I’m a public radio fan. I want to state that up front, because I definitely have a bias toward professionally produced, non-commercial, journalistic radio -- I mean podcasts. I intentionally didn’t say I’m an NPR fan. One of the things that I’ve come to appreciate recently is how much programming -- my type of programming -- is not produced by NPR.
But I digress. I used to switch on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday as soon as I work up, maybe even before I was fully awake. It’s a hard habit to break. As I go through my morning routine, moving from the bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen and so on, it’s sometimes easier to flip on the radio than a podcast. I’ll write later about how I have tried to overcome this limitation.
So I turned on the radio, still tuned to Morning Edition, and listened contentedly to a story about the current-day implications of Ariel Sharon’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, when he was defense minister.
But I was less interested in the next story. Not that it wasn’t worthy or well done. It just wasn’t what I was up for at that moment.
I realized, as I have so many times recently, that I don’t have to listen to what the NPR programmers think I should listen to next. When you read the newspaper to go from story to story, reading those you’re interested in. But there’s a certain tyranny in listening to a program like Morning Edition. You don’t have the choice to skip to the next story.
That is unless you wait till the program is available on NPR’s Web site later in the day. But that’s just too much trouble.
But if your computer is nearby you can easily start playing one of the podcasts that’s been downloaded to your iTunes program.
I’ll write later about how to make that process almost as easy as turning on the radio. (Hint: podcasts at my house do come through the radio.)
podcastroundup@gmail.com
