A to Z Joy: Everything is Alive

 

This one is a relative newcomer to my list. I was going to do a geeky writer thing with Edit for today (I really do love to edit). Then my friend April, who is also doing the A to Z Challenge, posted on social media about this podcast, and I am now hooked.

From the website:

Everything is Alive is an unscripted interview show in which all the subjects are inanimate objects. In each episode, a different thing tells us its life story--and everything it says is true.

Inanimate objects, you say? As in a lamppost, or a pillow? Yes, and yes.

If you enjoy dry, wry, understated humor with a touch of absurdity, this is the podcast for you. But it's also often profound, and I usually learn something random and fascinating, too. The episodes are short, which is good for my attention span, which seems to be dwindling by the day.

Happy 2nd week of A to Z!

Radio Silence

Welcome to another Wednesday here at the Take It or Leave It challenge! After last week's extra podcast listening, I decided to flip the script this week and give my ears a rest. I'm a big fan of background music and almost always have it playing at home, at work, and in my car. I like many different musical genres, so it often doesn't matter what makes up the soundtrack of my day. But there's always something.

Until I turned it all off.

On the drive to work that first morning, which takes a whole twelve minutes, I feared I had made a terrible mistake. Without public radio, I had nothing to distract me from the annoying rattle coming from somewhere in my car. One of the first things I do when I get to my desk is choose the music I will stream for the day. Instead, I gritted my teeth at the sound of the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Were they always that loud, or had I spontaneously developed some kind of Jaime Sommers bionic woman hearing?

At home, things were no easier. Cooking and eating without jazz music in the background is a lot less fun. And I don't know if this is weird, but I always wake up with a song in my head. Sometimes, it's a song I like. Sometimes, it's Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". There's no rhyme or reason to it. Without a new song to take its place, I was stuck with the bad song earworm for much longer than I wanted.

That's how most of the week went: me being hyper-aware of sounds I usually don't even acknowledge. And I also found out that there is such as thing as having too much time alone with one's thoughts. Well, maybe not for Bill Gates. But definitely for me. I confess that I had many moments where I almost lost my resolve and turned on some damn music already.

But I made it through seven full days of radio silence. Surprisingly, things got easier by the end, and I actually began to appreciate (some of) my silent moments. And various studies suggest that silence lowers blood pressure, boosts immunity, promotes brain cell growth in the hippocampus, regulates hormones, prevents arterial plaque formation, and decreases stress (even more than listening to music!).

Well, that's some food for thought. I know this week can't possibly be a Take It, because listening to music makes me happy. But I will make a point to be more mindful of silence and fit it into my day on a regular basis.

And now, for some throwback weirdness, here's Thomas Dolby's "Radio Silence". So very 1982.

Invasion of the Pod(cast) People

Back in the days before television--and definitely before my time--families used to gather around the old wireless radio for their nightly entertainment. From Little Orphan Annie to the Metropolitan Opera to the infamous War of the Worlds, there was something for everyone. Today, in the digital age, we can stream television content anywhere, anytime. And we do. But apparently we still love to listen to great stories, because podcasts are huge.

As of June of this year, the running total of podcasts is 750,000 and climbing, which adds up to more than 30 million individual episodes. Wow. And I thought finding something to watch on Netflix was hard.

Even though I sort of failed at audio books a few weeks ago, I wanted to give daily podcasts a whirl. I've dabbled in podcasts before, but not on a regular basis. So this week I dipped my toe into the Amazon River-sized stream of audio content and discovered variety that puts even the golden age of radio to shame. Despite that vast quantity of podcasts, it didn't take me long to narrow down my preferences:

Sports: No thanks. I don't mind watching, but listening to people talk about sports? No, no, a thousand times no.

Humor: It depends. Something clever (without an abundance of casual profanity), or the always funny Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, definitely. A couple of guys riffing about beards or whatnot--I'll pass.

Politics: Nope. I get quite enough of that by watching the news.

Science/Nature: Yes, please.

Psychology/Social Science: Another yes. History, too.

True Crime: This is a big one, because they are apparently very popular. I enjoy a good mystery, but if I start to feel like someone might be creeping around in the bushes outside, then that's not the podcast for me.

In general, the best podcasts follow the rules for good storytelling: they draw the listener in quickly, they build suspense and/or interest, and they don't waste time with a lot of extraneous details. It is not as easy as it might seem, but there are plenty of podcasts doing it very well. This week is a Take It, and if you have any podcasts to recommend, please leave me a comment! Happy listening!

Get your ears ready!