Podcasts on the Run

Being a glass-half-full person, I'm so grateful for having this (once in a lifetime?) opportunity of living through the pandemic. I realize this is not the most popular nor politically correct opinion, but it is entirely sincere. The pandemic resulted in a slowdown, which itself is great. And when slowing down there are so many things you can discover and experience. Normally they would not be noticed or would simply be ignored in our rat race.

Of course, a disclaimer is due: I do not have small children imprisoned with me in a small city apartament. I'm lucky to live in the woods, where every day (and I do mean every day) I go for a 10km trail run. 

These runs are like going through a sanctuary of wilderness. Just me and the forest. For some time I have been augmenting this experience with audiobooks fed via Bluetooth to the Bose Frames. The greatest audio experience in silent environment (again - this gear is NOT for any city runs, the noise pollution kills the experience). I started with Stephen King's The Stand (of course!), followed by the entire Dark Tower series (it took him 30 years to write and that is about 150 hours of listening!). In the meantime a number of other novels and now I'm going (again!) through the N.K. Jemisin's Trilogy of The Broken Earth. I've spent my years' worth of Audible credits in 5 months, but absolutely no regrets. I think I have consumed in the order of 10 thousand pages over the last year or so. Yes you need to slow down to read a book.

But also looking for other valuable audio content, I have revisited podcasts. To be honest this was sparked by the absolutely recommended NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership series run by Kimon Fountoukidis and Richard Lucas. Yes I do admit they approached me for an interview, but then I have subscribed and have enjoyed every episode.

And for the gadget child in me I wanted (again) to find a way to stream that podcast from my beloved Garmin watch, as I have the habit of leaving the phone at home when going for the run. Garmin has the concept of "apps", but they are not exactly the apps you know from an Android or iOS phone. The quality varies as does functionality. But there are some gems. Spotify is one of them. And it turns out Spotify supports podcasts so voila... A couple of clicks and I was downloading the Kimon's / Richard's episodes to the watch for offline play. Good stuff!