Podcasting

It really has enhanced my life. I hardly ever listen to music when I go for my walks. I download various shows and interviews, usually through Itunes, but occasionally through the websites that the shows are themselves broadcast. And mostly for free. You can subscribe to most NPR (Fresh Air, Leonard Lopate and This American Life to name a few) and C-Span book shows, and the podcasts will automatically update. Many of those shows will charge a fee if you try to download them later, though not a large one. One does not have to have an ipod to take advantage of this, the files can usually be transferred to a competing device.

Lately I've been delving into Itunes U -- and am currently going through some interviews sponsored by the 92nd Street Y (NYC). They have a few interviews that touch on science between Robert Krulwich and various writers and researchers. I listened to his interview of Oliver Sacks, played by Robin Williams in Awakenings. Krulwich is a science reporter for NPR and co-hosts the Radiolab show.

I must say I look forward to my walks -- and don't feel as deficient in my reading. I am also a convert to listening to interviews, I don't feel a need to see the person. In fact, walking seems to allow me to listen without distraction. My only complaint is that some of my best thoughts seem to come in go while I am on my walks, and while I return, the thoughts leave me.

Tom Friedman - Energy Technology

I haven't read Friedman's book, Hot, Flat and Crowded. And I was annoyed by Friedman for a long time for his "suck on this" rhetoric in support of the Iraq war, and his consistent insistence that the next 6 months would tell the story in Iraq got old after 36 or 42 months of the same.

But I don't like to hold grudges, and cut off good ideas just because I have had issues with the person speaking them. He also warmed my heart after the Republican Convention by pointing out the absurdity of people chanting "Drill Baby, Drill." He made the analogy to someone in the late eighties chanting "IBM Selectric Typewriters" in the face of the internet revolution.

Friedman has some very good ideas about the United States moving into a Energy Technology revolution. I drove to Cape May yesterday and listened to a podcast of Friedman speaking at the London School of Economics. You can download or listen to the address at the site I linked to, the powerpoint he used is also available. In a way I think Friedman is trying to reform himself -- and knows how poorly he performed in the early 2000's. If this is his path to redemption, I welcome him.