Long before I found myself listening to podcasts nearly everyday, I thought of the medium as a means for lonely people to not feel as isolated as they were. “What kind of loser listens to someone talk for an hour everyday for no reason?” I would ask myself. I would then chuckle likely, again to myself, and turn up the volume of the droning sound of rhythm and beats flowing through my headphones, an hour or so before turning on my very loud white noise machine and falling asleep.
I used to think so negatively of podcasts; that is, until I decided to listen to one. The first and, for a long time, only podcast I listened to was Everything is Alive, in which fully conversational and expressive inanimate objects (a baseball cap, a lamppost, a single grain of sand, etc.) was interviewed for around 20 minutes. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this quiet, creative little episodic podcast, and how often it replaced my intake of music.
For two reasons I enjoyed this podcast in particular: the voices of the objects, and the specificity of the topics discussed. The innovation involved in voicing something without a voice is impressive in its own right, and I responded instantly to the voices. You can tell the show uses the “extemporaneous speech” Renee Hobbs defines. The casual way the interview progresses is almost dreamlike, and resembles normal speech but is polished and easy on the mind.
In addition, the discussions on the show are specific, but they often relate to puzzled quandaries on human behavior that people normally do not think about. The show delves into often universal traits and emotions and states of being that, in our own busy lives, we simply do not have the time to think about. I believe that is where I see the merit of podcasts: as a window to other modes of existence, and a mode in which to question our own.
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