version of this story for Slate in 1996.

Update: Gladwell’s disclaimer.

The CBC has started podcasting The Vinyl Cafe.

I love the CBC.

Paul Dunay, of Buzz Marketing for Technology has a recap of Malcolm Gladwell’s recent speech at the World Innovation Forum about, what else, innovation.

Paul found an opportunity to speak with Gladwell during the conference and recorded his interview.

Gladwell illustrates some of his points from his book, The Tipping Point, and what I found to be quite interesting, how the “last mile problem of marketing” is still trouble for marketers.

“The last mile in word of mouth marketing is personal relationships. At the end of the day I’m most powerfully influenced by those I know, respect and love,” explains Gladwell. The most complicated marketing scheme in the world won’t have a very strong affect on any given individual if the people that that individual trusts aren’t moved by the product.

Gladwell also talks a little bit about his new book. He says it’s about exceptional performers and high achievers, how they got there, and what we can learn from them.

Listen to the “Buzz Marketing for Technology’s” interview with Malcolm Gladwell.

The Design Trust Council held their inaugural event last Wednesday in the Founders Room at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink) was joined by fellow New Yorker magazine writer Adam Gopnik (Through the Children’s Gate, Paris to the Moon), in an entertaining and provocative conversation titled “Gothamitis.”

Gladwell and Gopnik, both keen observers of New York civic life, each relate different perspectives on “Gothamitis”—what current development trends mean for the soul of New York City.

Listen to the entire conversation (116.5mb mp3), along with audience questions via Design Trust’s blog, I ♥ Public Space.

I’ve subscribed to a few really good podcasts from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp that I need to tell the world about:

• CBC’s C’est la vie - word of the day French lessons
• CBC’s Quirks & Quarks - weekly science show
• CBC’s The Best of As It Happens - The best of As It Happens brings you the story behind the story.
• CBC’s The Best of Ideas - Ideas explores social issues, culture and the arts, geopolitics, history, biography, science and technology, and the humanities.

And if you haven’t already, let me just re-recommend that you subscribe to the TED Conference talks and the This American Life podcast. These are my two favourite sources of inspiration and entertainment on the web right now.

I recently subscribed to the This American Life podcast and I love it. They just started offering their show as a free podcast this week and I’m so glad they did; consider me hooked.

A quick description of their show for those that have never heard of it:

One of the problems with our show from the start has been that whenever we try to describe it in a sentence or two, it sounds awful. For instance: Each week we choose a theme and put together different kinds of stories on that theme. That doesn’t sound like something we’d want to listen to on the radio, and it’s our show. In the early days of the program, in frustration, we’d sometimes tell public radio program directors that it’s basically just like Car Talk. Except just one guy hosting. And no cars.

It’s easy to say what we’re not. We’re not a news show or a talk show or a call-in show. We’re not really formatted like other radio shows at all.

Instead, we do these stories that are like movies for radio. There are people in dramatic situations where things happen to them.

There are funny moments and emotional moments and—hopefully—moments where the people in the story say interesting, surprising things about it all. It has to be surprising. It has to be fun. There are shows on public radio with no sense of fun or surprise and we hate those shows.

I’ve been enjoying the TED conference speeches lately. I particularly liked the ones by Malcalm Gladwell and Ze Frank. I haven’t listened to every one, but the ones I have are so good that I think it’s safe to recommend them all so, subscribe here. Update: The site has changed. Try subscribing to this feed in iTunes.

I’ve been listening to Science Friday via their podcast lately and I love it. It’s a great science show published by the NPR.

“Each week, we focus on science topics that are in the news and try to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join Science Friday’s host, Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science - and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.”

Science Friday is a little like the CBC’s Quirks and Quarks but due to a labour dispute the CBC podcasts are on hold. In the meantime check out Science Friday’s feed.

I discovered The Animation Podcast site a few months ago, but I never got around to subscribing to their feed until today. I really like learning about animation and animators and this podcast is awesome for that.

Great news for those of us that can’t get enough good quality podcasts: I just discovered several new NPR podcasts for your free subscription enjoyment. Check out their podcast listing page.

I’ve been discovering the joys of podcasts lately; the new version of iTunes is really handy for getting new content. I should mention that even if you don’t have an MP3 player like an iPod, you can still listen on your computer.

There is one podcast in particular that I really love. It’s the CBC Radio’s program Quirks and Quarks. I highly recommend adding their feed. (http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/quirks.xml)

This week the topics ranged from Australian Spiders that eat each other during copulation to how biologists are creating real life chimeras, and as well the ethical and moral questions that come along with such endeavors. They also talked about Chickadee speech patterns and how radiation, something that is known to cause cancer, can be used to treat it. It’s really fascinating stuff.

I’d like to expand my podcasting palette, so if you’ve got a good podcast please leave a comment with the feed.