Utne offers straight, serious quality

Utne Podcast

Web: www.ogdenpubs.com/ utnecast/

Feed: www.ogdenpubs.com/ utnecast/?feed=rss2

If Mother Jones magazine is a bit too granola for you, the next best podcast is UtneCast, a weekly production from the same folks who publish Utne Reader magazine. You might best take a gander at the list of roughly 40 episodes and pick and choose from the topics this podcast covers.

It’s not video at all; in keeping with the generally serious Utne philosophy, this podcast is mostly question and answer. But the interviewees and topics come with strong credentials: They include authors such as John Perkins (“Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”), Frances Ford Lappe, the global food specialist, and Seattle photographer Chris Jordan, whose site chrisjordan.com hosts the Running the Numbers project. That site itself is worth a visit just to see Jordan’s stunning large-scale photos that portray the vast dimensions of human consumption and waste-creation.

Roughly 80 percent of the podcast topics are derived straight from Utne Reader’s table of contents. Nicely enough, the podcast does direct listeners to visit utne.com when relevant videos can be found to elaborate on a topic. That’s good, since utne.com just went through a redesign and is much easier to navigate than it used to be.

Quality: Very high

Host temperament: Straight and serious

Best show: Episode 35, in which the topics include Chinese punk rock and Brazilian hip-hop music.