Informal learning with podcasts

How I listen to podcasts now

I search on Listen Notes and build personal playlists with Listen Later for each topic I want to learn about. Then I subscribe to my playlists with AntennaPod—The Open Podcast Player.

Why I changed the way I listen to podcasts

I learned about Listen Notes on a Hacker News post: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018).

I became curious to learn more about Listen Notes, it seemed like an innovative approach to consuming podcasts. I found a blog article by Wenbin Fang that explains why it’s worthwhile to build a search tool and a database for podcasts¹.

Initially I built Listen Notes for myself, because I couldn’t find the right tool to fit my podcast listening needs. I dislike the idea of subscribing to podcasts, because there are just too many podcasts that exist. It’s not worth listening to every single episode of most podcasts merely to find the portions of interest. I needed a tool to help me find individual episodes across all podcasts in the world.

In another article, he explains what is informal learning² and why podcasts are a becoming a resource equivalent to Wikipedia:

Why Podcasts Are My New Wikipedia —the  Perfect Informal Learning Resource | Listen Notes https://t.co/u8EBAjxaJ2 via @ListenNotes

— Listen Notes - Podcast Search & PodcastAPI.com (@ListenNotes) March 12, 2021

How I listened to podcasts before

I subscribed to individual podcast channels on Pocket Casts.

I still do subscribe to some individual channels with AntennaPod, mostly channels relaying news and current events analysis.