Since some people asked me what I listening to when I’m running, I will answer this question in a long post. The reason of that is that I don’t listen to any music anymore while running. I haven’t done that for years now but I still need a way to make the time run faster in order not to be bored with myself.

What is my solution, huh? I listen to podcats, thousand of podcats! Ok, not maybe thousands but a L O O O O T S of hours actually, and not only when I’m running, even when I am sitting in the train or when I fall asleep every night.

So here you go, the list of my favo podcasts, categorized by theme:

Documentaries, interviews

I love documentaries. I love to hear how other people live their lifes, how they grew up, the reasons why our lifes are so different from each others. I get inspired and relfect about my own life. Pretty often, I come to that point that 1) my life is pretty good and 2) if I want to change something in it, it’s only up to me. Very good to take away this victim-behavior that is so easy to get when I think that the whole world is against me. Ok, to the list:

• Les pieds sur terre (ca 30 min, french, every working day). One of my favorites ever: they just describe and let you on your own think what you want to think. I am always capted by the stories, from people like you and me and it inspires me a lot.
• Sur les docks (ca 1 hour, french, every working day except friday). These documentaries are like the big sister of the one above: story telling from real life. Sometimes, a whole week has a topic but most of the time, you can listen to the episods on their own. Not only french, some belgian stories make this podcast very interesting.
• Tendens (ca 30 min, swedish, every working day). This is all about letting people tell their stories, about something actual, happening in the society nowadays.
• Documentary on One – RTÉ Documentaries (ca 45 min, english, every two day). This is a very good (if I remember well, even prized) documentary about things happening around Ireland. I began to listen to it when I would travel to Dublin this fall, and I just couldn’t stop, even after the travel!
• P1 dokumentär (ca 1 hour, swedish, every sunday). One hour of good story telling, sometimes about sad destiny but always good quality in the telling. And even if it’s sad sometimes, it may open your head or heart. At least, it works with me.
• Varvet international (ca 1h30, english, every two weeks). Christopher Triumf has a very particular way to interview people, and letting them talk to the point. The other big plus of this podcast is that he interviews people (celebrities), that I had no clue about before and it is very inspiring. This pod exists since last summer, but I hope it will last a long time!
• Värvet (ca 1h-1h30, swedish, every sunday). Same author than the one above, but in swedish this time. It has been on the air longer than the international version, and is candy for the ears volume 10, in swedish though.

History

I also love listening about history. I always found that it was so much more easier to remind history like story telling than to read it. I feel that I know almost nothing about our past and this is a problem to me: we need to know where we come from in order to walk in the good direction. So I am adicted to history podcats. Here is the list:

• Les femmes, toute une histoire (ca 1 hour, french, every sunday). 2 or 3 guests sit around the programmanager and talk about actual topics, with their own experiences. They often have real experience of the things they talk about, like research or working with it, so this is a good source to learn real things (and not what people think things are)
• Concordance des temps (ca 1 hour, french, every saturday). This is a podcast that make relation between actual happenings and historical ones. Sometimes surprising to see the similitaries, it is always interesting to learn about what happened before.
• La marche de l’histoire (ca 30 min, french, every working day). Here we are going into a litle more pretentious podcast, but interesting as well. The topics are from the past and the interviewed people know about it very well. So good informations but sometimes a bit too serious.
• La fabrique de l’histoire (ca 50 min, french, every working day). This is as well a little pretentious podcast but it makes you travel to other continents. I cannot say that I listen to it every day, but I choose my topics.
• Historiepodden (ca 1h-1h30, swedish, every sunday). A pretty new swedish podcast that is excellent! It fills my unknowledge of swedish history with tons of good informations and the two guys talking are hilarious. They choose their topics depending on what is happening around and if not, they comment actual things from the news at the beginning. This is one of the podcasts I never miss.

General talks

I also like to hear about a little of everything. You will remark that the list is close to the documentary topics, but it is a little lighter, or at least not focused on one or few people.

• Kropp och själ i P1 (ca 50 min, swedish, every tuesday). About an hour of talks, interviews and facts about life, science or other topics that may interest most of the people in my age, like 30 something and maybe more. I like the mix of interviews and facts plus that the topics are interesting almost all the time, without being pretentious.
• Stil i P1 (ca 55 min, swedish, every friday). Much more than an hour about clothes, this program talks about all that hides behind the clothes, accessories and the choices we make every day. The topic can be a person, a kind of clothe or even a music style. There is always some connection to fashion, but a lots of very interesting other stuffs. I really recommend it!
• Les nouveaux chemins de la connaissance (ca 55 min, french, every working day). This program is a filosophy for the beginner, with links in our every day life. I don’t listen to it every day at all but enjoy sometimes a topic here and there. I feel smarter when I have listened to one. Always something!

How do I listen to them?

I use the app Podcaster, that you can find on itunes here. You can put toghether all your podcasts in one an only app, even if they are from different sources and this is pretty convenient. Android have for sure similar app, but I don’t listen to podcasts through my android device unfortunatly.

So you see, it’s a lots of hours listening to things, that may make me curious about life and other people. I don’t have any time to listen to music, when all these hours are gone and I love this pretty new way to get informations. I almost never listen to the radio, sometimes the news but not much more. It’s like: select what comes in your ears and you will hear your own mind better.

I am curious if you have any ideas about things I could listen to? Other podcasts? Thank you for any tips, you will save my lonely hours of running!