Three weeks of rainy days put a major crimp in my podcast-listening schedule in May as I was forcd to drive (rather than walk) to work. It's the difference between a 2 minute commute and a 15 minute one ... as well as no podcasts or three podcasts a week.

With the sun finally shining again and eastern Pennsylvania drying out, I've fired up my iPod and returned to some old favorites. After catching up on the Cato Daily Podcast (which provides me with regular audio injection of libertarian commentary) I turned to the Accidental Survivors.

It's been a while since I've talked about the podcast I listen to, partly because for much of the late summer and early fall I really wasn't listening to many of them (save the Order 66 podcast, which I've listened to slavishly since realizing my Star wars campaign was really going to happen). That's changed over the last few weeks as I've made an effort to queue up and listen to a summer's worth of podcasts.

DrupalCon Boston is looming large, but before I get there I decided to go visit my sister in New Hampshire. It's a long trip -- seven hours or so from Easton, longer with the family in tow -- so I had plenty of time to get caught up on my podcasts.

This weekend saw my home improvement efforts redoubled as I patched and primed the walls of our third-floor bathroom, dug up a third of our admittedly-small backyard in order to sow grass and clover seed, and pulled staples from our hardwood floors in anticipation of getting them re-finished. And naturally, all of this gave me plenty of time to listen to podcasts.

A few years ago, Audible.com offered up several science fiction short story anthologies from the big names in the genre: Asimov's, Analog and the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. For a while it looked like they were going to have annual, or perhaps even quarterly, editions, but nothing ever came of it. It's disappointing, because while there's plenty of book-length audio fiction, short fiction is rare.

Or at least it was. Short fiction's audio salvation may have arrived with Escape Pod, a new weekly magazine-style podcast. Each podcast features opening thoughts and commentary by editor Stephen Eley, followed by a short story. Eley intends to expand the podcast by incorporating 1-minute long, reader-submitted book reviews. Escape Pod is a paying market and relies on donations to fund its fiction.