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Podcast Love and Hate

Stefan Tilkov,

Daniel Jalkut loves Podcasts. I positively hate them; I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would prefer an audio transmission over its transcript. The final statement on this topic, IMO, is rather old and was created by Maciej Ceglowski.

On October 1, 2006 8:25 PM, Daniel Jalkut said:

If you can read:

  1. Faster than you can listen.
  2. While running or walking.
  3. All original intonation of humor, sarcasm, etc.

Then I absolutely agree that you should prefer transcripts - you’re a magical creature!

On October 1, 2006 10:23 PM, Stefan Tilkov said:

re 3: no, obivously not. But I think this does require visual feedback, as well, ideally while being in the same room with the speaker(s).

re 2: when I walk, I prefer to listen to music since it allows me to let my mind wander. I don’t run :-)

re 1: I can definitely read faster than I can listen - about 3-10 times would be my guess.

But I totally accept that mileages vary, this is just my personal preference.

On October 3, 2006 7:36 PM, Olli said:

I would subscribe to Daniel’s point of view, although my motivation is slightly different. First, podcasts give me the chance to hear radio transmissions when I want and second, podcasts are ideal while driving on the highway since most radio stations have either bad music, bad information quality or even both. Another situation of using podcasts is ironing ;-)

Nevertheless, I also prefer transcripts if applicable and reasonable.