Let me outline my listening since about November:
In the build-up to the new series of Radio Lab last Autumn, I set up a recorder (Wiretap Pro) to save for me the Real Audio streams of older shows, when the "lab" meant a weekly experiment in radio from all over (in contrast to how it's nowgenerally taken as "this is a radio show about science". Anyhoo). I listened on my pocket recorder (Olympus LS-10 -- it can double as a mp3 player after all), on the commute to work, and listened to each episode of the new series twice.
And then it was all gone. Cold turkey.
Next I somehow or other discovered the unofficial podcast of Jonathan Goldstein's WireTap on CBC. I had about two years worth of episodes to listen to. So I did. They fitted very neatly into my commute -- that meant two episodes a day. I love it. And I think it started to show in my podcasts too... ;-)
And then... it was all gone too. I'm down to one a week.
Twitter wanderings recently brought me to Ear Ideas, and a podcast in praise of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales (the stuff of my childhood), by none other than Stephen Fry. And so I have discovered Stephen Fry's Podgrams. And so I am freebasing again! There is thankfully a backlog, so this morning I listened to something about a year old. And it nearly had me punching the air for joy. Not much to say about the format -- it's just about noticeable. What matters, here as much as in Radio Lab and Wire Tap, is what is communicated. Which really is a pointless statement as that is what everyone does in radio anyway! Maybe though this is a pointer to the difference between an art and a craft. For sure, mixing the two can tie you up -- as it has done for me. As a trainer, I may well have unnerved people as much as other editors did me.
Am I out of the knots yet? Over the fear of people that stops you micing a situation right? Not quite. But if you fear people, you'll only occasionally make great radio. Does the thread follow out to all of art too?
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