Listening to podcasts 25/7
Delicate digital lives, climate optimism, harmful meditation, tteboeki, pilot speak, handsome fun.
When you think about what TV show to watch or book you want to read next, does it feel difficult to choose? There’s only so many hours in a day that we can commit the attention needed for TV shows and books. But with podcasts, it’s a bit different. They can be added to activities throughout your day. As Tom Webster recently wrote, they can kinda expand your day! If more people thought about podcasts this way, they might better appreciate the benefits of podcasts. This explanation from Tom says it best, but I recommend reading his whole article because it re-ignited my excitement about how podcasts fit into my day.
An oft-used metaphor for time management is the concept of filling a jar with big rocks and fine sand. The big rocks represent the large, important tasks we have to make time for, while the sand represents all of the little, less important things we fill our days with. If you first fill your jar (your available time) with the sand, the rocks won’t fit. Start with the rocks, however, and the sand will fill in the cracks until the jar is full. I just saved you a fortune on productivity courses.
Podcasts are part of the “sand.” We have more room in our jars for sand than we think.
Podcasts are the ultimate grain of sand, because they can fit into more places than any app or video. They just need to be reframed from thing that takes your time to thing that gives you more time. It’s doubtful that the average person would say that they have an extra hour a day to devote to podcast listening. But podcasts could be positioned as something that give you an extra hour you didn’t even know you had if they can be framed as a way to grab five minutes to yourself, away from a screen, in those little pockets of time that we all know we have.
This week’s podstack
TED Radio Hour - For All Eternity
Is it truly possible to save anything for all eternity? The fragility of our digital information, experiences, and creations is explored in this episode. I get overwhelmed just trying organize all the photos on my phone, so this gave me so much respect and appreciation for the work the Internet Archive team is doing. Websites are so frequently changing and disappearing, that they’ve set up systems and methods for archiving the massive amounts of information that could disappear tomorrow. The second part of the episode goes a step further in breaking my brain, by explaining how data can be stored as DNA and how stable that method is. DNA might have to be the data storage solution we use since we have soooo much data now, but so far it’s still pretty expensive to do. The third part of the episode is about the Earth Archive because our planet is also changing a lot and this archive is keeping track of how it looked throughout the years.
Unf*cking the Future - Plant Power with Maggie Baird
The theme song for this show is pretty great and you can probably guess how it goes based on the title. The title also didn’t make me realize how optimism filled it would be! It features people who are making a difference by coming up with and advocating for solutions to improve our future. I also started this episode not realizing the guest is the mother of a very well known singer. Since Maggie Baird and host Chris Turney have lived through the environmental movement since the 70s, you get a little history of it and hear about what they’ve learned and what they’re hoping for. They both feel the urgent responsibility to care and do more in order to help the world that their children will be left with. Since Maggie’s children became famous musicians, she also worked to bring more environmentally friendly practices to concerts and the music industry. She also explains how vital less meat and animal products are to our future.
Untold: The Retreat - Dear Madison
Obviously listening to lots of podcasts can be a great way keep your mind occupied, so meditating doesn’t really jive with that. Especially not a 10 day, 10 hours per day, meditation retreat. This is a type of meditation that you learn about in the first episode of this series. Even though meditation can be really helpful for many, in extreme forms like this retreat, it can lead to serious psychological damage. You hear from one person who experienced that damage after going to a few of these retreats. It’s unsettling and intriguing, with strong narrative production pulling you in. Then you learn that it also happened to this person’s twin sister. The plot thickens, bring on episode two.
The Sporkful - Deep Dish With Sohla And Ham: Tteokbokki
This episode made me crave tteokbokki more than I already constantly do. It’s a very popular Korean street food consisting of rice cakes that have the most satisfying texture and are served in many delicious ways. Through this new show from The Sporkful team, hosts Sohla and Ham teach us the history of tteokbokki and its present day popularity in the US. To learn more about its presence in the US, Sohla talks to Korean chef Ji Hye Kim, who loved tteokbokki so much she used to sneakily trade her milk cartons for tteokbokki from a street vendor when she was in grade two! That’s how irresistible it was to her. As part of the format of the show, the episode ends with Sohla and Ham cooking tteokbokki their favourite way. (transcript)
Revisionist History - This Is Your Captain Speaking
If you found out you were seated next to a pilot on a plane, what would you do? If you’re producer Ben Naddaff-Hafrey, you take this rare opportunity to finally ask them a question that’s been haunting you – why do all pilots sound the same? Something about their tone and pacing, always with similar pauses and filler words, has always intrigued Ben. How could they all sound so similar? This question ends up being a stepping point into how language and speaking patterns evolve. What charmed me most about this episode were the little interviews Ben did with people around airports and the pilot to hear their thoughts on ‘pilot speak’.
Handsome - Sarah Paulson asks about forgiveness
When Handsome first came out in August, I was immediately charmed by their friendship, easy humour, and the way they love a good bit. Now, many episodes later I still hear references to jokes made in previous episodes and I learn the new ones as I catch up after a while. If you don’t know the show, comedians Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster, and Mae Martin get together to answer a question sent in by their friends. Those friends include people like Sarah Paulson, Ty Burrell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Gabrielle Union. I’ve been listening to a lot of their episodes lately as a comfort pod and they give you that similar feeling as watching your favourite sitcom. Like how Fortune will say something even slightly scandalous and Tig will always respond “FORTUNE!!!”. And any time they have a funny idea they want to pursue, they say “add it to the list, Thomas”. Thomas is their producer and he’s got quite a long list to keep track of at this point. Whether they’re talking about childhood crushes or forgiveness, they balance genuine conversations with hilarious banter so well!
More sweet treats
Do people notice if news anchors don’t change their clothes?
Do we really need to listen to podcasts at 1.2x speed or can we just take our time?
Thank you for reading! If you listened to something this week that made your heart sing, your imagination wander, or your brain ponder, I’d love to hear about it!