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I subscribe to exactly zero podcasts. It's not a position or a statement; I just don't find them interesting enough to win out over audiobooks or music. Thanks

I subscribe to exactly zero podcasts. It's not a position or a statement; I just don't find them interesting enough to win out over audiobooks or music. Thanks to the Libby app, I have "read" several thousand books over the past 7-8 years. An excellent pair of earbuds is mandatory to allow a 2x listening speed, which you can work up to in about a week. Everyone tells me that they "don't have time" to listen to 2-3 books a week. I listen when I'm doing my morning routine, when I'm cooking, when I'm cleaning, when I'm cycling, when I'm shopping, when I'm clearing snow. Listening to influencers and celebrities hang out, pretend to be friends and try to be funny just doesn't do it for me.

Kbelicius 9mo ago
> Listening to influencers and celebrities hang out, pretend to be friends and try to be funny just doesn't do it for me. So basically you don't subscribe to any podcasts out of ignorance. Influencers and celebrities hanging out isn't the only type of podcast.
- peteforde 9mo ago
  I do not choose books over podcasts out of ignorance. I'm just not interested in wading through mountains of garbage to get to what you insist is worth listening to. I've certainly enjoyed episodes of, for example, This American Life, which friends have recommended to me. However, our time on this earth is finite so if I am to choose between ephemeral content and things which have made it through an editing process, I will choose books every time. When you encounter people who seem incredibly smart, I all but guarantee that your first thought is never going to be "this person must listen to a lot of podcasts!" If podcasts make you happy, then I am happy for you.
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    And it’s easy to “wade through mountains of garbage” to find interesting books?
    - peteforde 9mo ago
      Even putting aside the existence of libraries, your question is so bizarre to me that it stops me in my tracks. Are you freaking serious? (If you are serious, I'm happy to point you to resources.)
      - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
        So you don’t mind wading through the library fig books that you are interested in. But it’d a heavy lift to wade through a podcast directory like the one Apple has had since 2005?
  - Kbelicius 9mo ago
    > I do not choose books over podcasts out of ignorance. I cannot read minds so I have to go with what you wrote. What you wrote in the post that I replied to is that the reason why you don't listen to podcasts is ignorance. You gave no other reason. This post of yours also gives no other explicit reason besides ignorance. > I'm just not interested in wading through mountains of garbage to get to what you insist is worth listening to. Well, there is also a mountain of garbage books so that is not a very good argument for books. Yes, libraries exist so do podcast libraries. I'm not insisting on anything. > However, our time on this earth is finite so if I am to choose between ephemeral content and things which have made it through an editing process Podcasts can cover many of the same topics that books cover so they aren't necessarily ephemeral. Most of the books are also ephemeral. Many podcasts go through editing process. > When you encounter people who seem incredibly smart, I all but guarantee that your first thought is never going to be "this person must listen to a lot of podcasts!" It won't be but then again, I never thought "this person must read a lot of books". > If podcasts make you happy, then I am happy for you. I don't listen to podcasts. Maybe once in a blue moon as background noise.
anonymous908213 9mo ago
Would you say that you really digest the books you listen to like that? It seems difficult to fathom to me. I generally try to use tedious downtime to think through things and solve problems in my head rather than listening to anything, but I've found that I can't even really keep my thoughts straight while walking outside due to watching where I'm going and the large variety of distracting external stimulus. I feel like I would get absolutely nothing out of listening to an audiobook at 2x speed while cycling.
- crazygringo 9mo ago
  On the one hand, I visually read a book significantly faster than 2x listening speed, so the speed in itself doesn't seem problematic. On the other hand, if I'm listening while doing other things, then my attention is split. Which is why 1x works best for me. I can pay attention and still fold my laundry or make a meal or whatever. Listening at 2x while cycling sounds positively dangerous to me. Unless you're somewhere with virtually no traffic, or you really just aren't paying attention to what you're listening to. Our brains only have so much bandwidth.
  - peteforde 9mo ago
    It's no more dangerous than people talking on their speakerphones while driving, something it seems everyone does even though it feels insane to me. It all comes down to practice, familiarity and instinct.
    - crazygringo 9mo ago
      I'm specifically talking about 2x speed. That's using twice the brain processing. People aren't speaking on speakerphone at 2x speed. It has nothing to do with practice. It's entirely about whether you've got enough attention left over to detect unexpected situations the moment they start.
      - peteforde 9mo ago
        I really do appreciate the concern. What I've done a poor job of explaining in this thread is that audiobooks are ... recorded ... at ... molasses ... speed. When I listen to a book at 1x, it sounds like they are doing a bad William Shatner impression. If they didn't record them slowly, I wouldn't need to speed them up to a normal conversational pace. I'm not a neuroscientist but listening at 2x taking twice the brain processing feels off to me. I suspect that it's sort of like variable bit rate encoding, and that factors like practice, narration quality, sound quality, external noise, other distractions all come into play. When you're sitting at a table with multiple conversations going on around you, do you feel like your brain is working twice as hard to separate out what is being said to you? Our brains have evolved some pretty impressive special case handling features for these scenarios.
deleted 9mo ago
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Kbelicius 9mo ago

> Listening to influencers and celebrities hang out, pretend to be friends and try to be funny just doesn't do it for me. So basically you don't subscribe to any podcasts out of ignorance. Influencers and celebrities hanging out isn't the only type of podcast.

peteforde 9mo ago
I do not choose books over podcasts out of ignorance. I'm just not interested in wading through mountains of garbage to get to what you insist is worth listening to. I've certainly enjoyed episodes of, for example, This American Life, which friends have recommended to me. However, our time on this earth is finite so if I am to choose between ephemeral content and things which have made it through an editing process, I will choose books every time. When you encounter people who seem incredibly smart, I all but guarantee that your first thought is never going to be "this person must listen to a lot of podcasts!" If podcasts make you happy, then I am happy for you.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  And it’s easy to “wade through mountains of garbage” to find interesting books?
  - peteforde 9mo ago
    Even putting aside the existence of libraries, your question is so bizarre to me that it stops me in my tracks. Are you freaking serious? (If you are serious, I'm happy to point you to resources.)
    - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
      So you don’t mind wading through the library fig books that you are interested in. But it’d a heavy lift to wade through a podcast directory like the one Apple has had since 2005?
- Kbelicius 9mo ago
  > I do not choose books over podcasts out of ignorance. I cannot read minds so I have to go with what you wrote. What you wrote in the post that I replied to is that the reason why you don't listen to podcasts is ignorance. You gave no other reason. This post of yours also gives no other explicit reason besides ignorance. > I'm just not interested in wading through mountains of garbage to get to what you insist is worth listening to. Well, there is also a mountain of garbage books so that is not a very good argument for books. Yes, libraries exist so do podcast libraries. I'm not insisting on anything. > However, our time on this earth is finite so if I am to choose between ephemeral content and things which have made it through an editing process Podcasts can cover many of the same topics that books cover so they aren't necessarily ephemeral. Most of the books are also ephemeral. Many podcasts go through editing process. > When you encounter people who seem incredibly smart, I all but guarantee that your first thought is never going to be "this person must listen to a lot of podcasts!" It won't be but then again, I never thought "this person must read a lot of books". > If podcasts make you happy, then I am happy for you. I don't listen to podcasts. Maybe once in a blue moon as background noise.

anonymous908213 9mo ago

Would you say that you really digest the books you listen to like that? It seems difficult to fathom to me. I generally try to use tedious downtime to think through things and solve problems in my head rather than listening to anything, but I've found that I can't even really keep my thoughts straight while walking outside due to watching where I'm going and the large variety of distracting external stimulus. I feel like I would get absolutely nothing out of listening to an audiobook at 2x speed while cycling.

crazygringo 9mo ago
On the one hand, I visually read a book significantly faster than 2x listening speed, so the speed in itself doesn't seem problematic. On the other hand, if I'm listening while doing other things, then my attention is split. Which is why 1x works best for me. I can pay attention and still fold my laundry or make a meal or whatever. Listening at 2x while cycling sounds positively dangerous to me. Unless you're somewhere with virtually no traffic, or you really just aren't paying attention to what you're listening to. Our brains only have so much bandwidth.
- peteforde 9mo ago
  It's no more dangerous than people talking on their speakerphones while driving, something it seems everyone does even though it feels insane to me. It all comes down to practice, familiarity and instinct.
  - crazygringo 9mo ago
    I'm specifically talking about 2x speed. That's using twice the brain processing. People aren't speaking on speakerphone at 2x speed. It has nothing to do with practice. It's entirely about whether you've got enough attention left over to detect unexpected situations the moment they start.
    - peteforde 9mo ago
      I really do appreciate the concern. What I've done a poor job of explaining in this thread is that audiobooks are ... recorded ... at ... molasses ... speed. When I listen to a book at 1x, it sounds like they are doing a bad William Shatner impression. If they didn't record them slowly, I wouldn't need to speed them up to a normal conversational pace. I'm not a neuroscientist but listening at 2x taking twice the brain processing feels off to me. I suspect that it's sort of like variable bit rate encoding, and that factors like practice, narration quality, sound quality, external noise, other distractions all come into play. When you're sitting at a table with multiple conversations going on around you, do you feel like your brain is working twice as hard to separate out what is being said to you? Our brains have evolved some pretty impressive special case handling features for these scenarios.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]