Knowledge and Entertainment from Podcasts

When I was young, the few sources of entertainment we had was either playing, travelling, or watching a few channels on television. There was also radio, but it was generally considered to be for old people.

After a few years, satellite television reached our shores and we were exposed to a variety of television channels which presented programs that tried to cater to the young generation. There were less of news and information, and more entertainment. FM radio stations started around the same time which catered music shows with call-ins and were also targeted towards the younger generation. With the popularity of the FM radio shows, radio was suddenly hip to listen to. The radio jockeys (RJs) were overnight celebrities and radio was more popular than ever.

With the popularity of FM radio, the growth of FM radio stations also started. The shows presented in the FM stations also began to diversify. Although the majority of the shows were music based, there were also news shows, interviews and talk shows with celebrities as well as politicians and other important people. I got interested in long-form talk shows at the same time, listening to people being grilled by the hosts of the shows, and knowledgeable people from various walks of life talking about their experiences and sharing their knowldege.

After a few years, the internet arrived to our third-world country. Many forms of entertainment and knowldege that were inaccessible to us were now easily available to us. The internet, which I believe to be one of the greatest achivements of humanity, turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. It was, at once, the greatest resource of knowledge available to us, and also the greatest source of distraction for some of us. It helped us learn a lot of things is a short amount of time, and it also made us lazy and carefree in some way. With the constant growth of the internet and the many options available to us to quench our thirst for knowledge and entertainment, our attention spans began to grow shorter and more of us began to seek instant gratification. As more of us began to lean towards quick and easy entertainment, more services began to show up that provided us with us such types of entertainment.

I, too, got drawn towards these services and lost interest in something if it took more than 2 to 3 minutes of my time. Previously, I could read novels in one sitting and listen to 1 hour long interviews without getting bored. But now, I couldn’t even bother reading a long Facebook post or watch a video longer than 5 minutes without instantly losing interest. Slowly, I even found it hard to keep my focus on things in everyday life.

At that time, some of the ideas and beliefs I held were slowly beginning to evolve and I had begun questioning the status quo more and more. I was reading tweets and watching videos of the people who had the same kind of ideas and beliefs that I had begun leaning towards. Reading what they had written, and listening to and watching what they had to say helped me grow my ideas and pointed me towards more research and proof of the validity of those ideas and beliefs. Some of them also hosted something called podcasts.

Suddenly, I was pulled back to my past with these podcasts. They were the same kind of talk shows and interviews that I used to listen to during my FM radio listening days. Some were short shows that were brief and some were long form shows that delved deep into various topics. Some were interviews with people and experts from various walks of life and some were long or short rants from the hosts on topics they held dear. During that time, I had questions, and they had answers. Some were answers to the questions that I hadn’t even begun asking or didn’t know to ask. I was instantly hooked, once again. There were so many types of podcasts on so many different subjects to choose from. Anything I could think of, there were podcasts on them. I was both amazed and anxious at the abundance of podcasts available for me to listen to.

I keep forgetting that music is better than podcasts.

— Dru Johnston (@drujohnston) July 9, 2017

I listened to many podcasts and I stopped listening to many more, maybe because my ideas and beliefs grew past what they had to offer. I learned something new every time I listened to a podcast. Podcasts helped me keep myself occupied when I had nothing to do, helped me shorten my long walks, helped me keep myself entertained and learn something at the same time when I was working in the kitchen or when I just wanted to listen to something. Podcasts helped me stretch the horizon of my knowldege and helped me discover so many things that have helped me in life.

Some of the shows that I still listen to, like 99% Invisible taught me to look for the different types of design in everyday things of my life, Let’s Know Things taught me to be more curious about the things in the world, Freakonomics Radio and Planet Money taught me about economics and finance and how they affect our everyday lives, The Memory Palace introduced me to new forms of storytelling, and listening to Bill Burr rant for and hour or so on his Monday Morning Podcast taught me that it was okay to express myself if I thought some things were not right. I get to learn so many things listening to the ideas shared by so many people in their podcasts.

And the best part is that I can listen to podcasts wherever I am. If I have access to the internet, I can stream the podcast shows directly from their websites or through my podcast app of choice on my phone like Pocket Casts, or on my computer using something like iTunes. If I’m on the go and don’t have internet access, I can download the podcast before I move and then listen to it later.

I have currenlty started listening to local podcasters as well, and this has helped introduce me to a whole new world of podcasting in my local language. I believe, from the bottom of my heart, that listening to podcasts in my daily life, even if for a short amount of time, instead of some time that was being consumed by some other form of entertainment, has helped me learn new things and provided me with the entertainment I never knew I needed.