My Latest 'Love'

I toyed with the idea of calling it my latest 'resource' or 'interest' or 'fad' or 'fancy', and then settled for 'love', for the simple reason that it's having such a huge and wonderful influence on me, my life. Stuff that inspires, invigorates and empowers on daily basis.

It's 'Podcasts'

For those not familiar, a podcast by definition is an episodic series of audio or video files. The term itself came into being in 2004, when it was first mentioned by Ben Hammersley in a newspaper article titled 'Audible Revolution', where he came up with this portmanteau of ipod and broadcast, among other titles, and this one stuck.

I've been listening to audio podcasts of conversations with some really agile and interesting minds, so beautiful, informative and thought provoking.

They are typically 45 to 60 mins in length, a hybrid of a talk and interview, really in conversation format, with a facilitator and a speaker.

The first one I stumbled upon is called 'Farnam Street's Knowledge Project' whose host is Shane Parrish, and today I almost feel I know him, as my day pretty much starts with his voice.

His goal - "master the best of what other people have already figured out"

Shane claims to "follow his curiosity as he talks with remarkable people to uncover frameworks, deconstruct strategies, learn new things, in less time, learn to make better decisions, and live a more meaningful life"

And then I started to follow Jason Gots on Bigthink, whose podcast series is called 'Think Again', where he says: 

'we capture the best ideas of the world's leading thinkers and doers in every field' and

'we surprise some of the world's brightest minds by taking people out of their comfort zone with unexpected conversation starters' (this is a nice tweak, where in addition to the core conversation, they also bring in some thought provoking clips from their own archives)

I was blown right from the very first one I listened to, and would have loved to write more on each. Each does different things to you.....an unexpected 'aha' moment, or a lovely 'profound and deep moment' or a plain 'simple but deep laugh aloud' moment, or a 'hmmm...that's so beautifully articulated' moment, and so many that I just got overwhelmed and wrote nothing. ( I listen on my walk so tough to take notes)

It's a whole new resource. And a fun one at that, as it's very conversational, and my bonus is that it can be done alongside my walk, thus making it a daily ritual.

It's definitely added a whole new layer to my life.