Welcome to my first “Daily Teaspoon”. This is a not-very-clever play on the common abbreviation of Teaspoon, TSP [Tech, Sports, Podcasts]. I plan on sharing 3-5 articles a day, covering my interests which are most commonly sports and tech, with 1 podcast recommendation. I will hold myself accountable to do this Monday-Friday, posting these at approximately 9 A.M. Thank you for taking the time to read, if you like what you see, PLEASE share and tell a friend. Thank You Thank You Thank You.
Author Archives: damanr
Likes and Dislikes from Apple’s iPhone 6s, Apple TV, and iPad Pro Event
Overall
Today was a JAM-PACKED event that contained much more content than I had expected. Coming into it, I expected new iPhones (standard) and the much-rumored revamped Apple TV. I believed that the iPad Pro would be unveiled at its own event, as the iPad Air 2 had been announced the same way. I have divided my analysis into 4 parts, in the order they were introduced: The Apple Watch, iPad Pro, Apple TV, and the iPhones.
Podcast Recommendations: RIP
I will no longer be writing my weekly podcast recommendations. I appreciate every single of one of you that read these, and I sincerely appreciate all the podcasters that reached out. I started this blog as an outlet to write about stuff I enjoyed, and podcasting certainly falls into that category. However, this feature never really caught on and I’m sure there’s good reason for that. Podcasting is intensely personal, everybody has their preferences, and this medium is so wonderful that there’s truly something out there for everybody. I’m glad I got to discover new podcasts as a result of this exercise, and will continue to listen every single day, multiple hours a day. If you’re reading this and ever want some podcast recommendations, please reach out and I’ll see if I can help out. In addition, please send me your recommendations as well!!
Ultimately, all of this is experimental for me. Some experiments succeed, some fail, but at the end of the day the most important thing is that I have to learn from both sides of success and try to get better.
Thank you for your time, as always.
-Daman
Podcast Recommendations: Week of August 3rd
As a reminder, I identify podcasts I recommend as “topical” or “evergreen”. Topical generally would mean that it has a shorter shelf life, depending on topic it might be 1-7 days. Evergreen is good to go any time. As always, you can find previous week’s recommendations here. Thank you as always, I appreciate every single one of you.
Monday, August 3rd
- Monday Morning Podcast: 8-3-15 [Evergreen; Posted August 2nd; Length: 90 minutes]
- Bill Burr is undoubtedly my single favorite comic performing today. I share his love for sports, and I love his “angry” voice. It’s the funniest thing in the world, and I recommend you watch his Netflix specials to enjoy comedy at its peak. His Monday Morning Podcast is a fantastic display of his comedic ability. Very rarely can a show hosted by a single person (and in some cases joined by his wife, the Lovely Nia, or other comedians) be this entertaining. Twice a week, Bill seemingly off the top of his head discusses current topics that branch out into pretty great riffs and tangents. Listen to this one! Loved his bit about Cecil the Lion.
- I mark this episode as “evergreen” because a topic like Cecil the Lion, while current, will not age this podcast. There are some episodes where he talks a lot about current sports events (like during the football season), so I would recommend those accordingly.
Tuesday, August 4th
- Dunc’d On Basketball: August 4 (Worst Trades Since the Lockout with Daniel Leroux) [Evergreen – until the start of the NBA season; Posted August 4th; Length: 108 minutes]
- Nate Duncan and Daniel Leroux of RealGM have a fun discussion about the worst trades made since the 2011 NBA Lockout. It was fun looking back at some of these deals that I had forgotten, such as the wacky deal the Nets made for Gerald Wallace. I agreed with most of their picks, and I really liked the depth they went into to explain why some of these deals were as bad as they were, highly recommended for NBA fans.
- Audio quality, unfortunately, continues to need improvement.
Wednesday, August 5th
- You Made It Weird: #270: Jimmy Kimmel [Evergreen; Posted July 8th; Length: 110 minutes]
- The You Made It Weird podcast hosted by Pete Holmes is one of my favorites. Pete has a very “Weird” style of interviewing, and I mean that in the best way possible. He discusses topics such as God and spirituality that rarely get talked about and in general maintains a very upbeat and lively conversation with his guests, rather than a straightforward interview. His guest, Jimmy Kimmel, is also one of my favorite entertainers today. I’ve been following him since the Man Show and he seems like an all-around great human being and he tells his fascinating story about traveling around the country doing radio shows before he became a true star. Really interesting, really funny, highly recommended.
Thursday, August 6th
- The Joe Rogan Experience: #677 – Josh Zepps [Evergreen; Posted August 3rd; Length: 191 minutes]
- I typically have three reactions to listening to a Joe Rogan podcast: laughter, contemplation, and fear. I laugh because he’s a great comedic mind with great comic timing. I contemplate because Joe keeps an open mind and has an extremely diverse intellectual palette, and he has many interesting guests from many different areas of expertise. Lastly, I always get scared crapless, because Joe has a knack of reminding us as an audience that the world we live in is very fragile and our planet is a very unpredictable, violent sphere that exists in the universe. All in all, Joe has done one of the better jobs using this medium to have truly free-flowing discussions with very interesting people.
- Today’s episode, with Josh Zepps of HuffPost Live and We The People Live, was a great one that marked all of my reactions above. Joe and Josh discuss our current culture, Cecil the Lion, supervolcanoes, the universe, drugs, and more. It’s a great conversation with two interesting guys and I recommend it!
The Blueprint 2: Free Agency and the Lakers
Ever since Dwight Howard left the Lakers, I’ve been generally an advocate of the “keep your books empty, and sign a couple of max players together” strategy that it seemed like Mitch Kupchak and Jim Buss were going for. Signing players to 1 or 2 year deals that wouldn’t put a dent in the Laker books while simply waiting for the “big splash” made sense. The Lakers are the Lakers after all, they’re located in Los Angeles. What could go wrong?
Well, the strategy simply hasn’t worked. Carmelo didn’t want to sign here last summer, LaMarcus Aldridge (the only “splash” worthy player who changed teams) never really took the Lakers seriously, and Kevin Love didn’t even give the Lakers a meeting.
Podcast Recommendations: Week of July 27th
Hello! Started this week, I will start classifying the podcasts I recommend as “topical” or “evergreen”. Topical generally would mean that it has a shorter shelf life, depending on topic it might be 1-7 days. Evergreen is good to go any time. As always, you can find previous week’s recommendations here. Thank you as always, I appreciate every single one of you readers.
Monday, July 27th
- Fitzdog Radio: Nick Di Paolo Returns [Evergreen; Posted July 21st; Length: 61 minutes]
- I’ve said this before: I prefer East coast comics and their humor, and Nick Di Paolo is as good as it gets. Greg Fitzsimmons hosts this great podcast with Nick in which they discuss the comedy industry, politics, and more. What I love about Greg as a host is that he has strong political beliefs, but he is willing to enjoy the argument on the other side. Too often with our comics we label them as a “conservative comic” or a “liberal comic” and judge whether or not we will enjoy them just based on that. I’m as moderate politically as I think is possible, and both Greg and Nick have said stuff that bothers me. Who cares? They’re funny as hell and I’m glad any time we can get them on a podcast to have a conversation about it.
- The Dalrymple Report: Special Guest: John Gruber [Topical; Posted July 25th; Length: 99 minutes]
- I’m a huge Apple fan, and this podcast was between two of the most respected names in tech discussion about the company. Jim and John discuss Music, Apple’s earnings report, the Apple Watch, and the tech journalism industry as a whole. John had a really interesting answer to Jim’s question about what or who he considers his competition, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
- Technical note: Jim Dalrymple recently had some major issues with Apple Music, but in between the course of recording this podcast and the posting of it, Apple had fixed a lot of Jim’s issues. Thus, there was a portion of the discussion of Apple Music that was edited out as the information they discusses must not have been up do date. This doesn’t change the fact that the problem shouldn’t have occurred in the first place.
Podcast Recommendations: Week of July 20th
For previous week recommendations, please click here.
Monday, July 20th
- Pardon The Interruption: The Finish to The Open: 7/20/15 [length: 21 minutes]
- Ever since I’ve been a sports fan, I’ve watched PTI. I recommend today’s episode because these two were off for a couple of weeks and I just missed them so damn much. I’m very grateful that they release their shows as podcasts, and I listen to these every day. The chemistry between Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon is unparalleled as far as I’m concerned, which translates to a supremely entertaining podcast, even though we are in the dog days of summer with no NBA and NFL to really talk about.
- Upgrade: Upgrade 46: The S Could Stand for Snell [length: 84 minutes]
- Speaking of chemistry, I love this tech podcast hosted by Myke Hurley of Relay FM and Jason Snell of Six Colors (& more!). Today’s topics were a discussion of the new iPod Touches and how decisions that Apple’s making with this line might translate over to the iPhone. Any time there is a new release of a product it leads to interesting discussion, even though at this point in the company’s history an iPod refresh ranks pretty low in terms of Apple excitement. Still, really good podcast, and Myke and Jason had a really funny discussion about American geography which I much enjoyed. Nice try, Myke!
Podcast Recommendations: Week of July 13th
For previous weeks, please click here.
Monday, July 13th
- Slate’s Whistlestop: Ford, Reagan, and the Halloween Massacre [length: 28 minutes, originally posted May 13th]
- Really interesting podcast about the behind-the-scenes dynamic between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan prior to the 1980 Election. Fascinating that Ronald Reagan was challenging an incumbent (even though he wasn’t elected) President for his own party’s nomination. (There is a part 2 to this I haven’t heard.)
- Stuff You Should Know: How Zero Population Growth Works [length: 51 minutes, originally posted April 16th]
- This is another really good podcast that I’ve slowly been catching up on. They discuss an incredible variety of topics, and this one was really interesting. Many population theories exist about how long we can sustain our population with our scarce resources and hosts Josh and Chuck go through a good amount of detail to talk about them, specifically focusing on Paul Erlich’s 1968 prediction of famine and mass death. You know, the fun stuff.
- Dunc’d On Basketball: July 11 (News and Summer League with Seth Partnow) [length: 96 minutes]
- Nate Duncan, Daniel Leroux of RealGM and Seth Partnow of Nylon Calculus discuss the ongoing off-season news well and sprinkle in some thoughts on the Summer League action. I will always take their audio quality to task, but the depth of analysis of the basketball and contractual fits of all the moves in the league remain top-notch.
Podcast Recommendations: Week of July 6th
For previous weeks, please click here. Apologies for an incomplete week last week, but my best friend was getting married! Will hope to keep updating these posts daily.
Monday, July 6th
- Dunc’d On Basketball: July 6th (Full Weekend Analysis) [length: 119 minutes]
- Yes, I know, this podcast keeps coming up. My pod-crush remains stronger than ever. This is just the next installment of reactions towards free agency and evaluation of where teams stand as of right now. Nate Duncan and Daniel Leroux of RealGM continue to be an outstanding team and a joy to listen to have adult conversations about basketball. Keep killing it, guys!
- Steven Lebron Radio: Ep 97: Sage Steele [length: 79 minutes – posted 06/10/15]
- My apologies for being about a month late on this, but what a great listen. I’ve never heard Sage Steele outside of her hosting duties on ESPN’s NBA Countdown show, and I’m so glad I did. Alex Wong, host of this podcast does a great job discussing a very wide array of topics. I was especially inspired by Sage’s overcoming of her intense shyness to accomplish her goal of being an ESPN broadcaster. I have a newfound respect for Sage and am rooting for her even harder. She also discusses her friendship with Stuart Scott, who I can’t believe has been gone for 7 months now. This is a definite listen. If you’re interested, Alex has a GREAT newsletter in which he recommends things to read around the web which you can subscribe here.
Podcast Recommendations: Week of June 29th
Welcome to another wonderful week of podcasting!
Light day today, I didn’t have much time. For previous weeks, please click here. Please note that I only recommend podcasts that I’ve listened to, so they won’t necessarily correspond to the days that they have been posted.
Monday, June 29th
- Fastbreak Breakfast NBA Podcast: Fastbreak Breakfast Ep. 34 “The Trill and Sauce Show” [length: 64 minutes]
- A new addition to my NBA podcasts! This podcast reached out to me over twitter, recommending that I listen, and they were so right. THESE ARE MY PEOPLE. A really fun NBA discussion between three friends (2 Grizzlies fans, 1 Heat fan). I don’t know these guys’ names yet, I’m not familiar with their weekly segments, and it never really mattered. I laughed out loud multiple times, and if you’re a fan of the NBA and comedy, this is the podcast for you. Don’t let me undersell the content – they know their stuff, they just happen to be really funny too. Really glad I listened, and I recommend them wholeheartedly.
False Hypothesis 