Hey, everybody — gotta tell you about an amazing podcast: Chuck Mertz’s “This Is Hell,” available on iTunes under “This Is Hell podcast,” or its website, thisishell.net. It’s a 4-hour radio show on WNUR-FM in Evanston-Chicago, broadcasting regularly since 1998, with archives available back to 2001. The shows are based around four or five excellent interviews with academics or authors of recent books and articles, always ending with a “question from hell” – a question we hate to ask, you may hate to answer, or our audience may hate the response. Guests have included Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Chris Hedges, and others, known and not-so-well-known. Mertz is very bright and very funny, and though his shows are long, they’re well worth listening to.

Thanks to my friend Connie who sent me the link that got me started on “This Is Hell”! Give it a try, and if you like it, spread the word.

P.S. The way you listen to podcasts most conveniently is to get an MP3 player like an Apple iPod, connect it to your computer and download podcasts to it from iTunes via the wire that came with your device to charge it. You can also get podcasts onto your smart phone via a podcast app. Other podcasts I like are Democracy Now, NPR’s Fresh Air, PRI To the Best of Our Knowledge, and This American Life. You can also get great podcasts about your favorite TV shows. In that category I like Breaking Good, Bald Move TV, the Game of Thrones podcast, and The Scot and the Sassenach. The Moth podcast, NPR’s StoryCorps podcast, and Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Radio Essays are also good. Happy listening!