More Excitements Coming Soon

I’ve been an avid podcast listener since nearly the beginning. In fact, I know the exact day that I installed iPodder Lemon, the first podcast client I used routinely: October 23, 2004! Why? Because it was my birthday and I had just received (thanks to my brief foray into technology consulting) a spanking new laptop1 a few days before.

Anyway, though I stopped playing chess for many years (many times), I never really stopped listening to podcasts. Here are my favorites, along with a few that have stopped producing new episodes but still have archives full of gems.

Current

  • Perpetual Chess. Not the first chess podcast2, but certainly the adopted daddy of the genre, Perpetual Chess has everything from Super GMs to ardent amateurs, historical figures sharing Bobby Fischer stories to the most au courant personalities, advice for beginners who’ve learned how the knight moves to players pushing for a title, and more.

  • The Chess Growth Podcast - A very new entry with only two episodes to date, but promising!

Bygones

  • Full English Breakfast. The OG chess podcast, I still harbor hopes FEB will return, since no other pod since has quite captured its blend of witty sophistication, sarcasm, genial banter, and insight into the culture of the game while discussing players, events, and light game analysis.

Original image by Wesley Fryer is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

  1. A massive Dell Inspiron 9200 with a 17" screen and something like 512 MB of RAM and a 60 gig hard drive. It was, as they said then, hella cool. And heavy. ↩︎

  2. The first regularly published chess podcast I listened to was the still much-lamented Full English Breakfast. ↩︎