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If you don’t listen to Podcasts, you’re missing out on a whole world of alternative entertainment, education, news, and other content customized to your taste! Let me explain.
Podcasts are a series of audio or video episodes on a particular topic, published over the Internet. They are created by either individuals, organizations, or the media and cover an unimaginably large range of topics and themes. How podcasts work is that you find one or more that you like, you subscribe to them, and every time a new episode is published you automatically get a copy. You listen to Podcasts like you do any audio file: on your computer or portable music player. The vast majority of podcasts are free.
An Example
For the past three years, I’ve been listening to a podcast on photography, created and published by a professional photographer from Germany. Every week he records one or more new episodes on specific topics and publishes them. Since I’m subscribed to this podcast, every time I run iTunes, the latest episodes are downloaded and added to the ones I already have, and are copied to my iPod. I listen to them when I’m commuting or have some free time. I’ve learned more about photography through this podcast than I have all my life through books and various courses.
Why Podcasts
The reason I called podcasts “the best kept secret of the digital age” is because they have so many benefits, are readily available, and yet most people don’t know what they are. To start with, podcasts are produced by anyone who has something to say, which means you get a significant number of alternatives to the typical media content. Their topics can vary in topic from sports and comedy to current affairs and investment. Of course, the mainstream media has also jumped on the podcast bandwagon, and you can not only get most syndicated radio and TV programs but also audio versions of several printed media in podcast. So if you don’t have access to a particular station or journal, you can listen to their podcasts. This is also a nice way to listen to your favorite programs if you can’t catch them during the programmed slot on the radio. The other advantage of podcasts is that you can listen to them on your own time. In a way podcasts are the equivalent of TiVo, with a much wider selection of content than just TV shows. And when it comes to entertainment, you have a huge selection of music mixes, comedy, movie reviews, etc.
How to Get Podcasts
Subscribing to podcasts is very easy with iTunes and iPod, which we’ll talk about here. (If you don’t use iTunes and iPod, search for “podcast software” under Google.) To get to the iTunes podcast directory, go to the iTunes Store and click on Podcasts. Now you can either browse through the categories listed, or just type a keyword in the search bar and look through the list of items that come up under the podcast category. If you like any of the podcasts you’ve come across, just click on the Subscribe button, and the latest episodes will be downloaded into the Podcast folder. The next time you sync your iPod, the podcasts will be transferred and you can find them under Music, Podcasts.
Some Recommendations
Here are some Podcasts I recommend to get you started:
• Shahnameh (by Amir Porooshani) does a nice job of explaining the Shahnameh stories and then reading the poems related to that story.
• Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me (by NPR Chicago) is a witty weekly news quiz.
• Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (by Stanford) is a recording of a seminar series that takes place at Stanford University during the academic year.
• Stand Up Comedy (by HBO) is a collection of short clips from various comedians who’ve performed on HBO.
• Wall Street Journal This Morning (by WSJ) is a daily podcast on the topic.
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