I use my ipod constantly, pretty much every day for at least a couple of hours, yet I almost never listen to music on it. Most everything I listen to on it is spoken word, and of that a goodly percent is podcasts. It occurred to me that despite this being the case for over a year now I’ve never really highlighted any of the spoken word content I’ve been enjoying, and I’ve never highlighted the podcasts I like. Time to start doing it. For my first entry I’ll point to one of my absolute favorites, the In Our Time podcast. It’s a podcast of a weekly BBC radio show. Each week they examine an issue, historical figure, period of time or any of a number of ‘big ideas,’ and break it down for discussion with a panel of experts. The host is pretty good about keeping things moving, and there’s a great variety of subject matter. You can subscribe directly using this link.

If the concept is unfamiliar to you – you don’t need an ipod or any portable music player to listen to podcasts, all you need is a computer capable of playing mp3 files, which pretty much any modern machine can do. Tools like itunes or juice make it easier to subscribe and receive the content automatically though, and are worth looking into if the idea interests you.

I’ll link to some of the other podcasts I subscribe to as time passes.