Podcasts: Healthier than road rage

Fun fact: I spend three hours of each and every work day alone in my car battling Tokyo rush hour. That's 15 hours a week, my pretties. Fifteen hours over which I slowly lose my mind. Or quickly lose my mind, if I happen to end up stuck in a four-hour traffic jam caused solely because someone lit a flare and everyone has to slow down to look at it. Don't get me started.

To survive the hideous commute, I have befriended the podcast. Not that music isn't entertaining enough, but after a few hours sometimes you need a little something extra. Plus, I get tired after constantly singing along, though I do sound really, really excellent. In the car. And only in the car.

Here are two music-related podcasts I've gotten into lately. They help me choose to stay in my car, instead of giving in to the urge to go jump angrily on the hoods of other people's cars. And they also help me empty my bank account on CDs from newly discovered artists. Thanks, podcasts!

* The Nashville Nobody Knows -- Hosted by the knowledgable but not-at-all-pretentious Candace Corrigan, the NNK spotlights artists "usually found outside the mainstream radio machine," as Candace puts it. Recent guests have included Sam Bush, Julie Lee, the Duhks and Buddy Greene. But she also mixes it up a bit with the occasional chat with a producer, engineer or other behind-the-scenes person whose name you may not know, but whose work you do. Each half-hour podcast -- there's a new one every week or so -- is an informal interview with the artist interspersed with full-length songs. It's really a great way to get into new music, or to learn more about artists you've already heard. The half-hour format gives you just enough of a taste of something new to get a rounded view, but doesn't go so long that boredom has a chance to set in. And Candace is a great host -- the perfect mix of professional and regular person for the listener, and obviously someone with whom artists are comfortable chatting. Not preening or promoting, just chatting. When I listen to the Nashville Nobody Knows, I can almost picture myself sipping tea and sitting in on the chat. Of course, that'd be easier to imagine if I weren't, in reality, going 80 mph on a Tokyo expressway and screaming obscenities at trucks ...

* Paste Culture Club -- Brand-spankin' new from the good folks (my Atlanta homeboys!) at Paste, this podcast is an hour, give or take, of a little o' this, a little o' that -- just like the magazine. There's music, film talk, cultural musings, and etc. Especially etc. If you subscribe to the magazine (which you should, you really should), some of the topics will sound familiar. But usually the podcasts -- released once a week -- go a little more in-depth, or feature sounds to complement the words, to bring it all alive a bit. And of course, there's music. Full songs of it. One feature I especially appreciate from a podcast so varied in topic and long in length is the placement of markers between topics, songs, etc. If you want to skip something (shame!), just bump ahead to the next thing. If you want to listen to that Paul Simon essay again, roll it back. And if you want to listen to part of the podcast now and the rest of it later, you don't have to lose your place. Paste Culture Club is only on its third incarnation now, but I'm already hooked and looking forward to how it, like the magazine, evolves.

Great, so that's about an hour and a half of podcast therapy to ease my commute. Only 13 and a half hours per week left to fill. Any other good ones out there?