thebitterbabe

I was listening to, yes, a podcast the other day, and the woman being interviewed said she never listens to music or watches TV anymore– all she does is listen to podcasts.

I can relate in that I have no idea why I’m paying for cable. I rarely turn on the TV anymore. I still listen to a lot of podcasts, although I’ve cut my listening down from what it once was.

One of the reasons I like podcasts so much is, like everyone else, I’m stressed out and busy and podcasts allow me to multitask. Along those same lines, I, like most people these days, have little time for long, intimate conversations either in person or on the phone, so podcasts fill that hole.

The other thing I’ve realized, though, is that podcasters (and celebrities in general) are rewarded for an honesty and an airing of dirty laundry that the rest of us can only dream about. As the competition for jobs becomes ever fiercer, the average citizen must build a carefully crafted image that allows for no vulnerability, no strong opinions, and no mistakes.

Podcasts allow us to vicariously experience humanity in all its messy complexity, a messy complexity that, in our personal lives, we must keep under wraps.