Podcasts and Video Series

Looking for free streaming video? CNET made a list on March 28th. [Note: Cottage Grove Public Library does not subscribe to Kanopy or Hoopla at this time.]

Podcast Staff Picks

30for30: The Sterling Affairs: A five-part story about basketball in Los Angeles, a ruthless real estate empire, the worst owner in sports, and the scandal that rocked the NBA. Reported and hosted by Ramona Shelburne.

1619: Four hundred years ago, a ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia. A new Times podcast examines the long shadow of that fateful moment.

Dolly Parton's America: In this intensely divided moment, one of the few things everyone still seems to agree on is Dolly Parton—but why? That simple question leads to a deeply personal, historical, and musical rethinking of one of America’s great icons.

Drabblecast: A weekly audio fiction podcast featuring short and flash fictions from a variety authors. Their singular focus is off-beat, funny, eclecticism in science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Finding Fred: Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was not a simple show. And Fred Rogers was not a simple man. He was radical. Spiritual. Revolutionary. Maybe even subversive. Bestselling author and cultural critic Carvell Wallace hosts this 10-part series about the life, thinking and work of Fred Rogers, and asks what the cardigan wearing host of a decades-old children's show can tell us about how to get by in today's chaotic world.

Hidden Brain: Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.

Lore: Lore is an award-winning, critically-acclaimed podcast about true life scary stories. Lore exposes the darker side of history, exploring the creatures, people, and places of our wildest nightmares.

The Moth: 5 amazing true stories, a host and a musician, and an evening of Moth magic. 

My Favorite Murder: My Favorite Murder is the hit true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. 

The Purrrcast: Hosts Sara Iyer and Steven Ray Morris talk to cat people because they can't talk to their cats. 

Radiolab: Since 2002, Radiolab has been devoted to investigating a strange world. Created by Jad Abumrad and hosted by Jad and Robert Krulwich, Radiolab has won Peabody Awards, a National Academies Communication Award “for their investigative use of radio to make science accessible to broad audiences,” and in 2011 Abumrad received the MacArthur Genius grant. The show has an archive of hundreds of episodes and has toured in sold out shows nationwide.

Thrilling Adventure Hour: The Thrilling Adventure Hour was a staged production and podcast in the style of old time radio that was held monthly at Largo, a Los Angeles nightclub located in the former Coronet Theatre. 

Tunnel 29: Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Helena Merriman tells the extraordinary true story of a man who dug a tunnel into the East, right under the feet of border guards, to help friends, family and strangers escape. The series is based on original interviews with the survivors as well as thousands of documents from the Stasi archives and recordings from the tunnel.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell me!: NPR's weekly current events quiz. Have a laugh and test your news knowledge while figuring out what's real and what we've made up.

Welcome to Night Vale: Welcome to Night Vale is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff's Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.

Video Series Staff Picks

Ask a Mortician: You got death questions, we got death answers.

Atlas Obscura: Here at Atlas Obscura, we believe in asking curious questions to learn about the world's most unique places and foods. Join our global community of explorers, who have shown us everything from miniature cities and megaphones in Estonian woods to a sourdough library in Belgium. Come and discover the world's strange and wondrous side with us. 

Biographics: This biography channel will introduce you to people who changed the world for better and for worse. 

The Brain Scoop: I'm Emily, the Chief Curiosity Correspondent of The Field Museum in Chicago, former volunteer of the University of Montana Zoological Museum, and I'd like to share some of the amazing things we have in the collection with the Internet!

Critical Role: Critical Role is a weekly livestreamed Dungeons & Dragons game set in Exandria, which is the world created by veteran voice actor and Dungeon Master, Matthew Mercer. Each week, Matthew leads his friends (also fellow voice actors!) on epic adventures.

Geographics: Discovering the world, one place at a time. Learn about places from around the world and beyond.

How It's Made: Television series that documents how various everyday products are made.