Adam Curry and John C Dvorak - Interesting Segment on "Podspeeding"

The speaker discusses the concept of "pod speeding," which refers to listening to podcasts at a faster speed. Some people have reported negative effects such as feeling jittery and having less patience with others. One person shares their experience of feeling fidgety on certain days due to listening to podcasts at an increased speed. Another person wonders if long-term exposure to unnatural resonance, caused by listening to audio at higher speeds, could contribute to cognitive decline and mental health issues. The speaker and their friend discuss the possibility of saving lives by addressing this issue. The conversation also touches on different playback speeds and the potential impact on the listener's perception of the world. The speaker expresses their belief that better podcasts are needed and suggests that listening at a slower speed may be beneficial. Speaking of such, more response from my rant against pod speeding, that is now the official term. Pod fasting was not working for everybody. Pod speeding is the act of listening to a podcast at more than the normal speed. We have unscientific evidence, but a lot of accounts, firsthand accounts of people saying that it has hijacked their nervous system, they have no patience with the people around them, the people they love, their spouses, their children, their coworkers, that it makes them jittery, and there are two more pieces that came in that I would like to share. Because I want to mention something here. Yes. I have gotten some complaining notes about this, about your obsession with this. Yes, I'm just trying to save lives, that's all. And I'm backing you on this, because I think it's interesting. The people who are complaining, there you go, they are already irritated. They're irritated by us even talking about it. They're just literally irritated. Yes. Thanks for opening my eyes to the pod speeding side effects. My pod fasting or pod speeding use case was this. I try to listen to the show live on Podverse on Thursday and Sunday evening here in Germany, but my wife wouldn't let me listen to the whole show, so the next morning I would 1.25 it to re-listen to the bits I heard live and catch up on missed out sections. This of course meant that I'm really fidgety on Fridays and Mondays, and now I know why and will not do it again. How about that? And this final one from Sir Scovey, Earl of the Piedmont. The discussion about audio playback speed has given me much to contemplate about my blind parents. My dad lost his eyesight entirely when he was 12. In his adult life, he listened to thousands of hours of audio books, most of which he checked out for free from the National Library for the Blind. At the time, the NLB provided cassette players with playback speed control. In later years, he listened to digital audio books. Regardless of the format, my dad routinely listened to audio books and eventually podcasts on playback much greater than 1x speed. My dad died in 2019. He was diagnosed with frontal temporal lobe dementia just days prior to his death. He struggled often with anxiety and depression in his later years. Now my mom has been blind since birth. She was a medical transcriptionist for nearly 50 years. For decades, her words per minute was 120 plus and she often listened to dictation at speeds much greater than 1x. For the last two years, my siblings and I have observed what we fear are signs of decline in her cognitive ability. Your point about resonance makes me wonder if long-term exposure to unnatural resonance can be a factor in cognitive decline. I've consumed a lot of podcasts and audio books in recent years. Other producers have noted playback speed was based on the presenters or narrators, and I agree. Some have slow cadence. I never listened to NA at speeds greater than 1.0. Normal rate is perfect. In fact, off-putting me to higher playback speeds. But I think that maybe we've struck something here about depression and anxiety. We could be saving lives with this, John. Well, I'm gonna give it to you. You're the one doing it. But I'm interested in this. This is fascinating. We need better podcasts. I think probably there's gotta be something to it because if you start listening to everything at 1.5 or, I don't know, could you listen at two? Oh, some people do, sure. I think you could if you had the right pitch, kind of a thing that was accounting for pitch. No, that works. The pitch control is built into these systems. It rarely changes the pitch. First, they chop out silences. So you sound normal, but you're talking real fast. But you're talking really fast like this. Yeah, but clear. The problem is not listening to the podcast. The problem is the rest of the world. That's the problem. You can get depressed if everyone's slow and not moving at your speed. Yeah, with driving, guys. Yes, yes. You should probably be listening to the podcast at 0.8. Now, I did get some notes from people saying they listen at half speed. Oh, that's cool. And we just both sound like a couple of drunks. That's cool. People are just making fun of us by saying no one listens at a lower speed. I don't even know why they put lower speed in it except for Ben Shapiro, maybe. Ben Shapiro, maybe, maybe. Yeah, Shapiro, there's a couple other people. Yeah. Anyway, I'm only doing this, I've given up on my art, our art, of creating beautiful programming. I've given up on that. Oh, by the way.