Thing 21: Podcasts

I've been listening to podcasts for a couple years; mostly when I go to the gym, or when I go for a long bike ride along a well known route. I always make sure that I am quite able to hear what is going on around me, so I really don't think I'm being dangerous. I wear headphones that allow outside sounds in, and I don't keep the volume up at all.

There are two kinds of podcasts that I listen to. I have several subscriptions to knitting podcasts (was shocked to discover that there's a lot to be said about pointy sticks and string!) and I also time-shift many of my favorite NPR programs and listen to them via podcast. I particularly enjoy Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and Fresh Air. Sometimes, I also download a segment of On Point, or Talk of the Nation. I get video podcasts from Apple with tips and hints about using OSX, the operating system that my Mac runs on.

Most of the podcasts that I listen to, I've found either through the blogs that they are attached to, or through iTunes, which is also how I manage my iPods, music, and movies. I've not tried iTunes on a PC, but on the Mac, it's extremely simple and intuitive to use. I have an iPhone, an older Nano, and an older Shuffle. The computer recognizes each one, and keeps track of which subscriptions I like to sync to each one. My Nano doesn't do movies, so the video podcasts don't work there. The shuffle is the simplest, but also the least flexible, so that's become mostly just a back-up device.

It's easy in iTunes, to see which podcasts are up-to-date, and once I've subscribed to a particular one, anytime I open iTunes, if there's a new one, it will automatically download. I can also go to the podcast section of my iPhone, and download podcasts from there via WiFi. I can even download whole video podcasts right onto the phone. It's amazing!

I spent some time poking around with Podcast Alley, and found a number of Library podcasts. However, after clicking on the descriptions, and then clicking on the link to download or subscribe to them, discovered that most had not been updated in more than a year. I could not see any way to sort them according to how up-to-date the listings are.

Podcast.com works a little better, because each listing shows when it was last updated. If it hasn't been updated in a year or more, it is probably not worth subscribing too. However, it might still be useful to find a podcast on a particular topic that one would like to hear. An example of this might be the very informative This American Life segments that have explained how the downturn in the economy happened, in a way that non-economists could easily understand!

If you want to try a quick, fun, and very useful podcast, I highly recommend Grammar Girl, hosted by Mignon Fogerty. Each podcast is under five minutes long, but explains language usage and writing style in an entertaining and easy to understand way.