Why I love podcasts

Why I love podcasts

Have you ever listened to a podcast? It’s not that hard, especially if you own an iPod, although that’s certainly not a requirement. Almost any MP3 player short of a Zune can work with them. But I don’t want to talk tech right now. Yeah yeah, sometimes technology is important to me on a personal level because I like to play with it; it’s intrinsically cool. And I am a geek like most reading this blog. On the other hand, there are times when technology is simply a means to an end. Podcasts have become such a technology to me. I love them and use them all the time, and it baffles me that more people don’t use them. One thing I’ve come to realize is that I am an aural person living in a visual society, but while I think being an aural person helps in appreciating podcasts, by no means is it a requirement.

As an expat, I find I occasionally crave things that I would otherwise take for granted living in the States. As a prime example, I’ve listened to and supported public radio for years and I miss listening to Morning Edition on the drive to work, and All Things Considered on the way home. I miss Fresh Air and Car Talk and all those other wonderful programs from National Public Radio and its cousins. So it has thrilled me to no end to discover that I can get most of these programs either streamed over the Internet – or more importantly – stored as podcasts to take with me wherever I go or when listening on my PC while I work.

Playing with podcasts got me to thinking about a program I used to listen to when I was in grad school, Songs For Aging Children, that was dedicated to singer songwriters. I googled the program, and that led me to WETA in Washington DC, the NPR station I listened to when I lived there. They just had a format change, and they are all classical now, which is causing some controversy, and as I read through the comments, it got me thinking about Minnesota Public Radio which is my favourite public radio network of all, in part because of their format with two stations, one for classical and one for talk so you could have the best of all worlds or whatever you fancied at the moment. Minnesota is a lovely state if you can get past the long long cold cold winters, and the people there have done some wonderful things, of which MPR is arguably one of the best. While wandering nostalgically through their site, I discovered that I could get Garrison Keillor’s News from Lake Wobegon on podcast – truly the only part of Prairie Home Companion that I ever liked – and then discovered that yes, Leigh Kammond still did the Jazz Image every Saturday night and was in fact celebrating his 60th anniversary. I had a sudden urge to listen to Django Reinhardt as I read.

Sitting here on a warm February afternoon in Italy, surrounded by email and project notes and survey outlines, I suddenly felt transported to the North Shore of Lake Superior, to Lutsen and Tofte and Grand Marais.

I also felt drawn back to Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle and memories of sitting on the roof of the townhouse in Adams Morgan on hot summer nights drinking cold beer and listening to the radio. At that moment, home felt so much closer to me than it has in a long time, as though the distances in both years and miles were suddenly negligible.

I’ve had some conversations with people lately about how technology can isolate us and push us further away from culture and each other. We got into this conversation based on a discussion about Second Life and avatars and future GUIs. Would technology make a virtual world preferable to the real one? While this may be true for some, I find instead that I am using technology to search for and connect to modern storytellers who use technology to reach those hungry for their tales.

I find myself listening to reviews of books I’ll want to read and hearing from new (for me) musicians I’ll want to hear more from, as I wait in line for planes, trains, and automobiles or spend otherwise lonely nights in generic hotel rooms. Sometimes technology becomes a virtual way to gather around the campfire in a modern time and makes the real world virtually closer. It can break down barriers and build communities as much as it can distance us from them.