When I commuted into New York City, much of the time spent on buses was spent listening to podcasts. Sure 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 down to a few minutes spent during a short drive. I stopped consuming podcasts and, in typical human myopia, I figured the Age of Podcasts had ended, and they were no longer a thing.
Recently podcasts have reentered my life, arriving in kind of a goofy way. No, it wasn’t 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). Living in Silicon Valley, following the news often means tech news. One day I was reading the umpteenth mention of Marco Arment’s new podcasting app called Overcast, and I decided to download it to see what the hype was about. I mean, how could an app that plays podcasts possibly be “revolutionary”? This is a problem that has been well and truly solved.
So I tried it. Yup. It’s awesome. The app makes it easy to find podcasts, subscribe, and stay up to date. It alerts me when new episodes of my favorites are available. Overcast has an uncluttered modern design, but that’s not why it’s awesome. The real power is in the controls, which can be set on a podcast by podcast basis. One button, voice boost, gives noticeable audio enhancement. In an even moderately noisy environment, this makes an enormous difference. Another button, smart speed, shortens the silences that naturally occur when people are talking. Of course, you can manually adjust playback speed– all the way up to a peppy 2.25x. It’s got a Netflixesque setting to play the next podcast when the current episode finishes. The 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).
Now, rarely a day goes by when I don’t listen to one or two podcasts. Some great shows are being produced. Rather than the age having passed, I would suggest that we are in the golden age of podcasting. I am so glad they found their way haphazardly back into my life.
Disclaimer – I am not affiliated with the Overcast app in any way and have never met Marco.