Seven dragons and a baby... (Podcasts I think you should listen to)

Seven dragons and a baby marching on the town
The villagers are frightened but the baby calms them down
The baby says that he knows that dragons can be awful
But if they want some breakfast that the dragons will make waffles

So Lis and I have added a podcast to our podcast-listening routine.

I listen to three podcasts which could be loosely characterized as "two hilarious people talk about in interesting topic":

• The Dollop, a "biweekly podcast" (meaning, once a week -- they started out twice a week, and after people got into an argument about whether "biweekly" means "twice a week" or "every two weeks", they decided that it means whatever they want, and so, when they dropped down to once a week, they saw no reason to change the "biweekly" designation) about American (or occasionally Australian when they're on tour) history. Comedian Dave Anthony researches a weird topic, then explains it to comedian Gareth Reynolds, and they riff on it. What makes the podcast so much fun is that you're listening to two talented improv comedians grapple with absurd and often disturbing things in history.
  
• Saga Thing, a whenever-they-get-around-to-it-because-they-have-actual-jobs podcast about the Icelandic sagas. John and Andy, who are both tenured professors at actual universities have been friends since grad school, when they bonded over being geeks interested in Vikings. They are going through all the Icelandic sagas, summarizing them for our benefit, then counting up the bodies, choosing the best bloodshed, notable witticism, and cool nickname, picking one of the characters who is enough of a jerk to banish from Iceland, each picking a character to join their own crew, and then giving the saga an overall rating. What makes the podcast so much fun is that you're listening to two geeks who are both skilled speakers (being professional lecturers) who have terrific geeky senses of humor, discussing an interesting topic they both love in an vastly entertaining manner.
  
• Sawbones, a weekly podcast in which Dr Sydnee McElroy explains a weird and probably horrific topic from medical history to her husband, Justin McElroy. If that description sounds a little bit familiar, I think I remember Dave Anthony mentioning that he got the idea for The Dollop partially from Sawbones. In any case, it's a setup that works. What makes this so much fun is that Sydnee and Justin are adorable together, and they choose truly bizarre and wonderful things from the annals of terrible medicine. Their theme music, Medicines, by the Taxpayers, is also pretty cool.

And there are two podcasts that Lis and I listen to together, both of which could be described as "an ensemble of creative improvisers collaboratively make a story."

• In Film Reroll, a group of friends, mostly in theater and otherwise with performing backgrounds, take a movie, make GURPS characters of the main characters, and play the movie. What makes this one so much fun is, well, a whole lot. Mainly the people, obviously. Their most common GM is Paulo Quiros, and he is the most frighteningly brilliant GM I've ever heard. But if I had to choose an "audience favorite", well, ALL of them are brilliant and everybody loves all of them, but I suspect that, if most people had to pick an absolute favorite, the most votes would go to Jocyelin "Joz" Vammer, who is, well, not a "LEEEROOOY JENKINS!" type, but she DID pick up a catch-phrase of "sever the spinal column!" Honestly, most of the time, I like their version of the movies even better than the originals.
  
• The podcast that we just picked up, and which this post is theoretically about. We just started listening to Hello from the Magic Tavern. The conceit of the show is that a man from our world fell through a portal to a magical world, and, instead of going on adventures or anything, settled down in a tavern and decided to host a weekly podcast. He's got two co-hosts, a wizard and a talking badger (actually a shapeshifter, but he's gotten really comfortable in the "badger" form), and, each week, they have a guest and talk about stuff. This is "worldbuilding by 'yes, and'". The idea is that anything that is said on the podcast is canon. Whatever the guest throws in is real, and they go with it. It seems like the guests tend to have a good overall idea of what the world is, but they come in with their own ideas of fun things to do, and, whatever they do becomes part of the worldbuilding. Because the worldbuilding is improvised and agglutinative, it's a good idea to start at the beginning to listen to it. There is, sort of, an overall plotline -- the wizard really IS trying to put together a quest to defeat the Dark Lord, for instance -- but that's not at all the point. What makes it fun is the character interactions, the guests, and just seeing how the Land of Foon develops as people throw more and more weird stuff in. Like, well, that song at the beginning. Someone mentions that there is a popular song called "Seven Dragons and a Baby". Then someone wrote it.

Anyway, those are the things I'm listening to these days, and suggest you do, too.