I've mentioned it before, but I enjoy listening to podcasts. All of them are free or at least mostly/partially free. My favorite is Mysterious Universe and is hosted by two Australian men. They talk about lots of woo woo stuff like UFOs, ghosts, alternate realities, anything along those lines and they regularly have guests. A recent episode had a biologist who studies animal venom, so not all the topics are strange in nature.
Another favorite is Lexicon Valley. They talk with linguists about the English language. I totally geek out about words so this is awesome! There's Flash Forward which looks at a possible future and discusses how likely (or unlikely) it might be.
More recently, I discovered Origin Stories by the Leakey Foundation. The topics here are related to anthropology, natch!
If you're into writing podcasts, a friend of mine from when we worked together on Crimson City is podcasting with another author. The Business of Writing Romance is hosted by Carolyn Jewel and Rachael Herron. There's something for writers of all levels here and I think the information is presented in a very entertaining way.
But I was caught up on all of these podcasts recently and I needed something more, so I went looking. I discovered another new podcast that I really enjoy and it's completely different from anything I've listened to before. It's called Slate's Culture Gabfest and topics include movies, television, theater, music, books/authors, and even Pokemon Go. Pretty much anything that involves entertainment in some way.
TBH, I never thought I'd enjoy what is essentially an entertainment podcast, but it's not gossip-based. I enjoy listening to the three hosts discuss their thoughts about the various topics, and while they don't always agree, they're always respectful of each other which is so refreshing in this day and age.
I have a few more podcasts cued up to try, but haven't had a chance to sample them yet, but it would be nice to listen to a wide variety of different things.
All the podcasts I mentioned are free. A few of them have additional content that requires payment, but I don't subscribe to that and I usually don't feel as if I'm missing out on anything. So if you want to try any of these podcasts, it won't cost you anything but time. :-) Because they're free, most of them have advertising, but I don't find it particularly intrusive.
