Podcast as Radio Extension

I love stories. I love listening to stories. Together my need for good stories told well brought me to podcasts. When I looked at the podcasts in the queue on my phone, I was started to see how many of them come from public radio–both Canadian and American. My recent favorite is one called “Cultivating Place” and I’m constantly amazed at how much anthropology, ecology, and sociology, the host, Jennifer Jewell weaves in to her weekly discussions with gardeners about gardens. Looking for slightly different podcasts introduced me to “Outside/In” a podcast produced by New Hampshire Public Radio. A friend recently introduced me to “Ologies” with Alie Ward which recently featured “Opossumology” and “Ciderology” along with “Corvid Thanatology”. I also listed to the first few episodes of “S-Town” (another public radio podcast) which “follows a man named John who despises his Alabama town.” The vast majority of the podcasts that I listen to employ an “interview-format”; far fewer of them use a single narrator. I realized that my interest in scholarly podcast grows from my wonderings if podcasts might not help share some of the creative nonfiction that I’ve been publishing. Certainly some of the journals I’ve published in now ask for voice recordings of the piece. It’s interesting to think about where the boundaries of podcasts versus audio-books versus literary publications are.