Grammar Girl

Grammar Girl is on Stitcher Premium

~ jen

The extremely popular Grammar Girl podcast is now on Stitcher Premium. The Grammar Girl podcast was the winner of Best Education Podcast in the 2017 Podcast Awards. Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast, which was founded by Grammar Girl host Mignon Fogarty.

Grammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. Covering the grammar rules and word choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers, Grammar Girl makes complex grammar questions simple with memory tricks to help you recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules. Whether English is your first language or a second language, Grammar Girl’s punctuation, style, and business tips will make you a better and more successful writer. Mignon Fogerty is the creator and host of Grammar Girl.

Stitcher Premium is offering a one-month free trial for people who want to try out the service. It also has a Premium plan that is $4.99 monthly, and a Premium Annual plan that is $2.92 monthly (and is billed annually).

Each of the paid plans offers the following features:

  • Stream and download all your favorite podcasts
  • 21,000 hours of premium podcasts
  • Bonus episodes and archives
  • Ad-free shows
  • 300+ comedy albums
  • Early access to new releases

Stitcher points out that some shows record their own ads which Stitcher cannot remove. Mignon Fogarty tweeted that people can sign up for Stitcher Premium and use the code GRAMMAR to get all those great ad-free Grammar Girl episodes (plus a monthly bonus episode). At the time I am writing this, it is her pinned tweet – so I am assuming that the code is still valid.

Some episodes of the Grammar Girl podcast are available on Apple Podcasts. The description of the show on Apple Podcast says that you can find the full, ad-free archive of Grammar Girl, as well as exclusive bonus episodes, only on Stitcher Premium.

What about the other places where people listen to the Grammar Girl podcast? Mignon Fogarty provided some clarity on Twitter, in response to someone who asked her if the podcast would still be broadcast on Tune In:

Podcasting Lands on Jeopardy! TV Show

~ shawn

Jeopardy logoIt’s the latest indication that podcasting is moving closer to the mainstream. On the Friday, May 27th broadcast of long-running TV gameshow Jeopardy!, “Podcasts” was a featured category of questions.

For those who haven’t checked into Jeopardy! in awhile, the show pits super-smart people against each other in a match of whits that covers literature, history, pop culture, science… pretty much everything. Players select an item from a list of featured categories. Each item carries a dollar value. The higher the value, the more challenging the question. And actually, Jeopardy! questions aren’t really questions at all. They’re technically answers to questions, and players are prompted to respond in the form of a question.

Here’s the list of items in the “Podcasts” category:

  • $200 item: One “Grammar Girl” podcast podcast dealt with homophones, homographs & this other similar-starting word. Correct response: What is homonym.
  • $400 item: This network has a music podcast that’s called “All Songs Considered”. Correct response: What is NPR.
  • $600 item: Karina Longworth talks old Hollywood on “You Must Remember This”, a line from this classic movie song. Correct response: What is “As Time Goes By”.
  • $800 item: Elvis Costello & President Obama have been guests on “WTF”, this comedian’s podcast. Correct response: Who is Marc Maron?
  • $1000 item: On this comedian’s “Experience” podcast, he interviews comics & does recaps of ultimate fighting events. Correct response: Who is Joe Rogan.

A video uploaded to Twitter by the official Jeopardy! account (tho strangely, the original tweet that contains the video has been deleted) shows four out of the five questions. Another tweet (which is still available) provides the last of the five questions.

Hat tip to Mignon Fogarty for providing Twitter links to the questions. And congratulations to Grammar Girl for being included on the show!

BBC Podcasting Documentary Not Available As A Podcast

~ shawn ~ 17 Comments

BBC LogoBBC Radio 4 has produced an audio documentary called Podcasting – The First 10 Years. The documentary looks back at the first decade of the medium we all know and love (or hate, depending on the day). The documentary spans two parts for a total of about 60 minutes worth of audio. And (for now, at least) those episodes are available for on-demand streaming from the BBC website. But the documentary is nowhere to be found in any of the podcast directories, and the BBC site itself points to no way to subscribe to the series via RSS.

It seems like an odd choice, as this is something that would obviously appeal not only to podcasters but also to fans of podcasting in general. In fact, the BBC already has a large collection of podcasts and other downloadable media. But for some reason they decided not to podcast their documentary about podcasting.
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