Psychiatry and Second Life

This podcast is a tour of the Virtual Hallucinations building on Davis Island in Second Life. The building simulates what it is like to suffer from the auditry and visual hallucinations associated with schizophrenia. I walked round the building in the company of the researcher behind the project Professor Peter Yellowlees. It's a very disturbing place to visit, but an effective illustration of the potential of virtual words. While it's impossible to know what it is like to suffer from schizophrenia unless one has the condition, this building is a good approximation, based upon actual patient testimony. It must be a tremendous help to psychiatrists hoping to better understand the affect of the illness on the way their patients view the world. Even hallucinations rendered in the crude visuals and audio of Second Life were very disorientating and not a little distressing.

The audio was recorded via Skype through a mixer with the audio output from second life routed through the PC's soundcard while skype was routed through a separate soundcard plugged into a the PCMA slot..enabling me to control the level of the audio halucinations while talking to Peter. Both outputs were put through a physical mixer enabling me to send a mix-minus back to Peter.

Kevin and Suw Year in Review

A podcast that features two good friends shooting the breeze about what happened in the "blogosphere" in 2006 and what's likely to happen in 2007.Kevin Anderson is the Guardian's Blog Editor and Suw Charman is a top social media consultant and blogger. Among the topics discussed: The future of User Generated Content, Time's Person of the Year and are we facing Irrational Exuberance2.0

A guide to recording audio

When I started in radio most of the kit was prohibitively expensive for the home enthusiast, now free digital editing software, and an abundance of cheap and very good mic's bring the whole audio production game within the reach of just about anyone with a home PC. To highlight some of the different ways you can record broadcast quality audio without spending a lot of cash I joined up with Paul Parkinson of Podcast User Magazine. More details on what we used to record here. There's a version without idents on the internet archive here incase you want to spread the good word yourself. Otherwise you get exactly the same thing plus bonus bad music and husky voiced ident via the link below

Podcast: Philosopher John Stewart Mill's 200th

In this podcast I become for 30 minutes a genuine pub philosopher, as philosopher and blogger Jonathan Derbyshire and myself discuss the life and times of the British philosophers John Stewart Mill who celebrates his 200th anniversary this year. Our venue appropriately enough was the Jeremy Bentham pub in London just across the road from UCL. I believe it's the only pub in the city named after a philosopher and it's an appropriate venue as Bentham was in many ways the godfather to Mill's own theories. Although he lived 200 years ago, Mill's theories still have great currency in modern political debates. In our conversation we covered everything from The World Cup, to the Danish Cartoon Controversy and, of course, nude rambling.

Podcast: At The Media Forum

I'm at the Podcast Day of The Media Forum conference Cologne and pleased to be meeting with podcasters Nicole Simon, Thomas Wanhoff, CC Chapman and Ewan Spence. I'm wearing my "radio" hat and it will be interesting to see how German broadcasters view the revolution that is sweeping over us. But I'm even more keen to find out about the German podcasting scene.

UPDATE: I've cut together some interviews with podcasters recorded at the forum. Shorter versions will run on "pods and blogs"  The music was written in Cologne airport, where the fire in Turkey necessitated a long delay..

Podcast: Britain's First Degree in Comedy

Britain's first comedy degree has arrived. It's the brain-child of Dr Chris Ritchie of Solent University and while some wags in the press have sneeringly refered to it as a "joke degree" from my interview with him, he seems committed to exercising the minds as well as the comedic talents of his students. As I say in the podcast, if Aristotle regarded comedy as a fit subject for inquiry who are we to argue.

Mr Behi Episode II Podcast from Tehran

For my money this is what podcasting is all about. Tehran based blogger Mr Behi has put up the second edition of his podcast and it's a wonderful mixture of music, culture and hard news. I love the relaxed pace of his delivery, and the reflective tone that he strikes. All those who think podcasting is no more than cranks and shock-jock wannabees should listen to this.

Slamidol Slamdunk

Simon Toon of the excellent Slam Idol podcast came to visit me at work, and recorded a soundseeing tour. He even persuaded me to read a poem..and now I feel rather like the victims of the producers of a "girls gone wild" video...surely this will come back to haunt me when I'm president.

It was a very useful chat I had with Simon. His cast is a collaborative production with so many different poets recording pieces for him, you might almost call it "distributed podcasting" A very powerful idea.

Going Underground Podcast

Back in California I was propelled from LA to B (via OC) by the miracle of engineering that is a 10-year old beige Honda Accord and everywhere was either 20 minutes or 2 hours away from everywhere else depending on the traffic.

Now I'm back in a city with a functioning, and an historic public transportation system, The London Underground. As well as taking me to and from work, the Underground has, briefly, been the focus of my work the past couple of weeks. First there was an interview with Geoff Marshall about variant Tube Maps (listen here), recorded for the Big Belly Crew (see below). Now exclusively, and only on Pocket Planet Radio..Annie Mole,the blogger behind one of the world's best City Blogs, Going Underground, talks about The Tube, the Wapping shaft, and Bumper Harris. (and yes it was IKB's dad Marc who designed the Rotherhithe tunnel.. I know..I know..)

Grease over easy: an interview with Russell Davies

I think the world divides into two types: those who like their eggs sunny side up, and those who prefer them over easy. As a member of the "over easy" camp, my breakfasts are long and lounge like. Loafing, lingering, lizarding and loitering, indeed, all the good l words, are stacked up like toast over the course of a good hour. I am, as you may have guessed, very much a B-type, an idler and a ne'er-do-well. My friends who like their eggs sunny side up, in contrast, rise with the day. They burst with nearly as much energy as the great ball of fusing hydrogen that has just bounced over the horizon. They are orange juice and sweet-and-low to my ham and hash-browns.

So it was good therefore, on a morning when an alcohol induced migraine lurked round the corner like a mugger with an ice-axe, that the first task of the day was to do an interview all about Eggs Bacon Chips and Beans (link here). Russell Davies - my interlocutor - is an expert blogger and a man who clearly takes pause over his morning repast. He's great company too. I've since listened to more bits of his blook/blog; it's great stuff, the essay on sausages was seminal and important, and worked on at least 3 levels - perhaps 4.  I encourage, all you breakfast lovers to throw away the can of chocolate slimfast and visit his site. It's almost as good as the real thing.