One of the weirdest things about getting older is that you find that you pay more attention to the daily news.

When I was a kid I didn’t care about bra and/or flag burning, Viet Nam anti-war demonstrations, or Watergate. The only thing those "We interrupt this broadcast..." news reports did was ruin perfectly good cartoon-viewing time.

Nowadays when I get home from work my channel surfing almost always brings me to one of the local news channels. I tell myself it’s to see what the weather will be like tomorrow, but in my heart of hearts I know I’m there to get a daily helping of the human swill that passes as news. I’m almost always disgusted by something I see, and I almost always comment about why celebrity news really isn’t news but gossip, yet I watch anyway.

(Actually, whenever they interrupted my cartoons I use to wish they would announce something cool, like an alien invasion, or some weird monster eating up Manhattan. Unfortunately (but not for Manhattan) nothing like that ever happened. Darn it!)

There seems to be a lot more news these days too; I mean, really, how many CNN or MSNBC news channels do we really need? The shame of it is that when there’s no real news to report these channels seem to drum up news. The slightest incident affecting the fewest number of people is made to sound like an earth-shattering event.

Take the news about MRSA, you know, that drug resistant strain of staphylococcus bacteria that’s making its rounds? If you’ve watched any of the reports from any news outlet, especially the local news, they made it seem like the disease was waiting jump you or your kids as soon as you stepped outside. Only after they’d drummed up enough public worry that they mentioned that if you’re healthy and you’re not in the habit of licking other people’s open wounds, you’d have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than catching this disease. And if you did, there are treatments for it.  Call me when a virus starts creating hordes of infected zombies.

Anyway, news is where you find it, and I’ve found some excellent places for news and information that you can enjoy anytime by simply downloading an episode from the iTunes Store and watching on your iPod or AppleTV.

Since we’re talking about diseases, let’s start off with something that’s patently absurd; Abigail’s X-Rated Teen Diary.

Abigail before facial hair.

Meet Abigail, a seventh grader with Bloomberger’s Syndrome, a disease that makes her look like a middle-aged man.  But don’t feel sorry for Abbey, though she has to deal with shaving facial hair and deciding which public toilet to use, she’s still a happy 13 year old girl at heart, and she wants the world to know it.

Like some 13 year old girls Abbey’s X-Reated Diary is short, probably because Abbey has a short attention span, and it’s repetitious, and it can be annoying if you watch enough episodes, but it’s fun and life affirming in a Monty Python sort of way.

Check out Abigail’s X-Rated Video Diary on the iTunes Store. No, there’s not much that’s X-rated about it, but it’s fun to watch anyway.

Now for a bit more serious fair, but not too serious, I offer RocketBoom.

Joanne Colan hosts a show that is pretty hard to define other than to say that it is a blast to watch. No subject is safe. There’s one 2-minute episode were the camera follows someone on a bicycle through the streets of New York. I’ve never been to New York City, but I could recognize the streets as the video sped through the ride. (That’s right! I’ve never been to New York! I’m a cultural neanderthal. Get over it.)

Joanne Colan chats it up in RocketBoom

Other episode are equally eclectic and always a good time. RocketBoom has been around for a while so many of their episodes are well made and should look pretty nice on your AppleTV.

Now a little something for all of you eggheads out there; The Smart Show.

Hosts Joan and Henry travel to different places around the U.S. finding smart-like stuff to look at and talk about. It has humor, it has science (sometimes), it has young hosts. What more do you need?

Henry looking for smart stuff

There are over 20 episodes and Henry and Joan visit all sorts of places, like the Fluff Festival in Boston or trading jibs with a robot receptionist in Pittsburgh.  Each show offers up factoids about the places they visit.

For instance, did you know that Pittsburgh has more bridges than any other city on Earth except Venice, Italy? How’s THAT for smarts?

This is going to be one of my new favorite podcasts. Check it out at the iTunes Store.

OK, that’s it for this week. See you in seven days.

More free stuff on the iTunes Store:

Vern Seward is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He’s been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.