Oh well.

I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts, and I’ll list a few of those below, but the ones that really feed my soul are the investigative podcasts. So take a look below and let me know your thoughts.

True Crime Podcasts

Casefile - I love the fact that it’s just the facts, no analysis, but goes deeper than the typical true crime podcast.

Scamanda & Unicorn Girl - Women scammers that go the extra mile.

Swindled - Focuses on white collar crimes, corporate greed, and massive scams

Dateline - Please don’t hate me, but this one is like a warm blanket and an episode of Friends.

Investigative Reporting (some true crime, some more social commentary)

APM In the Dark - The first 2 seasons are as riveting examples of investigative reporting as you’ll find. My favorite all-time podcast!

Bear Brook - Season 1 is VERY strong; season 2 is OK. But still good stuff.

S-Town - This one snuck up on me in ways I still don’t understand. What started out as a …

I’m not sure if this is the right place for this kinda thing. I’m just trying to work through my feelings on this.

​

I recently attended an event where one of my favorite podcasts were at. It was a several day event, I saw both hosts hanging out or walking around a bunch of times during this event. I’ve listened to this podcast for YEARS. Follow them on social media, patreon, buy their merch etc. I spent several hundreds of dollars to attend this event. I know all that’s on me but the hosts have always come across as genuine and caring about their listeners. I’ve had a few interactions with them on social media. They (or their team) liked comments and responded with some pretty generic responses. I emailed them once with some questions related to the subject of the podcast. (Something they say every show, email with your opinions or questions) They responded after a few months, ignored the question and gave kind of a generic thanks for …

I feel like every single new show that launches lately is just two people sitting in a studio with high-end mics for three hours. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good deep dive, but I’ve noticed a massive shift where even niche topics are being stretched out to fill airtime. It feels like the ‘edutainment’ style is being replaced by just letting people ramble without an editor. I miss the days when shows had a tighter structure or a specific hook that didn’t require a massive time commitment just to get to the point. Does anyone else feel like the quality is dipping because of the sheer volume of content being pushed out?

I listened to the BBC’s Post Office Trial podcast years before the story became the well-known public issue with national press reporting on it and its own TV show. I remember thinking at the time: how is this not a public outrage, why do more people in the UK not know about this?

Any other podcasts out now that give you that reaction?

Like a decade ago I found a podcast called the bittersweet life. It’s about 2 Americans. One living in Seattle and another as an expat in Rome. They met as schoolgirls on the bus in middle school 3-4 decades ago. Listening to them is like flipping through a magazine—it’s definitely not a lecture on a very narrow topic. It’s chatting. But they are often very good at finding light, fun, interesting and uplifting topics to discuss. That’s what makes me think the podcast is golden. Before them I just was never into podcasts because they seemed overly critical and serious and didn’t have enough humor to them. The bittersweet life podcast is brilliant because it makes you appreciate things that you don’t always remember are great. The podcast started in 2014. It’s been a long journey but their episodes just fly by for me. Does anyone have a podcast that feels like this for them?

Hi,

I am looking for recommendations for a really good general life podcast.

I don’t look for something focused on a specific topic like health, fitness, finance, business, productivity or sports. I’m more interested in a podcast that covers life broadly and regularly leaves you with useful insights, different perspectives, interesting ideas, or things that genuinely help improve your life or discover new ways of thinking.

Any suggestions? 😄 Thanks a lot!

I love it when I read a nonfiction book that fills me with facts that I absolutely need to tell everyone I know immediately!!

My favourite books in that category are:

Women’s Work by Elizabeth Wayland Barber (about the history of textiles!!). A bit academic, but I have somewhat of a special interest in textile history so this book is so important to me!

Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett (about the Pirahã people of the Amazon and their absolutely fascinating language and culture). Was made to read this by a friend who read it and could not shut up about it and they were absolutely correct.

I am partial to anthropology but open to other suggestions!

I’m not at all interested in self-help-ish pop psychology or anything businessy in any capacity, but I’m super down to read anything else.

What was the last nonfiction you read that you could not shut up about?

Okay first of all, I genuinely enjoyed reading this book. I’m currently an EMT, a caregiver, and I’m working on getting a nursing license so I picked this book up to expand my knowledge in medical literature. I’m not the biggest fan of John Green but I truly adored this book. I loved the history, the story of Henry and the pathology of TB that John Green described. However, this is not a genre I’m familiar with. I usually read horror, thriller, and mystery. After reading this book, it has become apparent to me that I need to know more about the history of disease and how it *really* affects people. Are there recommendations that fall in line with this book? It doesn’t have to be about TB. Thanks in advance!

EDIT: oh my God I wasn’t expecting to have so many recommendations. My personal library thanks you, my brain thanks you for expanding my knowledge, my bank account hates you hahaha. I’ve been looking into some of your suggestions and …

I am a new father. My 8.5 month old son passed the other morning. My world is a lot darker. My wife is a reader, I am not. Please help me find something that has answers for my grief, something that can help me support my family. I also have a 13yr old stepson that I worry about. I am a Christian and would like both religious and non-religious suggestions. Thank you for any help you can give.

–Thank you for everything I’ve read so far in this post. The words, the suggestions. It’s this what I wanted my boy to see. I’ll try to read what I can and do what I can. Thank you everyone

I mean like gasping out loud, jaw on the floor gagged. A truly genius plot twist is honestly one of the best experiences on this entire earth. Obviously, please be extremely sensitive of spoilers in the comments.

I’m not looking for a fun magic system, a grand adventure, or a cozy slice-of-life. I am seeking the literary equivalent of a stress headache.

I want books where the author dedicates a pathological amount of page space to the hyper-specific, granular mechanics of a highly stressful process. I want the written equivalent of a line cook having a panic attack during a Friday dinner rush, or an engineer trying to keep a failing system alive with duct tape.

What I mean:

• I want the energy of Herman Melville pausing the plot of Moby-Dick for 40 pages just to aggressively explain the logistical nightmare of rendering whale blubber.
• I want to read a 15-page chapter detailing the sheer, unadulterated bureaucratic misery of processing supply chain paperwork in a sci-fi dystopia.
• I want the exact, exhaustive muscle movements required to survive a 14-hour shift in a punishing environment.

If the protagonist isn’t profoundly burnt out by chapter three while meticulously explaining the …

I don’t read smut very often. I think the only one I’ve read is the fever series by karen marie morning. It was fun.

I’m looking for the most shameful, degenerate, embarrassing smut you can publicly endorse. I want to read something you don’t want your friends to know you’re reading. I want to read a book you put a cover on when reading on public transit. I want a smut book you double check your Bluetooth connection and headphone volume for. Give me a book you listen to in the car and turn the volume down at stoplights.

Show me what you got!!!!

edit: THANK YOU, I now have more smut than I will ever be able to consume. you’re the best.

When I was a teen, I played Maplestory and loved to take Thief as my class, so I could go invisible and go places that were WOEFULLY overleveled for myself. Knowing I could be surrounded by instant death but being safe was weirdly really reassuring?? It’s probably the same part of my brain that loves when it rains, knowing I’m warm and dry inside.

EDIT - I’m already seeing some great suggestions, thank you! to clarify, I would love for there to be something to do both in the base and in the surrounding world, maybe some mini games inside or, a depth of base building that is immersive?

And not just any rain. It doesn’t have to be raining all the time either. But when it does, it’s beautiful (if you like rain like I do). Maybe some of you even prefer the rain in this game to actual rain because you get to stay dry. Any rainy games you can recommend? Or rainy missions, if it’s not the complete game

i like open world games but a lot of them end up feeling the same after a while. are there any that actually feel alive and worth exploring without just repeating the same stuff over and over?

This is not about games that failed to deliver, but about games you felt delivered so well that you expected other games to follow suit, but ended up not doing so. I’m looking for would-be trend setters that didn’t gain the attention or recognition you believe they deserve, and I’d love to hear the reasons you think they stand out.

My personal choice is Supreme Commander. I’d played the Total Annihilation games it was a spiritual successor to, but even compared to them the level of strategic depth available in SupCom was almost unprecedented. While I didn’t expect the likes of StarCraft or Command and Conquer to change their gameplay, I fully expected a wave of SupCom clones that never came and apart from a couple fairly recent indie titles I haven’t found a strategy game that quite compares.

Now I’d like to hear your examples. What are some games that, by your preferences, you believe should have changed their respective genres but …

I was playing Fallout New Vegas and was really enjoying myself. Had a crit build with a gatling laser and was watching enemies explode into dust with a quick burst from a mile away. Then it kind of hit me: THIS is what these heavy machine weapons are for. But in almost all the shooters I’ve played, the heavy weapons are meant for heavy armored slow characters who wander straight into battle, acting as living tanks. That’s not right! A machine gun fills the role they usually give to sniper rifles, medium to long range combat. They fire high caliber rounds, sometimes even the exact same bullet, but instead of worrying about accuracy they have a high fire rate.

So I ask, are there any shooters where the heavy weapons actually feel good to use from a distance? No dramatic reduction at range, no piss-poor damage that causes every single fight to cost hundreds of rounds, just something where I can find a good vantage point and make things explode with a minigun or LMG that …

e.g. Mass Effect Andromeda, Hitman Absolution, that sort of thing

Screen-grab from the keynote.

Getting storage makes shortcuts MUCH MUCH MUCH more functional

The one two punch of bringing automation triggers inside the shortcuts editor and having notifications trigger shortcuts is huge.

Specifically this enables three longstanding desires from the shortcuts community.

1. Run a shortcut every X minutes throughout the day
2. Schedule a shortcut from shortcuts to run later
3. Share Automations

In the images I’ve attached you can see that the proof of concept shortcut I made, has run 2867 times all on its own.

this loop has been running now for over 2 days, and as far as I can tell, little to no impact on battery life.

This test shortcut also makes use of the native ability to store data, which allows the shortcut to show a custom message the very first time it runs, and then keep track of the amount of times it’s run so far.

I also include the notification settings screen to indicate that it will be possible for all of this to happen nearly invisibly, this long running notification test loop runs silently and without any visual interference. …

iOS 27 finally solved the main issue with Apple automation by adding the “On Notification” trigger.

Historically, scheduling a shortcut to run at a dynamically calculated time in the future (e.g., “run this task exactly 45 minutes from now”) was incredibly difficult. It usually required clunky workarounds like cluttering your Calendar or using a ⁠Wait⁠ action that would inevitably time out in the background.

By combining the new “On Notification” trigger with a third-party helper app (like Actions), we can now reliably schedule background tasks.

How it works:
1. You use a helper app (like Actions) to schedule a local notification to appear at a specific calculated date/time — you can make actions schedule a notification from Shortcuts itself.
2. You set up a Personal Automation in iOS using the new On Notification trigger, set to watch for that specific notification.
3. When the notification fires, your automation catches it and runs your …