My highlights from podcasts this week include an in depth discussion of caramel covered popcorn, a beautiful marriage of Radiohead and a ukulele, and a new podcast about a bee. Would you like the language of origin for “podcast”?

With baseball season in “full swing,” The Sporkful took a look at one of the best parts of the game: ballpark food. Dan Pashman, host of The Sporkful, spoke with USA Today sports columnist Ted Berg about his past job as a food vendor at old Shea Stadium, including a story about (brace yourself) a rude Yankees fan who spit at Berg for serving him a tepid hot dog. More importantly, Pashman got to the bottom of some important Cracker-Jack-related questions: (1) it is officially “Cracker Jack” not “Cracker Jacks,” (2) despite what you may think, the peanut-to-popcorn ratio actually has increased in recent years, and (3) no one ever leaves their prize behind at the ballpark.

The Mad Max movie franchise returns to theaters this week after a 30 year hibernation with Mad Max: Fury Road. Tuesday’s episode of The Frame included an interview with the legendary writer/director of all three Mad Max films, George Miller. Miller talked about the unique process he used for writing Fury Road and his preference for real stunts over CG.

On Wednesday’s episode of The Nerdist, Chris Hardwick sat down with singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson. Sprinkled in the middle of a very colorful conversation with Hardwick, Michaelson performed an incredible cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” which you can listen to on the episode or use your ears and eyes and watch video of the performance at nerdist.com.

Sports coverage has been saturated this week with news of Tom Brady’s four-game suspension by the NFL as a result of the Wells report. Even if you’ve got “Deflategate” fatigue, this week’s Be Honest with Cari Champion is worth a listen. Champion and her guest, fellow ESPN analyst Jemele Hill, discuss the insecurities that can motivate even incredibly successful people to break the rules. Champion and Hill don’t get into the accuracy or fairness of the NFL’s findings, but focus instead on their own experiences with insecurity and how something similar might have driven Brady.

Seymour Hersh’s story contradicting the official account of the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden received a lot of attention and criticism this week. Hersh joined Bob Garfield on the On the Media podcast to address some of the skepticism aimed at his story.

If you’re counting the days until the Scripps National Spelling Bee, scheduled to take place on May 27^th and 28^th, grab your headphones because there is good podcast news for you. The Scripps Washington Bureau launched the Spelling Bee Podcast this week, promising conversations with some of the bee’s colorful participants and discussions with other special guests about language and spelling. Spelling bee commentator Paul Loeffler hosts the podcast, a new episode of which will be released daily until the end of this year’s spelling bee.

Photo: cracker jacks by Lindsey Turner, available under a Creative Commons license