In the first Bombcast of 2013, Jeff mentioned watching some of British comedian Chris Morris' Jam, which was based on Morris' original radio show Blue Jam. I love Blue Jam, and I thought it would be something special to dig up for our fiftieth episode. Here's the blurb: Blue Jam is a nightmare that seems to have no end. The series was the brainchild of subversive British comedian Chris Morris. Morris mixed ambient music, haunting monologues, bleak black comedy sketches, and other bizarre sounds to make a lingering sound-scape that sticks with you days and weeks after listening. The first series of Blue Jam was aired in 1997, played in the early morning on BBC Radio 1. One segment was deemed so offensive that it was hurriedly cut off mid-broadcast. Blue Jam is troubling. Blue Jam is disturbing. Blue Jam is unlike anything you’ll ever hear—a dark descent into something totally oppressive and undeniably wonderful.
The best-of is just over three hours long. Here's the MP3; also, the original post if you want more information. Hope you guys enjoy it! Let me know what you think.
Hey! It's time for another Bombcast best-of. Here's the blurb: The Giant Bombcast is a gaming podcast, but the games aren't really important. Jeff and Ryan lament the state of franchise pizza restaurants in Petaluma. Vinny develops an interest in ham radio and becomes a father. Brad needs a new bed. Patrick does jukebox trolling at a bar. Above all that, Jeff tunes into clandestine radio broadcasts. Make no mistake, there's talk about games—namely, the hate some of the cast has for NiGHTS into Dreams and Jak 2—but there's also talk about jumping into swimming pools full of food, Storage Wars, Antiques Roadshow, space catapults, parking, and men named Chris that drive white cars. This is the Giant Bombcast: an eclectic and unbeatable grab bag of talk that never fails to entertain. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the buzzer buzzes...
Hey friends—we here at This Year, where we produce best-ofs for podcasts like the Giant Bombcast, Idle Thumbs, and other fine programs, think you might enjoy this best-of for Loveline, in which we have selected the best calls from July, August, and September 2001. Loveline is a sexual health and relationship advice show that's been on air since 1983. It's always been hosted by Dr. Drew, but from 1995 to 2005 it was co-hosted by the fine comedian Adam Carolla, and that was when the show was at its zenith.
Not all the calls were from heartbroken teens and dudes with horrible STDs. There are all types of issues in this eight hour thing. Most of them are in the psychological realm: people that were abused as children, alcoholics or other addicts that are struggling to get by, and that sort of thing. It's super interesting, Adam is super funny (no surprises there), and if you're interested in psychology at all, or want to hear from people with crazy stories—there are plenty of funny ones here to go with the horrific ones—then you'll like it. That's actually what appeals to me most about the show: trying to figure out the psychology behind a person that's super into body modification or BDSM and things like that.
Here's a direct download to the MP3 (the best-of is 8 hours long, just under 200MB). You can hit up our rush on Twitter, or on Facebook, or on iTunes, or via RSS. If you subscribe to us through iTunes, we'd really appreciate a rating and a review! Thanks for listening. And if you like what we do, then there's a ton of other podcasts we cover. You can find all those through our blog. We are listener funded (for our hosting costs), and we appreciate any help you can give us with that too. Thanks for supporting us! Incidentally, one of our next best-ofs is for the old 1UP.com podcast Good Grief that starred Tina Sanchez, Sam Kennedy, Scott Sharkey, and Chris Plante. That will be out in a few weeks, so be on the lookout.
So, we've been working on the best-ofs for the Bombcast archive for most ofthisyear, and now we've finally caught up! This best-of for the show's 2010 year fills in the gap, so now we've essentially done a complete Bombcast highlight reel. For those who don't know or haven't heard any of our stuff before, we basically produce best-of highlight shows for podcasts/radio shows. We've done 1UP Yours, Idle Thumbs, GFW Radio, Loveline, The Adam Carolla Show... and the Giant Bombcast, naturally.
It's unclear whether the Giant Bombcast has ever really been about video games. It ostensibly should be—it is a podcast produced by a video game website, starring a number of individuals that make a living as video game critics—but that doesn't account for the discussion of pizza, helicopters, Swatch Internet Time (or 'beat time'), and Kid Rock. Nevertheless, video game players will find the Bombcast informative: included within is an exhaustive and potent segment where the cast discuss the latest releases for Nintendo's WiiWare and DSiWare, two critically acclaimed online-only platforms recognized for providing the cutting edge in video game software. Stocked with an illegal amount of humor, the Giant Bombcast is among the longest running gaming podcasts, and among the most superior.
You can download the best-of here. It's six and a half hours long; one and a half hours of that is new releases. You can hit up our rush on Twitter, or on Facebook, or on iTunes, or via RSS. If you subscribe to us through iTunes, we'd really appreciate a rating and a review! Thanks for listening. And if you like what we do, then there's a ton of other podcasts we cover. You can find all those through our blog. We are listener funded (for our hosting costs), and we appreciate any help you can give us with that too. :)
It's another This Year release! This time it's for the last year of GFW Radio. GFW Radio was as brilliant as ever in its final days. The show persisted despite major upheaval at the 1UP offices, including the cancellation of the Games for Windows Magazine, the publication with which GFW Radio was ostensibly linked. But rather than dither at the changes about them, the cast continued to provide the critical (and droll) commentary the show was known for. Whether engineering This American Life-style segments, discussing socially questionable behavior in Second Life, or reflecting on the institutional pressures that brought down the magazine, that GFW Radio remains perhaps the greatest gaming podcast ever created, now four years after its end, is a testament to the individuals that manned those microphones.
While the final few weeks of GFW Radio were overshadowed by the departure of key personnel and the eventual cessation of the podcast, the rest of the year the show operated as its familiar self. As Jeff Green pondered the breast physics in SoulCalibur IV, Robert Ashley waxed eloquent about the milk produced by female Yodas. Anthony Gallegos reported from a Magic: The Gathering ‘gathering,’ and Shawn Elliott recounted still more distressing tales from his childhood. Shawn and Robert visited various protests and the cast as a whole discussed the issue of piracy and wondered about the state of the industry. And then, it was time to go... but not before Jeff read from what must be the most alarming Hero of the Web—people on the internet discussing how they find diapers sexually gratifying. This was GFW Radio.
It's another This Year release! This time we're covering a comedy show, The Penn Jillette Radio Show. You probably know Penn Jillette from Penn & Teller and from the duo's superb television series Bullshit! (The Mother Teresa episode is my favorite.) Penn also hosted a radio show from his house from January 2006 to March 2007. It was a great show—it's now been rebooted as Penn's Sunday School—and we figured we'd start doing best-ofs for those old episodes. The radio show was pretty similar to Bullshit! Penn talked about atheism, libertarianism, and other good stuff in that vein, and he also talked about and debunked things like psychics, palm readers, and more. This best-of covers Q1 2006 of the show (Jan, Feb, and Mar) and here's what's in it...
...in this best-of, Jillette and Goudeau overcome technical difficulties (that might have been brought about by God) before going on to discuss circumcision, atheism, physics, free speech, clown sex, palm reading, conspiracy theories, and Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die. Paul Provenza, James Randi, and Adam Carolla also make in-studio appearances.
Our next episode is a best-of for This American Life, specifically the best stories from the episodes #26 -> #50. We're doing best-ofs for those early shows (pre #100) because not many people have heard them. After that, we've got our final GFW Radio best-of (2008) lined up.
We at This Year produce podcast best-ofs. We cover a lot of different podcast genres, and one of those genres is gaming podcasts. And we return today to the Giant Bombcast. Previously we've done best-ofs for the 2008 and 2011 year of the Bombcast, and this best-of slots right in between those. Ryan, Jeff, Vinny and Brad have stories to tell as they sample Swedish candy and Canadian sodas. Jeff attempts to defend the PSP Go! before the crew discuss the games they’ve been playing—Vinny is accused of being a freeloader as he refuses to report his length to girl in Noby Noby Boy—and muse on the news of the day. Jeff endorses a novelty pair of night-vision goggles leading Ryan and Vinny to place a wager on an upcoming video game. The crew is thrown by Nintendo’s output for DSiWare, and the show closes with emails on a variety of topics, including talk about movies, Snoop Dogg, colorblindness, and sitting in the shower. Also included are highlights from the special E3 broadcasts.
We at This Year produce podcast best-ofs. We cover a lot of different podcast genres; I guess we're best known here for our best-ofs of gaming podcasts like the Giant Bombcast and GFW Radio and Idle Thumbs, and recently GameSpot's The HotSpot with the gang before they founded Giant Bomb, but we also cover a lot of comedy podcasts, as well as science shows and culture and politics and all that jazz. For the past year we've been covering The Adam Carolla Show, specifically Adam's morning radio show that ran from 2006 to early 2009. We started out at the beginning in 2006, and now we're up to July of that year. Carolla has done a ton of radio. I recently looked at all the shows he's done, and I kind of leaned back and said, we could be covering this guy for years. Luckily, it's all good stuff—not just funny, but intelligent. Carolla is intelligent and lightning fast, and it's just fun to listen to.
For example, in this best-of, Adam hangs up on Ann Coulter during an interview because he doesn't like her attitude. He thereby starts an internet firestorm (in his favor). Also in this best-of, ESPN sports guy Bill Simmons joins Adam to discuss the fine films Con Air and Face/Off.
Our next episode is scheduled to be a best-of of the Giant Bombcast (2009). The next release is on 4/18, but I don't know if we'll make it (the Bombcast has a ton of episodes and they are all long). If we don't, we'll release a best-of for On the Media (2011); that's an awesome media criticism show that everybody should be listening to. Trick likes it. If the Bombcast best-of doesn't hit in two weeks then it'll definitely be out in the first week of May. Thanks for supporting us guys! Check out our RSS feed; Twitter; Facebook.
This was supposed to be out next month, but in light of recent events we thought we'd push it out early. You may recall earlier this month we opened up voting for listeners to choose their favorite HotSpot moments -- The HotSpot, of course, a gaming podcast featuring some of our GameSpot/Giant Bomb favorites, including Ryan, Vinny, Jeff, Brad, Carrie, Rich, Bob, and Alex. It ran from 2005 to 2007 and then some stuff happened and things changed. In any case, we seem to have gone a little full circle, so this is pretty good timing. Here, then, are the top forty The HotSpot moments as voted by you, the listeners.
Here's the MP3 link and a link to our blog, RSS feed, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't heard The HotSpot before, you might consider checking out or best-of highlight shows we produced for The HotSpot's 2005, 2006, and 2007 years. There are threads here on Giant Bomb for them as well with plenty of discussion within. And if you don't know who we are, we're This Year, and we like enjoying old podcasts and new podcasts in the form of lengthy best-of programs. People seem to like reliving them along with us. Enjoy!
Time for another This Year! We'll continue with one of our most popular runs, GFW Radio. No other gaming podcast managed to balance humor and aimless banter with serious discussion about the state of the industry and the state of the games press as well as GFW Radio did. Ostensibly a show about computer games, GFW Radio never pigeonholed itself in that niche, instead becoming a program that flowed between topics and moods, a show at the absolute top of its game whether mocking the internet’s peculiar dwellers or gravely exposing the sickly nature of gaming “journalism.” Very few—perhaps none—have been as eminent and brilliant as GFW Radio.
Storytelling defines this summary of GFW Radio’s second year. Host Jeff Green has a Lord of the Rings-themed dream; Shawn Elliott tells gaming arcade horror stories; Robert Ashley gets duped by con artists in Shanghai. Jeff Gerstmann is fired from GameSpot for refusing to buckle to pressure placed on him by advertisers, and the cast mark his ouster by wondering how their profession collapsed into such a state of disorder. Elsewhere, nerds question whether Superman produces bodily waste, and pontificate upon their desire to wed fictional rodents. A woman turns to prostitution in order to gain standing in World of Warcraft, and a hoi polloi of recluses seek out Shigeru Miyamoto on their quest to find true love. Hello and welcome to the GFW Radio podcast.
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