By: Kate Pearce
Biking has become our 9 to 5 pursuit this summer. Except normally we start well before 9, especially as we are in the midst of an intense heat advisory in Missouri.
Caliphate. Radiolab. The Moth. Serial. She Explores. TED Talks Daily. And more! Many of us choose to listen to podcasts on the road. Especially as we’ve been biking along the flat and forested Katy Trail the past three days, there are no cars to worry about. With the open trail ahead for miles, it gives us the chance to focus on other things.
It can be boring biking on the same trail for hours each day. Obviously, animal sightings (snakes, squirrels, and birds oh my!) and weather changes keep it interesting. However, we also take matters into our own hands and often listen to podcasts. I’m a big fan of Radiolab, and Annie and Matt also like to listen. Here are a couple of my recommendations.
Radiolab: Bigger Little Questions, Dark Side of the Earth, Poison Control
The Moth: Blue Men, Psychopaths, and a Bad Date & Hand Transplant, DNA, and a Backwards Heart
She Explores is about women in the outdoors. Sometimes it’s too rah rah or cheesy, but other times it hits on the passion and community present in women who love the outdoors. TED Talks Daily is also a reliable and interesting podcast channel. They can be listened to sporadically and are on a variety of topics.
Sometimes the MIT-ness of it all is scary. I listened to a TED Talk on the future of AI given by my 8.02 professor Max Tegmark. Another podcast I was listening to about gene drives in mosquitoes featured an MIT Media Lab scientist. Likewise, the famous Eric Lander, pioneer biologist on the Human Genome Project and Intro Bio professor at MIT (among many other cool titles and associations), told a story on the June 12th episode of The Moth. Even as we’re so far from MIT both physically and mentally this summer, it’s cool to see the scientific impact and reach.
During the school year, I normally listen to podcasts at 1.5 or 2x speed while running or walking. It’s a symptom of constant busyness and a desire to be efficient. I found it kind of symbolic, then, that I’ve been listening to hours and hours of podcasts at 1x speed as I bike. Time goes by as we roll along, and I have many hours to savor. Sometimes it’s easy to feel like I should just bike fast and listen fast and “maximize” everything, but I try to focus on enjoying the ride as opposed to racing to the destination. Admittedly, this probably reads as the cliché “it’s about the journey, not the destination” but with 7+ hours of biking, you’ve got to at least try to enjoy the ride!
From stories of medical anomalies to near death in outer space, the stories that these podcasts tell keep me interested for sure. Annie, Matt, and Delia have also listened to Caliphate and are huge fans of the impressive journalistic storytelling that helps shed light on ISIS. Lisa and I might be convinced to start this one soon. All in all, as we’ve been listening to podcasts, we try to get each other to listen to the good ones we’ve found.
In the past, I’d listened to part of Serial, and Delia and I are about to try listening to that soon. It’d be fun to listen around the same time so that we could discuss.
Suffice it so say podcasts are educational and entertaining. Come the end of the ride, though, I often just switch over to music to power me through. I’m writing this on a break during our longest and hottest day yet, so I’m sure my podcasts will fade to music later on. Regardless, I hope that you can find some podcasts you like from our random suggestions or at least get some answers to “What do you DO all day on those bikes?”
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