Hi,
I know this will come across as a whiners post … nevertheless I felt I had to write it.
I listen to podcasts every day in my one hour trip by car to work and back. Most science, history and music. I discovered your podcast last month and downloaded about 20 of them, looking forward to it.
This week I abandoned them after tasting about 10 of them, erased them and unsubscribed. Why ? I KNOW it is an amateur effort and I DO appreciate your work and the lack of resources. However I could not suffer any more listening to the poor readings kills being recorded as a podcast. Scripts being read aloud with, sadly, poor and stuttering reading skills and little effort to inject variation in the reading tone. I thought it would improve when I moved on to recent scripts. But it doesn’t and it is just too difficult to listen to. It’s a great project but basic skills are letting it down hugely.
I wish you all the best.
Howard

To Howard I say thank you.  Thanks for leaving.  I was taught if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t.  But thats me, I know a lot of Internet people feel the need to share their opinions on everything and I don’t expect everyone to like my little podcast.  I’m not doing it for everyone.  I’m doing it because I want to.  If you want to listen great, go ahead.  If you don’t like it unsubscribe like our friend Howard here.  But here is something to chew on.  People are actually listening to this podcast.  A lot of people actually.

Looking at the above chart from my Libsyn statistics you can see that on average 1,000+people download the history podcast episodes daily.

The website is doing okay, with about 70 visits per day.  I am interested in what you 70 or so folks think about this post.  And I would like to ask you all a question.  What do you think would make this website more valuable to you?  In other words, what do you want to see on this site?

“The museum has had the footage for some time, but thought YouTube would be a good platform to show the film and the other films about her life. It’s another way to bring the life of Anne Frank to the attention of younger people, and all people worldwide.”

Found via Mashable.

Learn the real story that turned a man’s name into a synonym for traitor from Today’s History Lesson:

He began negotiating turning over the Fort to the British, finally agreeing to do so in exchange for money. Having already weakened the Fort by shuttling off supplies and soldiers, he met with Major John André on September 21st and gave him the plans.

Image credit:  Wikimedia Commons

Read this story about Manzanar, one of the Japanese interment camps during WWII.  Story from mental_floss, image from flickr via trialsanderrors

15. EconTalk
14. The Naked Scientists
13. Common Sense with Dan Carlin
12. The Writer’s Block
11. The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe
10. Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
Find the rest at CollegeCrunch.org

Image credit: derrickkwa

Find out five interesting facts about Jackie O. in this mental_floss article.  Like, did you know she was accidentally pictured in Hustler magazine?  Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Follow this link to the video at Scientific American.  Image credit: currybet

Found via mental_floss:

Los Angeles doesn’t have a Statue of Liberty. It can’t boast an Eiffel Tower. But we do have one monument unlike anything else in the world: the Watts Towers. Built between 1921 and 1954 by an Italian immigrant named Simon Rodia — in his backyard, with a window washer’s tools and no special equipment — they’re among the United States’ best and most famous examples of vernacular art. (Another is Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain, just a few hours away in the desert, which I did a photo essay about earlier this year.) And yet many people in Los Angeles (I’d even say most) have never seen the Towers and don’t know much about them, perhaps fearing the reputation of Watts. The towers are an amazing and enigmatic national treasure.

No, they’re not named after me.

Image courtesy of: danagraves