Richard Farrar

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How I Listen to Podcasts

Filed Under: Life, Podcasting

Podcast listening habits of mine

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

Roberts Pillowtalk SpeakerI 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

Creative Zen MP3 PlayerI 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

The PlantAdvice Gardening Podcast show artworkAs 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.


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.

How do you listen to podcasts?

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Where do you listen to podcasts?

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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!

Posted on 16 October 2013Tagged: bbc, bit rate, mono, Podcasts, stereo

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Comments

  1. Andrew Martin commented

    16 Oct 13 at 6:31 pm

    Hi Richard, Great post – and pleased to meet another ‘Infinite Monkey Cage’ and ‘More or Less’ listener. Admittedly, I don’t listen to those as podcasts, but usually when I’m driving home – as you have mentioned in the interview snippet you had done with Five Live. I only listen to one podcast called Genealogy Gems by a great host, Google Search fanatic, and someone I’ve met and attended a few talks from (when she’s in the UK), Lisa Louise Cooke. Listening to her over the years has always made me curious of doing my own podcast series – as there seems to be a complete lack of UK genealogy podcasters. Your articles and love of podcasting might just give me that push to start something as a companion for my blog. Thanks, and look forward to seeing you again soon.
    Andrew

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      17 Oct 13 at 1:35 pm

      Thanks Andrew, glad you liked the post; a little more of a personal one I guess than some of my others. As you can tell, I do indeed love podcasts and podcasting! I hope you do start a podcast yourself as it can be good fun and very rewarding, although it can take a bit of time and become a commitment if you want to produce regular episodes. Catch you soon, Richard

      Reply
  2. Sam Collett (@WhatSamSawToday) commented

    21 Oct 13 at 10:44 am

    Richard a great write up.

    I empathise with the trying to find time as well – hence why I don’t tend to listen to many.

    At the moment I am loving the Digital Human series on R4 – however, it is still a conscious effort to set aside time to do this!

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      21 Oct 13 at 6:46 pm

      Thanks Sam.

      Sometimes you have to “make” the time, but the beauty of podcasts is that they can be time-shifted and are easy to listen to while your doing mundane tasks like mowing the lawn or doing the washing up, which are times when it would be difficult to consume other types of content like reading or watching a YouTube video.

      P.S. I’ve added the Digital Human podcast to my list, I just have to wait for the next episode to become available.

      Reply
  3. Steve Stewart commented

    18 Nov 13 at 10:05 pm

    Oh man, I knew I shouldn’t have read this post. While I listen to about 2/3 of the same shows you do, I had never heard of More Or Less: Behind The Stats and had to go check it out.
    In short: Now I have another show to try and squeeze into my already overloaded podcast playlist. Thanks a lot Richard! 🙂

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      20 Nov 13 at 1:03 pm

      You’re welcome Steve. It’s always nice to discover new podcasts and the More or Less one is great at debunking false statistical claims. I can appreciate your frustration trying to fit everything in though.

      Reply
  4. Kevin Scullion commented

    27 Dec 13 at 10:52 am

    Richard

    Thanks for the post. I travel around Scotland and listen to many podcasts. The only thing I find frustrating is how poor the search facilities are on iTunes. It makes it hard to discover new and interesting podcasts.

    So I use Google and recommendations from people particularly from other podcasters. I found your post on The School of Podcasting comments. I share your list in terms of the podcasts about podcasting ones but I’m also interested in astronomy and short stories.

    Cheers.

    Kevin

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      28 Dec 13 at 1:38 pm

      Hi Kevin, Like you, I tend to find most new podcasts by recommendation. Which astronomical ones do you listen to out of interest?

      Reply

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BBC Radio Interview on Podcasting

Listen to my interview on BBC radio about podcasting and how long a podcast should be:

https://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/BBC-interview.mp3

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Richard Farrar

Hi, I'm Richard; an Electronic Engineer by trade, self confessed Geek, Blogger and Podcaster, although as often the case life has the habit of taking us on unplanned journeys... Read More ›

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