I really love podcasts, like in extremely love podcasts, like I’m listnening to over 1000 episodes a year love podcasts. It’s been a long relationship, I started out listening to them around 2006, so that even means that I have a 2 decade anniversary with listening to them next year.

Before podcasts I was a huge radio listener, and I grew up listening to radio, I also had a portable radio like a diskman that I used to carry along with me, there aren’t many of the podcasts that I used to listen to back in the day that I still listen to. I guess I do change through the times, and some I have come back to with time, but that is the good thing about having a list of different podcasts that I listen to, it’s like a radio that is tuned into topics that I am interested in, and I can just pause it, and then continue on later when I have the time.

I really like that they are mainly offline, I can download rather small files and carry them along with me, have hours of stuff ready for me to listen to. Back in the day I used to have a small mp3 player, my old creative muvo running off 2 AAA batteries, and sticking it into my PC every evening, and running my little script that went through and downloaded stuff to it, things have changed now that I have a phone in my pocket with a dedicated programme that is specialised to do it, but I really liked my old janky setup as well, it kind of gave me a better understanding of how simple and nice the whole setup is, just some audiofiles linked to by a single file.

Audio content is great for the times that you want your eyes free, like when I’m out walking, and it’s also great alongside games, it’s nice to have something to listen to when I grind some game, or jumping around in a platformer. It’s there while doing chores, and when I just want to sit down for 10 minutes relaxing.

Long form content is nice, and it’s something that podcasts do very well, since the files are rather small, and you can easily just pause it, they are usually around the hour mark, but also many times up to 3-4 hours and in some cases even up to 6 or even a whopping 16 hours.

The informality of a podcast can be great, at least when you like the hosts, and it feels more relaxed that more planned out and rehearsed things, and it’s usually not a huge thing if you lose focus for 5 minutes. I never managed to get into audio books, since my mind tends to wander when I read a story, and unless it’s an audio play I find myself having to rewind so often that it’s not really doable for me.

The relative ease of creating a podcast also means that there are a lot of niche stuff out there that you just don’t get other places, and usually discussed in a depht that you just don’t see other places, you get everything from really bad quality stuff recorded on crap microphones to professional productions with chapter markers and pictures for each chapter, it’s a really cool variation that’s just wonderful.

I guess I could go on more and more, I just really love them, which I think I’m qualified to say, just in the last 5 years I’ve listened to 600+ days of podcasts, so yeah, I guess I’m a bit over average of an enjoyer of podcasts :p