I like books, blogs, pod­casts, and soft­ware. I’ve cre­ated some my­self (no books, prob­a­bly never a book). And I like to sup­port peo­ple who cre­ate things that I like. Free ser­vices are great, but if you made a use­ful and well-de­signed app, I’m happy to pay a few dol­lars for it. We also have a bud­get item called “Creators”. It’s not a huge amount, but I make sure every month to give back to a cre­ator who’s given me ei­ther prac­ti­cal value or just en­joy­ment. In ad­di­tion I’m go­ing to start writ­ing about these folks each month as a fur­ther “Thank you”.

Dan Carlin

Dan Carlin is one of the most suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sional pod­cast­ers. Both of his pod­casts, Hardcore History and Common Sense, are quite pop­u­lar (in the mil­lions of lis­ten­ers), and de­servedly so.

Hardcore History is ba­si­cally a se­ries of au­dio­books on top­ics such as the fall of the Roman Republic, World War I, and the Persian Empire. Dan is an ex­cel­lent story teller with a great ra­dio voice. He’s a self-pro­claimed am­a­teur his­to­rian, but he does a ton of re­search and pre­sents a bal­anced view of his­tory.

Common Sense is his po­lit­i­cal, cur­rent events pod­cast. The top­ics vary but civil lib­er­ties, ter­ror­ism, and gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion are some of his fa­vorites. We don’t agree on every­thing (who does?) but it’s al­ways thought-pro­vok­ing and, quite of­ten, re­ally just com­mon sense.

Dan is able to make a liv­ing pod­cast­ing through do­na­tions. You can lis­ten to his shows for free, so check them out. If you en­joy them as much as I do, you might even do­nate $1/?show to help him con­tinue.