Podcasts, podcasts, podcasts!

What does it mean when you're no longer interested in downloading much new music? My brain has a limited capacity for memory (i.e. none) I guess, and I simply can't remember from hour to hour what music I wanted to download when I get home from work. It's a rare day that finds me on Amazon.com's mp3 download page. There is simply too much to do besides that. As a result, I generally listen to the same 3 albums on shuffle/repeat when I'm at home. That is, until I discovered podcasts...

That's why RSS feeds are the best invention of the Internet age. I can collect feeds from all over the Internet, and instead of opening 20 different websites to read news, webcomics, and listen to podcasts.

Podcasts, podcasts, podcasts! They are so wonderful. Just recently, I subscribed to an Irish Music podcast, and an NPR book podcast that takes a bunch of other NPR book-related podcasts and mashes it up into a digest version. I also subscribed to an Irish/Celtic music podcast. That's a whole hour of music I've probably never heard before. I'm looking for more music podcasts, but this celtic one has my feet moving all by itself.

The absolute best thing about podcasts, though, is the fact that I can plop a few in my feed reader and just listen at work at my leisure. Google provides an awesome aggregate reader at www.google.com/reader. Feeds can be found for almost any blog, and podcasts are an easy search away. Here's a list of the ones I subscribe to. It gives a fairly straighforward idea of what my interests are at the moment.

• T3 Podcast - a techy gadget podcast
• Irish and Celtic Music - showcases new celtic music
  
• NPR: Books Podcast - compilation of various book-related sound bites from all over NPR
• The Sound of Young America - brief-ish interviews with people my age group gives a crap about
• Philosophy Bites - snippets of information about various new philosophical concepts, and visits to old ideas as well
• Anime World Order - an anime podcast that's been around longer than mine
  
• The Instance - an excellent, high-production value World of Warcraft Podcast
• The Phileas Club - A monthy news recap/commentary from contributors all over the world
• Friday Night Party Line - as their tagline says, any topic is fair game, so this one's hit or miss for me.

Anyway, the takeaway advice here is that podcasts provide fairly quick glimpses into the things you like as expressed by others. For me, podcasts express a human need for vocal communication in a time where digital communication is king. RSS feed technology has gotten to a point where you can listen to podcasts directly from your feed reader (well, Google anyway, and presumably others) so you don't even have to worry about saving the mp3 files. Do yourself a favor and "Feed your need."

Also, if anyone has podcast suggestions, please let me know!