Growing up, I used to hate when my parents turned on NPR when were on long car rides. Today, however, I actually find myself enjoying the program. At times, NPR interviews and stories can be lengthy and dry, but usually they are very interesting. My favorite NPR program is Fresh Air with Terry Gross, which covers a wide range of topics, from music, to films, to health, and much more. Perhaps the best thing about NPR, however, is that it offers free podcasts on iTunes. A podcast is (usually) a series of digital episodes downloaded from the internet. When they first became popular, podcasts were strictly audio, but today there are several visual/audio podcasts. iTunes offers a wide variety of free podcasts available for download covering a wide range of topics.
For this blog post, I watched an NPR podcast about Adele, one of the most popular female artists right now. The podcast, Adele: Tiny Desk Concert is an episode in the NPR series Tiny Desk Concert, which gives the audience an “intimate” interaction with popular as well as up and coming artists. This episode in particular is about 12 minutes long, as are the rest of the episodes in this series, but podcasts in general run anywhere from a few minutes to more than an hour. What I like about this podcast series is that there is a video aspect to it as well as audio. Had it been just audio, I would feel like I was just listening to Adele on the radio, which I already do almost every day. There is just something different about being able to see her perform.
Despite our obsession with television and movies, podcasts are surprisingly popular. They are played in cars and at the gym. They make people laugh, cry, and get upset. Whether they are strictly audio or accompanied by video, I think that podcasts are going to be around for a while.
