When I commuted into New York City, much of the time spent on buses was spent listening to podcasts. \u00a0Sure I played a few games on my iPad and read the occasional audiobook, but the majority of the time I gorged on one podcast after another.<\/p>\n
Then I moved to California, and my commute went down to a few minutes spent during a short drive. \u00a0I stopped consuming podcasts and, in typical human myopia, I figured the Age of Podcasts had ended, and they were no longer a thing.<\/p>\n
Recently podcasts have reentered my life, arriving in kind of a goofy way. \u00a0No, it wasn\u2019t the massive popularity of the podcast, Serial that brought podcasts back to my attention (though I did eventually listen to that podcast and enjoyed it). \u00a0Living in Silicon Valley, following the news often means tech news. \u00a0One day I was reading the umpteenth mention of Marco Arment\u2019s<\/a> new podcasting app called Overcast<\/a>, and I decided to download it to see what the hype was about. \u00a0I mean, how could an app that plays podcasts possibly be \u201crevolutionary\u201d? \u00a0This is a problem that has been well and truly solved.<\/p>\n So I tried it. \u00a0Yup. \u00a0It\u2019s awesome. \u00a0The app makes it easy to find podcasts, subscribe, and stay up to date. \u00a0It alerts me when new episodes of my favorites are available. \u00a0Overcast has an uncluttered modern design, but that\u2019s not why it\u2019s awesome. \u00a0The real power is in the controls, which can be set on a podcast by podcast basis. \u00a0One button, voice boost, gives noticeable audio enhancement. \u00a0In an even moderately noisy environment, this makes an enormous difference. \u00a0Another button, smart speed, shortens the silences that naturally occur when people are talking. \u00a0Of course, you can manually adjust playback speed\u2013 all the way up to a peppy 2.25x. \u00a0It\u2019s got a Netflixesque setting to play the next podcast when the current episode finishes. \u00a0The app has a sleep timer as well as handy buttons for jumping thirty seconds into the past or the future (useful for when a loud truck outside muffles a good part).<\/p>\n Now, rarely a day goes by when I don\u2019t listen to one or two podcasts. \u00a0Some great shows are being produced. \u00a0Rather than the age having passed, I would suggest that we are in the golden age of podcasting. \u00a0I am so glad they found their way haphazardly back into my life.<\/p>\n Disclaimer \u2013 I am not affiliated with the Overcast app in any way and have never met Marco.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I commuted into New York City, much of the time spent on buses was spent listening to podcasts. \u00a0Sure I played a few games on my iPad and read the occasional audiobook, but the majority of the time I gorged on one podcast after another. Then I moved to California, and my commute went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[8,9,10],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-lifestyle","tag-media","tag-podcasts"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianpagano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianpagano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianpagano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianpagano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianpagano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianpagano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianpagano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianpagano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianpagano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}