Everything I want? It has to be good for me!

I have recently discovered podcast. For those of you that are not familiar with podcasts, they are almost like mini radio shows. The idea of a podcast immediately brings to mind thought on technological advancements. Didn’t we advance beyond radio and into TV? Wasn’t radio dying…just those filler moments in the car between places? Are we regressing backwards? These are some of the questions I have been pondering over the last few weeks as I have immersed myself into the world of podcast. For the last two weeks I have been listening to—well I was going to say “back issues”, but issues implies written words, so maybe I was listening to reruns?...no that doesn’t work either because it implies that an organization is actively airing it again…how about past-casts? Ok, back to the thread—For the last two weeks I have been listening to past-casts of “Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing” and pondering the question of radio verses podcasts. I came to the conclusion that the reason podcasts are technologically advanced over radio is that they are on demand. You download them and listen to them when you want to. With radio programs, if your boss decided to hang around the cubicle farm at the wrong time of day, you were out of luck. This, of course, leads to the question, “Why are these different from movies, audio books, music or TV shows, all of which are also available on demand?” Here I think it is both cost and availability. To watch a season of a TV show or a movie, you have to go to some store or wait for it to be delivered. Find a podcast you want and it’s yours faster than my dog can sneak up and slobber on me. Movies on demand are equally convenient, but can be costly, whereas a podcast is free. The only real media that can compare in cost and ease of access is you-tube videos. However, I think they may lack in entertainment value. I know that there are certainly entertaining videos on you-tube, but they lack relation to one another and it’s hard to build up a following. But, I am not interested in talking about you-tube vs. podcasts. The pertinent conclusion to this internal debate was that podcasts are here to stay.

Of course, the world of podcasts is relatively small. By this I mean that, even though it is already huge and growing, compared to the literature world or any other media, it is tiny…miniscule…practically nonexistent. So as I have been listening to the past-casts of several podcasts that are right up my alley, I have been thinking that I could get a handle on them and listen to every episode out there. I would have an entire collection!!! (I like to have complete sets. I mean sometimes I won’t even start a series of books until the series has been entirely written, so I feel like I can have the whole story in my head. You can see what a big deal it is for me to be able to listen to every episode of a podcast). As I explore the world of podcasts, I keep adding new ones to my list. I currently have about 550 episodes that I have not listened to. I am pretty sure that I am not going to be able to get through them all, keep up with the new episodes and give more newly discovered podcasts their proper attention. My ability to glue my headphones to my head is not the point though. The real gem is that I am able to find this many regular podcasts that cater exactly to my interests. I am practically wiggling in my seat with enthusiasm. It makes me remember when I was a child and there were only two channels on TV. I hated most of the shows that were on TV. Similarly, when we went to the library, the choices of books were sadly thin, often missing volumes in a series (now you know the real reason behind my obsession with complete sets.) I was often forced to read normal young adult fiction instead of the science fiction/fantasy that I wanted and forced to watch Wheel of Fortune when I would have much rather watched He-man and She-ra cartoons. Now, as I see this vista of unlimited delights before me, I think, “What a wonderful age we live in!” If he wants, a person can find reams of literature on studying “muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battles” (Dr. Seuss reference, go look it up). So if I want to spend the rest of my life listening to podcasts on Sci fi publishing and read all the fantasy books I can get my little fingers on, I can! And the way the world is going, I might be able to able to get it all for free. Excellent!!!

Then a new line of thinking occurred to me. Was it really a good thing that I would be able to immerse myself in the subjects that I entirely enjoy? Even though I hated Star Trek (sorry, it’s true) as a child, it was good for me to expand my imagination in that direction. I mean, if I had not seen William Shatner in as Captain Kirk, how could I truly enjoy some of his lines as Denny Crane in Boston Legal? Would I know what it really meant to ‘boldly go where no woman has gone before?’ Probably not. I started to envision these poor children of the future who developed an obsession with a subject and were never forced by the lack of material to stray into another topic. Imagine when they grow up and go on their first date with that cute girl who sits next to him in that class on muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battles. They will find that he is very knowledgeable on the Star Trek and she is very adept in the study of quorum sensing in aquatic microorganisms, but they have nothing to talk about and no interest in learning about each other’s passion. Next they date someone who shares their interests, but find that they have nothing to say because they have studied exactly the same thing and had identical experiences. Society would break down and it would be the end of all civilization. Fortunately, at this point in musings, I remembered that there are already people like that; people who are obsessed with Nascar or a sports team or Starwars or a comic, yet they still manage to function (sort of) in the real world and procreate more little knowledge clones. Also there are people like me who might like sci fi one week and be completely obsessed with color pencils the next. Now, I don’t fear the breakdown of society, but I do worry that as more material becomes available for a specific interest, people will not be forced to diversify and an individual will be less interesting because of it.

After I finished writing the above, I was listening to another episode of Adventures in SciFi Publishing and found they were interviewing a woman (Marie Brennan) who did her graduate studies in SF/F fandom. How awesome that a person could pursue that as a course of study! But again, I refer to my fear of people never being forced to stray from their chosen topic…hmmm.