2014-12-30

Why podcasts don't work for me

Why podcasts don't work for me:

I don't have a driving commute, so when it is the case that I am driving, it's either a short trip, or I have passengers, or I'm going to an unfamiliar place so I have to pay attention to navigation. Plus my car time is irregularly scheduled. And to top it off, my car's audio doesn't have an aux input of any sort.

When I'm not driving a car, I'm usually reading, writing, doing work with my hands, exercising, meditating, thinking deeply about something, sleeping, or talking with someone. None of these activities are compatible with listening to a podcast.

And finally, podcasts are too slow and too linear. I can read well formatted text an order of magnitude faster than someone can speak clearly.

Plus my reading style is to constantly jump backwards while reading ahead, constructing lists and building up the "idea structures" that the text is presenting, and then if the text was interesting and useful enough, jump back an entire section or chapter or the whole work and reread it again, filling in the structure that I built the first time. There are probably people out there that can do the same thing in one pass, memorizing the text in one flat read or as it's dictated to them, but I am not that smart.

In other words, if a podcast is that awesome, please also translate it into an essay, or even just a cleaned transcript, and I will read that instead.


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