It’s Podcastic

When it comes to hand-me-downs, I have little shame.

(Yeah, yeah … I have notable shame deficiencies in other areas, too; but those are fodder for other postings.)

I drive an inherited car. I compute on hand-me-down computers. I read hand-me-down books. I wear some hand-me-down clothes. (I tell hand-me-down jokes ...)

Yet every handed-down item is, by definition, comprised of one hundred percent post-consumer recycled content. The hand-me-down market turns one man's refuse into another man's treasure. The discarded items of those who stay on the cutting edge wind up not in the dumpster, but instead in the hands of us less discriminatory folks who can continue to extract value today from yesterday's goods.

As such, in these more environmentally conscious days, I can hold my head high and proudly state that my proclivity towards embracing the down-handed material good makes me the embodiment of positive stewardship of the earth's precious resources. It is quite satisfying to be part of the solution.

(Not that I am an environmentalist by any means; far from it. I am about as green as a stop sign. No, my satisfaction is drawn more from the relief that I no longer have to admit to being too broke and/or too cheap to buy the stuff myself.)

So when Ms N upgraded her iPod recently (she got the spiffy new one with the tiny screen and the irritating commercial), I became the very happy recipient of a hand-me-down iPod.

It fails to bother me in the least that both my fiancé and my daughter have much nicer and newer iPods than I, nor does it bug me that engraved into the back of my iPod are the words, "This is mine. – DevineMsN."

While I would like to have the newer model, I much prefer what little cash I have staying in my wallet for the time being. And I sincerely doubt I will ever be accused of stealing from Bette Nidler.

So at first, I limited my iPod activity to listening to the songs Ms N left behind. You know, the hand-me-downs. While I’m not quite the Prince fan she is, I happened to enjoy the other songs not found in my collection, like Apache from the Sugar Hill Gang and select songs from Big E. Smalls.

(Ain’t that right, Boo? True!)

Soon I (by which I mean Ms N) started loading on songs from my CD collection. Shortly afterwards, I (by which I mean me) realized that The Economist, my favorite magazine, had an audio version, which of course, could be played on the iPod.

(Yes, The Economist.)

(Would you believe I only get it for the pictorials?)

So I tried out the audio version ... and liked it! While I found the quaint British spelling quite amusing in the printed version, having it read aloud in that accent is absolutely smashing!

(And the fact that Robin Bew, Editorial Director and Chief Economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, tends to sound a bit like Monty Python’s Terry Jones makes it that much better. I just love getting global economic forecasts from Mr. Creosote!)

Then I started looking around for other audio. Boy howdy, there is no shortage of this crap out there on the internets! And it's all too easy to subscribe, too. Before long, I found myself subscribing to 75 separate podcast feeds.

Yes, I am a Podophile.

If I were to listen to all the downloaded content I currently have on my computer, it would take four days – six if I wanted to sleep at all.

So with all this, I have some recommendations. For political discussion, there’s Left, Right & Center, from Santa Monica NPR affiliate KCRW. There is also the Washington Post's P3: Post Politics Podcast.

Paul Douglas Boyer's Mad Money Machine is a good investing show.

For business news, I stick with The Economist audio edition and The Wall Street Journal.

The Harvard Business Review's HBR IdeaCast (We’re ideating!) has some very interesting business discussion.

And of course, no Libertarian's day is complete without the Cato Daily Podcast.

In the mean time, I can't figure out which is sillier: The Official White House Weekly Radio Address or The Official Parody of the White House’s Weekly Radio Address.

(Perhaps Discurso Radial del Presidente ... You can't figure out what El Presidente is saying here, either, but at least there's a valid reason!)

(Then again, there’s the podcast for the President's dogs.)

(Yes, really.)

Of course, if you are not as excited by global economics, investing, and politics as I am, you may be more interested in Short Cummings Audio, a great collection of humorous essays written and read by Kevin Cummings. He is one of the funniest humorists I have seen in quite some time. (Imagine Dave Barry and Tom Bodett's love child.)

Bowl of Cheese, by Jeff Cutler, was another good find.

And what podcast library would be complete without the great works of comic genius John Cleese? (Much to my chagrin, thanks to this podcast I learned that for the past 20 years I have been pronouncing his name wrong. Turns out it rhymes with wheeze, not fleece.)

If you want more than this, don’t ask me ... Ask A Ninja!

(Just don’t go to Aks a Ninja … stupid fake sites!)

Ms N was taken aback by the speed at which I latched on to podcasting, but really it is just what I was looking for. For starters, I crave content. Like good ol' Number Five from the movie Short Circuit, I need input.

Unfortunately, carrying around all the magazines, newspapers, and such I would like to have gets to be a pain. Printing out pages from sites is not only wasteful, but creates quite the mess. The iPod, meanwhile, replenishes itself every time I plug it into my PC and fits nicely into my pocket, earphones and all.

That last feature provides one of the greatest benefits. As I head into the men's room for my morning constitutional, I've found that the iPod is as inconspicuous as the Wall Street Journal isn't!