Another year, another round of podcast recommendations:
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No, it's not your browser. The list is empty.
After 10 years of attaching electric appendages to my head using flimsy earhooks some call ear-phones, I have decided that one voice in my head at a time is quite enough, thank you, and that there are better ways to muffle the sounds of everyday existence than the nasal overtones of middle-aged white men.
Who will be crushed to lose me as a listener, I am sure.
I haven't suddenly decided that they are all bad, mind you—I have spent cumulative months listening to them, so they must be good. The problem is, I like them too much.
Behold my modified CAGE questionnaire for podcasts:
- Have you ever felt you needed to Cut down on your time spent listening to podcasts? Doing it right now.
- Have people Annoyed you by criticizing your listening to podcasts at inappropriate times? Does my wife count as people? If so, then yes.
- Have you ever felt Guilty about listening to a podcast instead of doing something else? You mean like sitting in the car 10 extra minutes after coming back home from work, waiting for an episode of Radiolab to finish? Umm…
- Have you ever felt you needed to put on your headphones first thing in the morning (Eye-opener) to finish listening to last night's podcast, or to get a head start on completing the unplayed list. "Felt like?" I do it all the time.
Aced it.
Granted, being mostly free, not too hard on your body, sometimes educational, and often entertaining, podcasts are not the worst thing in the world to be addicted to. But to be alone with your thoughts is exceedingly rare when there is a toddler in the house—rare enough that you do not want to spoil it by introducing external stimuli which make it impossible to string a chain of thought longer than the 30-second commercial break for Squarespace.
Farewell, voices. It was good while it lasted.