Pod Schooled

I'm continuing my education.  I've got the podcast list to prove it.  The professor for the course is 'Girlfriend' -- she looks and acts suspiciously like a well-kept iPhone.  She dresses in Otterbox white, and dirt refuses to cling to her shell.  Shhh.  My reputation is shot if people catch on that I've gone high-tech iTech.  Aww, who am I trying to fool?  Everyone worth a darn in my life KNOWS that is the pit into which I've fallen since my 40th birthday hit hard and generously just last winter. 

I should probably come clean and admit to surfing the net, blogging, and checking e-mail on my pretty-in-pink Dell laptop while updating my status ('stati' for multiple tweakings?) on Facebook using Girlfriend, all simultaneously.  With that revelation, I either instantly jumped ahead on both your popularity list AND your friend list or sank to the bottom of the ocean floor, never to be admired or revered in your gray matter again.  Should I mention I text and Facebook my daughters, son, and husband when the mood hits even when we are PRESENT at the SAME time in the SAME house?  Nawww.

So, back to podcasts.  The term has existed on the peripheral of my awareness for some time now.  NPR (National Public Radio for those of you not in the know) reminds its listeners to check their prodigious offerings in between music and shows.  My iTunes menu has a podcast selection in the list to the left of the main screen -- I just never knew what to do with it.  It all sounded a bit outer spacey to me.  Remember those enormous stone pods covered in oceanic plantlife in the classic movie, "Cocoon?"  They end up in the swimming pool of an abandoned mansion, lending their life force to the old folks who discover their age-related ailments clear up after a dip with the dino eggs?  THAT'S what came to my mind.

The real thing, an actual podcast, is a revelation in free, and often enlightened and most definitely entertaining, information.  It's all there for the taking on any number of subjects in varying lengths and degrees of professional production.  Faith, science, comedy, language, exercise, YOU name it.  Brilliant, I tell you.  Brilliant!  Where have they been all my iPod-inculcated life?  Let me interrupt to say I love me a whole slough of audio books downloaded to my iPhone; they are perfect company on my daily walks, house cleaning, gardening.  I remain loyal to them and will access the online R.E.A.D.S. program via my local library, scouring for titles to accompany down one street and up another from spring to winter and back again, for as long as they'll have me.

But the day I ventured forth, tapping the iPod icon on my touchscreen menu, and accessing the vast array of podcast titles, and encountered a vista of companions for my constitutional outings, I swear my life changed.  (Yet again, courtesy of Girlfriend.)  Where else could I hear QuackCast in which an infectious disease doc systematically attacks and debunks the doctrine of quack medicines with tongue-in-cheek humor and barely contained disdain?  I'm not quitting probiotics despite his well-researched rant, but I sure will read the labels and check the origins carefully!  Oh, and New York Times Book Review where inspiring authors are interviewed and their works compared to established writers, and new titles judged worthy or not so much with intelligence and just the right amount of verve.  I imagine myself there one day in the not too distant future.

My favorite podcast of the moment appears once a week on Mondays -- I await each update with baited breath, eager to catch wind of the subject matter -- and comes courtesy of Chicago Public Radio, This American Life.  In-depth stories ripped from the broad headlines and brought micro, ranging from the collapse of the housing market as it affected a condo building of desperate owners in the big city desiring to hang on despite being ripped off by the builder who left them with myriad construction crises; to the imminent closing of NUMMI (an auto plant jointly opened by GM and Toyota back in the early 80's which could have saved GM had the spirit of this particular plant caught on industry-wide).  

And, how could I forget this week's story on 'Enemy Camp 2010?'  One whole segment was dedicated to a guy whose allergies and asthma drove him to research cultures where residents did not commonly suffer such things.  His studies led him to West Africa where he toured 38 villages in two weeks to walk barefoot in their communal potty pits, hoping to contract a handy case of hookworm.  Upon attaining his goal and experiencing a marked reduction in his seasonal sufferings, he marketed his hiney-hosting denizens to fellow sufferers via an online business before fleeing to Mexico after being shut down by the concerned folks at the FDA.  My husband, who is miserable year-in and year-out with sinus headaches and the full-on attack of histamines, is so-o-o-o lucky that guy no longer ships to America!  One worm or two, honey?  (We Googled him.  For $3,900 he can help you conquer wheezing, sniffles, itching, and even alleviate Crohn's Disease and other maladies.  There is actual science to back this up though HE is neither a doctor or a scientist.  Check it out!  http://www.asthmahookworm.com/)

I find myself wondering if I, too, should enter the fray and start my own podcast?  Off the top of my head, a short topic list might include a reading of letters from the edge of sanity per my brother's writings; adventures in flax, yogurt, and brooding bowels; what to do when the garden throws you Bermuda grass, blue lizards, and black widows; the profound wisdom of the American teen at the expense of mine own wisdom; and how to create usable topographical maps by connecting the stretch marks and spider veins present on my body and yours.  Would YOU listen?