How I Listen to Podcasts

Podcasts can be listened to virtually anywhere and at anytime, which is probably why they have become so popular. By the very nature of their flexible listening options podcast listeners will undoubtedly have their own podcast listening habits and I’m certainly no exception.

I’ve been into podcasting for quite a while and since June 2007 have been recording and producing a regular monthly podcast for a UK based Internet service provider, Zen Internet.

Although I may have been producing podcasts for over six years, I have to confess that it’s only recently that I’ve actually started listening to podcasts with any regularity myself. While I have wanted to listen to podcasts for a long time, unfortunately my personal circumstances restricted my listening options compared to the vast majority of people.

My Circumstances

While podcasts can be listened to virtually anywhere and at anytime, their immense flexibility didn’t seem to quite work for me. I loved the idea of podcasts, and of podcasting, yet it took me along time to find a way of listening to podcasts that suited my lifestyle.

My Accident

In July 2000 I suffered a very severe accident whilst diving into my neighbour’s swimming pool. This accident left me paralyzed from the neck down with only partial movement in my right arm. The nature of my condition,and my sedentary lifestyle leaves me prone to pressure sores. For this reason my practical sitting up time, and therefore “useable” time, is restricted to about nine hours per day.

Such a limited “up-time” during the day makes every second count, which I tend to use either going out and about, or working on my PC.

Listening Requires Concentration

While I tend to listen to music whilst working on my computer, I found it difficult to listen to podcasts in the same way. My concentration would wander from the podcast to the task in hand or I’d end up concentrating on the podcast instead of what I intended doing; neither circumstance being ideal.

My Listening Habits

Night-time Listening

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, but when my brother asked me for Christmas present suggestions last year I suggested a pillow speaker for my MP3 player.

Previously I’d only ever used my MP3 player on holiday to listen to episodes of “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” BBC radio series; one of my guilty pleasures.

Since my accident I seem to struggle getting to sleep, so listening to podcasts during this period of “dead time” suddenly seemed a brilliant idea and a way of consuming interesting content that I would never have otherwise discovered.

Listening Times

I set my MP3 player to switch off automatically after one hour, which initially seemed like a reasonable period. I soon discovered however that a few podcasts which I listened to regularly had occasional episodes that breached my cut-off period.

I subsequently adjusted my MP3 player’s settings  to cut off after 1.5 hours, which seems to have done the trick. After over six months I haven’t come across any podcast episodes that have hit this threshold. If I had I certainly wouldn’t have adjusted my settings again; an hour and a half for a single podcast episode would be just too long.

Trying to Stay Awake

The only downside of listening to podcasts in bed at night is that they can be quite soporific. I often find I’ve dropped off halfway through an episode only to wake up towards the end having missed a large chunk of the episode.

This used to worry me and I wanted to go back and listen to what I’d missed. I’ve now decided that there’s so much information out there, would it really matter if I never heard that missing bit of content: No!

I very rarely go back to a podcast that I slept through now, unless it was a topic that I was very interested in and really wanted to hear.

My Podcast Listening Choices

I currently subscribe to 20 podcasts via my RSS reader, the majority of which are weekly with the remaining being ad hoc (released as and when) or bi-weekly:

1. School of Podcasting – Weekly
2. Podcast Answer Man – Weekly
3. The Audacity to Podcast – Weekly
4. The Podcasters’ Studio – Ad hoc
5. Podcasters Roundtable – Ad hoc
6. Music Radio Creative – Weekly
7. Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips – Weekly
8. More or Less: Behind the Stats – Weekly (when series is running)
9. The Smart Passive Income Podcast – Weekly
10. Internet Business Mastery – Weekly
11. Science in Action – Weekly
12. Let’s Talk About Tech – Weekly
13. Click – Weekly
14. CoP Show – Weekly
15. Simply Recording Podcast – Ad hoc
16. Social Media Marketing Podcast – Weekly
17. The Social Media Show – Weekly
18. The RHS Gardening Podcast – Bi weekly
19. The Infinite Monkey Cage – Weekly (when series is running)
20. The Public Speaker’s Quick and Dirty Tips – Weekly

My favourite podcasts are undoubtedly the podcasts about podcasting, with my other topics spanning science and technology to social media and internet marketing through to gardening. There’s no hiding from it; I’m definitely a geek.

The list of 20 podcasts seems to work well with my 1.5 hours of available listening per night (10.5 hours per week). If I were to subscribe to too many more podcasts I would either have to up my listening time to 2 hours per night (which is probably a little excessive) or consider ditching an existing podcast from my subscription list.

Weekly Schedule

For the week beginning 07 October 2013, the podcasts that came in for download resulted in just under eight hours of listening, which gave me a little chance to catch up on my backlog of podcasts that had accumulated whilst I was on holiday.

Day	Podcast	Duration	File Size	Type	Bit Rate
Mon	School of Podcasting	51′ 41”	23.7 MB	Mono	64 kbps
Tue	The Audacity to Podcast The Social Media Show More or Less: Behind the Stats – BBC	35′ 40″ 39′ 25″ 09′ 35″	16.4 MB 18.0 MB 4.5 MB	Mono Mono Mono	64 kbps 64 kbps 64 kbps
Wed	Click – BBC Internet Business Mastery	26′ 57″ 49′ 55″	12.4 MB 46.1 MB	Mono Stereo	64 kbps 128 kbps
Thu	Podcast Answer Man Cop Show – BBC	55′ 58″ 27′ 12″	51.7 MB 24.9 MB	Stereo Mono	128 kbps 128 kbps
Fri	Music Radio Creative Grammar Girl Science in Action – BBC Social Media Marketing The Public Speaker	30′ 25″ 11′ 45″ 17′ 59″ 39′ 18″ 13′ 14″	27.8 MB 8.4 MB 16.6 MB 36.3 MB 9.2 MB	Stereo Mono Mono Stereo Stereo	128 kbps 96 kbps 64 kbps 128 kbps 96 kbps
Sat	More or Less: Behind the Stats – BBC	09′ 36″	4.5 MB	Mono	64 kbps
Sun	Let’s Talk About Tech – BBC	50′ 42″	23.3 MB	Mono	64 kbps
		07:49:28	315 MB

Producing my own Podcasts

As well as listening to podcasts I also produce two podcasts myself, one for an old college friend who owns and runs a UK internet service provider (ISP) Zen Internet and one that I do with a friend for a gardening website;The PlantAdvice Gardening Podcast.

The Zen Internet podcast is a scripted version of their monthly e-mail newsletter read by an actress friend of mine.

Both of these podcasts are produced monthly and go out at the beginning of every month.

How do you Listen to Podcasts?

So, that’s how I listen to podcasts. We’re all different and the beauty of podcasts is that they can be listened to virtually anywhere and at any time, enabling most of us to take advantage of this wonderful new medium.

How do you listen to podcasts? And if you don’t, why not give them a try? You never know, you may be pleasantly surprised. No matter what you’re into, the chances are there’s a podcast out there for you somewhere.

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Select as many answers from the list below that are applicable to how you listen to your podcasts. Once you have submitted your answers, you will get to see the results of the poll so far. If the categories don’t fit perfectly, pick the closest that you feel apply.

If you’d like to leave any comments in the section below on your podcast listening habits such as how, where and when you listen to your podcasts, I’d be really interested to hear. Thanks!