i’d rather listen to music than podcasts, usually

This one is for you, Kyla.

Everyone listens to dang podcasts these days. That’s fine but they don’t do much for me. Jenn will put some on when we go for road trips or to the cabin and I generally enjoy the ones she chooses. So far I have liked This American Life, RadioLab, Cocaine and Rhinestones, Revisionist History, Stuff You Should Know, and a handful of short series investigations into murders and shit. Side note, I wonder how typical my podcast tastes are. Am I a basic bitch? Whatever, who cares.

Anyway, despite enjoying those podcasts when Jenn and I are traveling or having dinner or sitting by a camp fire, I don’t like listening to them at other times. I admit I haven’t tried that often but I have a bit, and I haven’t liked it. I just tried again tonight. First I checked out a podcast by a black female fighter I really like (Angela Hill, she’s hilarious, and a great fighter) and her friend and UFC commentator who I also really like. They were talking about topics I’m very interested in so I thought, “wow, this sounds good.” I was excited to check it out. But after 5 or 10 minutes I was bored, disinterested. Pulled the plug. I felt bad because I really do want to support those girls but I just wasn’t feeling it. Then Kyla sent me a podcast she thought I would like, and I didn’t like it at all. I have already thought about this topic a lot but tonight’s events lead me to decide that I needed to blog about this.

Here’s the thing: I would almost always prefer to listen to music instead of a podcast. I love using music to elicit a particular vibe or feeling that I’m seeking, or using it to enhance whatever shit I’m already feeling. I love that, and music is great for it. Podcasts are obviously way better at communicating more concrete information, but I usually just don’t care. And I think this is the big problem, that I’m more of a feeler than a thinker. I’ve never felt like that before, because while I’m no genius I’m obviously not the biggest dunce on the block, but my preference for music and feelings and vibes over learning new shit has had me thinking about this a lot recently.

And that’s a shame, really. I’m jealous of how much Jenn learns from her constant podcast consuming. She frequently teaches me new shit that she has learned from them, and I’m envious of that. I want to learn cool shit too!…but I’d rather listen to disco or chillwave or nihilistic progressive black metal so that I can feel emotional and weird.

As with everything, I think finding a balance is important. I think both music/feelings and podcasts/thinking have equal value so I wish I could dig the latter more than I do. But I also believe that the left and right brain use different approaches to achieve similar things. I mean, they are just specialized in certain types of information processing. One is for abstract info, the other is for veritable info, and both are equally valuable. So maybe I’m not necessarily making myself dumber by choosing one over the other, like I’m afraid I might be.

But I am definitely afraid that I am just sticking with music because of the nostalgic value of a lot of the stuff I like. Nostalgia is fun and all but it lacks depth, I think. It’s pretty one-dimensional. It’s reliving old, safe experiences instead of creating new ones. Seeking new experiences is riskier, there is a greater likelihood of elements you don’t like, and that variety of elements adds more colour, more dimensions to the experience. But fuck, is it really that simple? I mean, when I listen to the right music at the right times, it can bring me to tears. I feel like that is a dead giveaway of deep emotional value, at least for me (I’m not a crier). But I’m also always digging for new music so I don’t think I’m totally obsessed with nostalgia when it comes to art anyway so this is kind of a moot point.

Conclusions:

• This is a really muddled post but I’m tired now and don’t care.
• I think podcasts and music are equally valuable but I generally prefer music.
• The jury is still out on nostalgia — it might be totally vapid crap but I don’t know, it sure doesn’t feel like it to me.

I might have to edit this tomorrow so Tizzy Sliz-a-bing-bong, I’m sorry if you get this crappy version emailed to you and never see the super duper cleaned up version. I just hate having incomplete posts sitting in the drafts folder, they weigh on me heavily.

Night night.

*Inevitable edit* – Ben texted me and pointed out that music is good for passive listens, while podcasts are not. I mean, how much information can you fully absorb from a podcast if you are distracted by whatever else you’re doing? I thought that was a really good point. Meanwhile, background music has tons of value. So yeah, I’m feeling better about my choices for when I listen to podcasts and music. Thanks Benny boy.

why is joe rogan’s podcast so popular?

I really like Joe Rogan as a UFC commentator, and he comes across as a decent and halfway intelligent guy that I like just fine, but man, his podcast super sucks and I can’t understand why it’s so ridiculously popular.

You may have seen the news that Rogoan just signed some deal with Spotify which will be hosting his podcast from now on. They paid huuuuuge money for it, and released some statement about how Rogan is an important host and media figure and blah blah blah. I wonder if they actually believe that or if they just said it because that’s what you have to say whenever you’re hyping some new shit up.

I can’t believe that they meant it because I’ve watched plenty of short 5 minute clips of his podcast and it’s *ok* in those small doses — it suffers from the same flaws as the full episodes but at least in bite-sized segments, I don’t get so annoyed by those persistent flaws that I have to turn it off, which is exactly what happens when I try to sit through more than 10 minutes of it. Joe repeats himself a lot (to fill time, I think?), he gets distracted and goes off-topic on dumb tangents, he always goes on and on about diet and nutrition stuff even when his guests aren’t into that stuff and haven’t brought the topics up, he interrupts his guests and directs the conversation to whatever HE wants to talk about, he brings on interesting guests who he should just ask occasional questions to and let them talk but instead he blabs on for 20 minutes about beans and how good they are for you but how the protein is different than the protein you get from meat and the guest is like, “ok…yup…oh wow…huh.”

Who thinks this kind of crap is high quality shit? What are they getting out of it? Do people actually care about what Joe thinks about this diet and that diet, and do they want to hear him talk about it multiple times per week, even when he has amazing guests on his show who could talk about far crazier things, things we haven’t already heard Joe pontificate on at great length? It’s not even just meat heads who listen to Rogan’s show because he’s also the UFC dude — I’ve met lots of people from all walks of life who dig it. It’s the weirdest thing.

I like Joe Rogan as a dude quite a bit but his show stinks. It’s pretty much just him — an uneducated but fairly thoughtful stoned guy — talking about whatever random shit pops in his head while his guests sit through it. No thanks. I’ll take This American Life, Radiolab, or Freakanomics over old Joe any day.

Sorry, Joseph. And hey, I’m not just bitter because Spotify picked up Rogan’s show instead of my blog. Yeah, we were in talks, but it just wasn’t a good fit for me over there.