Three Podcasts, Pt 1: Omnibus

INTRODUCTION

I listen to podcasts when I drive to work. Some are educational or literary, but three are specifically personality-driven. Here’s the first in an overview of those three. 

All are led by white males, such as am I, so I supplement my listening with other voices. But podcasts, like music, are often a reflection of who we are or what we want to be. 

OMNIBUS

The Omnibus podcast brings musician John Roderick and “Jeopardy” celeb Ken Jennings together to talk about random shit. Typically one of the hosts leads the discussion while the other provides the color; and they alternate who leads, so the topics are as diverse as these two are. 

Despite both being cis-male Caucasians, the pair is actually diverse in many ways. Jennings was raised Mormon in Korea (and other places). He is a trivia mastermind and quick-witted. Roderick was raised in Anchorage (concurrently with me though we didn’t know each other; but I look much younger!) has toured broadly in the US as part of his band, and has multiple podcasts. 

“Omnibus” has a future motif, as if it is a time capsule for “futurelings” who will listen to the podcast “in our distant future.” As their website describes the show: “An encyclopedic reference of strange-but-true stories compiled as a time capsule for future generations.”

Good stuff

The randomness of the topics is fun. You don’t know if you’ll be hearing about shipbuilding or European monarchies. The guys are smart and do their research, so the show is both fun and thoughtful. There’s an interesting part of the show at the end when they respond to listener mail, and listeners often send them objects related to the show or a particular topic they covered. In a recent episode a fan sent them homemade coasters with phrases that truly captured the essence of the two hosts: Jennings’ said “100% Medium” and Roderick’s said “Two Time Nader Voter.” 

John Roderick is my spirit animal: Fellow former-Alaskan, 50-something, smart, full head of hair (I’m jelly!). John, if you’re reading this, let’s do lunch!

Bad Stuff

WTF is the future motif about? It was probably funny when they started, but its really distracting. They open the podcast with giving us the entry number which actually means nothing, just a lame attempt to be futuristic. I just hit the skip-thirty-seconds button until the intro is over. The future motif is worn out, but it’s in the show’s DNA.

During the listener mail segment, the background music is a high pitched drone with twinkles (trying too hard to sound futuristic, I think). But the sound is simply piercing. How a professional musician can listen to that and think it’s a good background sound while people listen to speech is beyond me.

Ken Jennings is a smart ass. This has gotten him into trouble on Twitter when he mocked someone with a disability—for which he has apologized. His smartassery can be distracting when Roderick is leading the topic. Roderick is a slower speaker, and so Jennings’ continual quips interrupt our listening (Roderick doesn’t seem to notice).

In Conclusion

Overall, the podcast is informative and humorous. The pretentiousness of the motif can be skipped, so that the listener gets to enjoy an interesting topic reported on and reflected upon by two intelligent people.