WhaleCast ~ Favourite Podcasts of the Week ~ Ed.1–2018

Schalk Neethling
4 min readMar 9, 2018

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Welcome the the very first edition of WhaleCast. So no, this is not a new podcast about whales, or whale sounds(although, a podcast about these amazing creatures would be neat). It’s a curated list, if you will, of my favourite podcast episodes of the last week.

Before I get started though, here are a couple of things to note:

  1. I say the last week but, that does not necessarily mean that the episode was posted in the last week. Some of the episodes I will highlight here are pretty old in fact.
  2. While I am a front-end web engineer who absolutely loves the web, open source and all the maker things, this will not be the exclusive focus of the podcast I will recommend.
  3. Not all episodes I recommend will be for everyone. Here I mean both in terms of taste, and in terms of the maturity of the content.

With all of that out of the way, let’s get this journey started.

RadioLab ~ From Tree to Shining Tree

“A person balancing and walking across a log in a trail in a forest” by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

Most of us have have had the privilege of spending a morning, afternoon or even a whole day hiking out in nature. It’s an opportunity to get out into the serenity of nature, breath in the fresh air, and just disconnect from the craziness of the world.

What you may not realise, is the amazing magical networks of cooperation, commerce and communities that runs beneath your feet. I guarantee that you will never look at the forrest floor the same again.

Listen Now

CodeNewbie ~ How does the internet work?

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

How does the internet work? I mean really, really work. There is a heck of a lot more to it than firing up your browser, typing a URL and hitting enter. If you have ever been curious, Julia Evans, software engineer at Stripe has got you covered.

Host Saron Yitbarek and Julie covers everything from Netcat, cat(not the animal that rules the internet), TCP-IP, DNS, UDP to why SSL is important for your website. It’s time to open the black box.

Listen Now

Note To Self ~ Your Personal Terms of Service

“Women viewing modern art with black and white surveillance cameras on wall in Toronto” by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

The internet is an amazing innovation that has empowered so many people the world over. At the same time, certain organisations both corporate and governmental, has used the power and reach of this amazing tool and abused our trust.

Identity theft, tracking, surveillance, hacking, secrecy, lies, fake news, the attention economy, the list goes on. Thankfully over the last year or so, many individuals and responsible organisations have started to open talk about all of these problems. Sharing information, educating the masses so that we can take back our online identity and refuse to be tracked and exploited like a commodity.

In this episode of the Privacy Paradox, host Manoush Zomorodi talks to the inventor of the internet Sir Tim Berners-Lee about setting our own online terms of service, so that together, we can build the web we want o/\o

Listen Now

The Changelog ~ JAMstack, Netlify CMS, and 10x-ing Smashing Magazine

“Handmade jams in glass jars with doilies over their lids on display on a table covered in rocks” by Jason Blackeye on Unsplash

Unless you have been living under a rock or, took the plunge and unplugged from the network, you have surely heard about static site generators. It has taken the web platform by storm, and for good reason. Sites built this way are super performant, dead simple to host, and with the right toolset, a joy to build.

In this episode of The Changelog, Mathias Biilmann and Chris Bach(Chr_Bach) joins hosts Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo to talk about the JAMStack, Netlify CMS and the huge success they had in redesigning Smashing Magazine from the ground up.

Listen Now

TED Radio Hour ~ Shifting Time

Photo by Jason Olliff on Unsplash

“How did it get so late so soon?”
Dr. Seuss

Time. It’s fleeting. It goes by so quickly. It the ultimate ruler of most of our lives. It’s what makes planning so hard. It runs out to soon. In this episode of the TED Radio Hour, host Guy Raz talks to a few TED speakers about the abstract illusion called time.

Among the speakers are Cesar Kuriyama creator of(among other things) the 1 second everyday video diary app. Rives, part poet, part storyteller, part philosopher talks with Guy about the quiet, magical hour of 4AM. Also, Laura Carstensen about savouring life, running out of time, and looking forward to old age.

Listen Now

And that is it. The first edition of WhaleCast. I hope you find something here that inspires you, that your learn something new, that you take a little time to just listen.

Until next week, stay curious.

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Schalk Neethling

I write about mental health, addiction, sober living, living your best life through an active lifestyle and a whole food plant-based diet. Psychedelic curios :)