Speed up Your Podcasts for a Better Listening Experience
There are so many good podcasts out there (including Lifehacker’s The Upgrade ), but there isn’t much time in the day. The Wall Street Journal reported on “podcast geeks” that are making time for podcasts, speeding them up with apps like Overcast . Like, up to 5x speed. Sure, it saves time, but it also likely raises your blood pressure and makes listening to podcasts super stressful. So what is the best speed for listening to podcasts without sacrificing your health or ruining the podcast?
Many podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts , have features that speed up the release of podcasts. Overcast has a Smart Speed feature that speeds up podcasts by reducing pauses. I listened to an episode of The Upgrade about awkwardness using the Smart Speed setting in Overcast and turned up the volume by two stops. Overcast turned a 53-minute podcast into a 34-minute podcast with no pitch change or sacrificing podcast quality (thanks tech). The speed ranged from 1.1x to 1.8x, but mostly stayed at 1.3x. By continuing to listen, I was able to increase my listening speed by an average of 1.8 times. I tried 3 times but it seemed too fast for me. I could still understand what the podcast was about, but it took all my attention and it was exhausting to follow it.
Lifehacker staff writer Nick Douglas says Overcast’s Smart Speed is great for unedited talk shows, but not so good for high-performance shows. When listening to The Upgrade, Smart Speed ranged from normal (1x) to 1.1x speed, which doesn’t save much time. But for shows like Being with Christa Tippett , which publishes unedited versions of its episodes, Smart Speed sped up the recordings 1.2 to 1.7 times faster.
And while speeding up podcasts certainly saves time, it can degrade your listening experience, depending on your personal preference as well as what type of show you’re listening to.
Obviously, you shouldn’t speed up podcasts when timing is important, like meditation podcasts, music podcasts, or comedy podcasts – you can’t listen to Welcome To Nightvale at 2x speed without breaking the tension and changing the tone of the narrative. But for podcasts I’m just trying to get information from, like The Daily New York Times, speeding up podcasts might be more effective.
As with multitasking , when I am in a rush to get as much as possible in a short amount of time, I keep listening to accelerated podcasts knowing that this is a kind of trade-off between pleasure and efficiency. There is something attractive about being more efficient even when you don’t need to, and having an extra 19 minutes a day that you could spend listening to another episode of the podcast.