The average Brit spends nearly 10 years of their life staring at pictures moving on screens. As of January 2019, Netflix has 139 million subscribers globally, while Amazon Prime and Hulu have 101 million and 25 million subscribers in the US respectively.
Video might have killed the radio star (according to The Buggles), but the podcast is having its revenge. The first few ‘online radio’ shows were established around 2004; yet by 2017, nearly 68 million Americans (approximately 1 in 4) listened to a podcast monthly. As of last month, there were nearly 660,000 podcasts in circulation, with 28 million episodes to boot – and that figure’s only ever increasing.
Podcasts are more shareable and portable than TV or print media. I can listen to a lecture delivered by a Yale professor while cycling down Haarlemmerstraat. I can hear Michelle Obama chatting with Ellen DeGeneres while sitting on Singel. As well, they’re even more time-efficient: you can listen while cooking, cleaning, cycling, exercising, or (surreptitiously) during a particularly boring lecture.
Listening to a podcast can be a more direct way of getting information, and more digestible – we speak in a way that is generally more accessible than writing, making episodes easier to understand than articles. The retention rate (how well you remember information) is two times higher with auditory learning than reading – and four times higher than attending a lecture.
Although many universities (including the University of Amsterdam) now publish their own podcast series, which can be mined for useful information relating to your own studies, science basically shows that you’re better off staying in bed, skipping uni, and catching up with the latest Spotify or SoundCloud has to offer. And for those with vision impairments, difficulties with reading, or those just short for time, podcasts are more accessible.
Netflix might be colonising our time while print media breathes its last breaths, but maybe the podcast offers a healthier middle ground. Life is short, the planet is dying, and we want to learn and consume while also getting on with things. My answer: turn off your screen and listen.