A friend recently wrote to me:
I enjoy these little articles that you link to a lot. I just have one question though: Do you really have that much free time to find all of these? Please tell me there is some kind of automated thing that sends them to you.
It’s a good question, and it’s one that I get a lot.
Though I have RSS feeds setup for some of my favorite news sites, a lot of my news comes from podcasts that I listen to daily. The list includes:
Several CNET technology podcasts, including the daily podcast Buzz Out Loud
The Economist’s weekly podcast summarizing articles from the magazine
The Scientific American daily podcasts 60-Second Science and 60-Second Psyche, plus the weekly science podcast, Science Talk
The New York Times daily front page summary, Ethicist, Book Review and weekly science podcasts
The Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast
The Big Money’s business and finance podcast
TED’s audio and video podcasts
The New Yorker’s Comment and Outloud podcasts
NPR’s Story of the Day, Books, Planet Money, Technology, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and Playback (a monthly podcast that looks at the stories that NPR was covering 25 years ago)
Slate Magazine’s daily podcasts
ESPN’s daily Best of Mike and Mike, Football Today, and The BS Report, as well as the Patriot’s weekly podcasts (in football season)
WNYC’s weekly podcast Radio Lab, which deals with a specific topic in detail each week
The American Life, similar to Radio Lab, and often the most popular podcast in iTunes
Books on the Nightstand, a weekly podcast dealing
Bill Maher’s Real Time podcast, the audio broadcast of his HBO weekly television show
I know it seems like a lot, but many of the podcasts are less than ten minutes long, and some are just a minute or so. And considering that I wake up everyday before 5:00 and have my headphones on and playing whenever I am not speaking or writing, I can consume quite a bit of media in a day
Add in the time spent in the car, on afternoon walks with Kaleigh, work outs at the gym, and doing chores like folding laundry, doing the dishes, etc. and it’s not difficult for me to clear my daily supply of podcasts quickly and move on to my current audio book or music rather quickly.
Isn’t the world great? Targeting content, delivered daily, without advertisements.
