A “Music” Meme that I decided to remix

A music Meme

I have been tagged by L Oman to do a music meme. I’m gonna change that today and instead of doing songs, do podcasts. Podcasts are my thing. I used to be one of those people who had to have three books on her to feel emotionally secure in public transportation (this after getting stuck in the Brussels-Avignon train for twelve hours once with nothing but someone else’s Paris Match. I also had no food or water but that is another story). Now I have a big old ipod filled with podcasts and I have books and lectures and news and all that goodness. I don’t believe in paying for downloads. I am philosophically against it. It is up to the book and music industries to adapt themselves to the new technologies and change their ways of doing business, it isn’t up to the consumer to make up for these industries inability to make money because of their inadaption to new technologies. As such, all these lovely links are free.

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

So let’s podcast.

1. The first podcast is my guilty pleasure. It is like the lucky charms and cheetos of podcasts. Or the breakup carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream, oddly consoling but afterwards I feel weird and slightly nauseous. I figured I had to start with a little shame, so here it is: The Young Turks. I keep making excuses for myself like I like hearing American accents these days and stuff but I know those are just platitudes. Funjuns y’all.

2. The second podcast is my one true love and I can put it (well them) on shuffle for days and days and days and just zen out. Here you can get short stories read aloud by Dutch and Flemish authors in English, French, Dutch and Spanish. I listen to the English, French and Dutch versions. It helps me with my Dutch because some editions are the same or from the same story. The English alone has twelve hours of goodness.

3. I listen to all of the news versions of the RFI podcasts while I am commuting or cleaning house. I especially like the call in show, it cracks me up. Sometimes people even do shout outs.

4. My other favorite besides the radioboeken is a show about books called La librairie francophone. A weekly review of books from the owners of bookstores in Quebec, France, Belgium and Switzerland. What I really like is that the Swiss ones are from Morges (a bookstore I have been to) which is a good sized little town for Switzerland, and Oron-la-ville, which is straight up podunk. Something about that makes me like it more than if it was some hippie bookstore in Geneva. At Ole Miss we had Square Books and as such I just love the independent bookstore vibe. And that goes double if the bookstores are in nowhere land. And the Canadian lady? Her accent is gorgeous. I LOVE Canadian accents in French. I would rather hear some toothless Canadian farmer speak French than hear the NAP accent, which makes my skin crawl. A NAP accent is also what I refer to as Nice Husband’s “phone voice.” His phone voice is hilarious though because it is so different from his normal voice. When he calls people in Switzerland they can tell right away where homeboy is from. The queen of the Parisian Phone Voice, however, is his oldest sister. He probably learned it from her. Their phone voice is the total opposite of anything that could be considered a banlieue accent, it is like the RP of French. As usual, anything “French” Algerians will do better than the “French.” Moving on. Do any of your spouses have a phone voice in their native language that is different from the way they would normally speak it?

5. Since I love Canadian accents so much, I also listen to the daily news podcasts of Radio Canada. I really, really like made-for-radio Quebec accents, where they try to speak with as neutral of an accent as possible, yet their speech still retains that kind of homey charm. I am actually the same way with English, I don’t like traditionally posh accents. In fact, when I hear someone who did a UK public school talk I cringe which is why…drum roll…I don’t listen to anything from the BBC. Not for lack of interesting content but rather I can’t deal with the accent. I can’t handle really northern US accents either. And the podcasts where they have the British lady who sometimes does stuff for Radio Netherlands, I have to turn them off. I love hearing normal uk’ers speak, scottish people, south africans and all that but New Englanders and Englanders yeah no. I don’t know what it is. And I don’t know why I am the same with French accents.

6. Met het Oog op Morgen is one of those classic radio shows. I don’t pretend that my Dutch is good enough to get it all, but when I converted to Islam I kinda dropped the whole Dutch thing. I felt like there was so much racism and bad blood and random movies and so on that I shouldn’t waste my time learning something when all the resources available to me at the time were just not positive. Now with significant technological progression I am getting back into it. Just because some people think that Dutch culture and Islam are incompatible doesn’t mean that I am going to give up on something I had always loved learning even though the drama discouraged me for a couple of years. I also think, on a sociological level, that Dutch is a language that deserves to be learned and not many people take advantage of this opportunity. It is part of the Germanic language family and so many people learn German and English. Learning Dutch is not only personally edifying, it also helps you to understand Germanic languages as a group and if you are a native German or English speaker, learning Dutch makes you speak all three better. I firmly believe that.

7. Last one, I promise, is another popcorn podcast. It is La Soupe on the Radio Suisse Romande. It is one of those classic radio shows, the best way I can explain it is that it is kind of like a Prarie Home Companion for French-speaking Swissies.

Note I did not list any Muslim podcasts, and this by choice. It’s not that I don’t listen to them, but the second I post what I listen to, some fool will come in and break my Blog Rule Number 5. If you like podcasts I would love to hear what you got, so I tag any other addicts who read me.

Tags : i loves me some podcasts