5 Podcasts reviewed

Democracy Now: en espanol
I call this this an underground news source because Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez present news that is not covered by the mainstream. Everyday there is a report on the war in Iraq. There is a critical consciousness to the news delivered with regard to race, class, and gender. They have a podcast of the headline stories in Spanish, which is nice but it goes very quickly so I tend to use the written version more frequently than the audio version.


Youth Radio
This is an amazing site for youth. The podcast I listened to was from Nico Savidge who after listening to a stand-up from Dave Chappelle learned about Grape Drink in the black community and decided to do a full piece about it. He interviews an authority of the Grape Drink company, a Grape Drink consumer, and one who does not like Grape Drink. He finds out what the contents in Grape Drink are (and aren't as there is no actual juice) and why they're put into the ingredients (low price and long shelf life). He also discsses the smear campaign of Sunny Delight referring to Grape Drink as simply the "Purple Stuff".

Cut to the Core
This is a podcast put out by educators but I was not impressed with the first segment I heard, which was Larry Anderson talking about technology in education. He was basically saying what I have already heard before. Teachers should decide if they want to use technology or not (and it seems that if you can access a podcast you are already making that decision) and then he says that we should figure out how to integrate it into our curriculum without giving any specific ideas. Although this particular podcast was very unenlightening, I would check these podcasts out again to see what other issues they discuss.

Indiefeed: Hip Hop Music
As a fan of original hip hop music, it was refreshing to hear this independent station that is not controlled by Clear Channel. It is amazing how many wonderful artists there are out there who do not get airtime because they talk about real issues.

Flipsyde
This group is my favorite group out right now. They have a new genre of music that you have to hear in order to understand. They are from the Bay Area and they combine hip hop with live music, Latin guitars, and other sounds. They talk about political issues and keeping faith in a hypocritical society.