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!

We are thrusday evening, 18th of december and this is the first time since a long time that I am sitting and breathing. Oh, I have been breathing though but not in front of my computer.

I have spent the 3 past days in Stockholm for work, but found the time to meet a friend yesterday evening for the dinner. She is a very experienced french woman, living in Sweden since the 60’s and she is one of the most interesting people I know. Surprising, smart and loving culture, the discussions are always funny and very interesting. Plus she gives me some power when I have some downs, being a foreigner in Sweden. She has done it, so why not me?

For the rest, I am waiting for snow but it seems that we will have a rainy christmas again. It was already like this last yer and what to do? Nothing. The good part of getting dark so early is that you can avoid to see all the clouds and the rain falling. What for a compensation?

Ok, time to tips for nice and untertaining music: the VO of the film The grand hotel Budapest, enjoy!

It snowed for the first time for this new winter on thursday. It was actually magical to wake up and see all the white everywhere outside. I am longing to the cold period now, and more snow!

The week went pretty fast, again, and I haven’t had 5 minutes to sit and write some stories, I am sorry for that. The fact is that I had an intense week at work and every evening, I just went to bed and slept within some minutes. Yesterday, I fell asleep during the time M brushed his teeth…

We need to go downtown today. It takes 25 min to walk there, not that much you may think but it’s always an expedition. The sky is white, puder white. Like cotton.

Enjoy this song so far:

Oh and I was listening to some podcast this morning and the woman who was talking asked this question: “If people want so hard to make something, if it’s so important, why don’t they just do it?”. Think of it next time you really want to make something, why don’t you do it?

oh what I love this song! Allready as a teenager, I was dreaming of feeling the big love, the one that every romantic film describes and the one of the princesses. I never thought though that I would be a princess, white horses are so hard to get clean. But Damon Albarn -who I’ve secretly always been in love with- singing this song was always a promise to me that one day, I would feel it. Until then, I just had to dance and sing along through.

And one day, automn 2003, I saw him and could put a face to this “someone” the song talks about. Even today, this is the first thing I think of in the morning when I wake up on M’s side: tender is the night, laying by your side. And so strong is the longing of hugging him again after his days away for the work.

Tender is the night
Lying by your side
Tender is the touch
Of someone that you love too much
Tender is the day
The demons go away
Lord I need to find
Someone who can heal my mind

Come on, Come on, Come on
Get through it
Come on, Come on, Come on
Love’s the greatest thing
Come on, Come on, Come on
Get through it
Come on, Come on, Come on
Love’s the greatest thing
That we have
I’m waiting for that feeling
I’m Waiting for that feeling
Waiting for that feeling to come

Oh my baby
Oh my baby
Oh why
Oh my

Tender is the ghost
The ghost I love the most
Hiding from the sun
Waiting for the night to come
Tender is my heart
I’m screwing up my life
Lord I need to find
Someone who can heal my mind

Speaking of songs from Blur… Hum, actually, I may admit how I came to think and listen to them tonight first. I like to take a hot bath on sunday evening, which was pretty good tonight for my “sickness” or how you would call my head hurting, my nose running and my throat feeling sore. And I like to untertain myself, so I looked after a live concert from Blur, because I was feeling for it. I came of the back looking like an old turtle and I realized that to sing in a bath is thousend times better than to sing in the shower. Not for my neighbourghs for sure, but for me. Back to Blur. The song before Tender is Out of time. I put you the lyrics there, so you might understand how I feel:

Where’s the love song?
To set us free
Too many people down
Everything turning the wrong way around
And I don’t know what love will be
But if we start dreaming now
Lord knows we’ll never leave the clouds

And you’ve been so busy lately
that you haven’t found the time
To open up your mind
And watch the world spinning gently out of time

Feel the sunshine on your face
It’s in a computer now
Gone to the future, way out in space

Tell me I’m not dreaming but are we out of time?
(We’re) out of time

Even if I love my job, I can’t help for several reasons (mostly myself getting older) to think that I’m not accomplishing very much on earth right now. Not that I want to let things after me for posterity, but that I would like to fully use the chance that is given to me to live, and hoppefully have fun and be a good people for others and the planet. This chorus about beening busy and not having the time to open up the mind, that’s so in the middle of my problem. I regret that I don’t spend more time doing creative things or discovering new thoughts, both in words or musics or other way of expressions.

When I was a teenager, I listened a lots to Blur as well and actually, it was to me like a stay in England and all the descriptions about the english classes, both low, middle and upper. You can for exampel listen to:

–  Country house of course (He lives in a house, a very big house in the country Watching afternoon repeats and the food he eats in the country He takes all manner of pills and piles up analyst bills in the country It’s like an animal farm lot’s of rural charm in the country)

– Coffee and TV (Do you feel like a chain store? Practically floored One of many zeros Kicked around bored Your ears are full but your empty Holding out your heart To people who never really Care how you are)

– Charmless man (He thinks his educated airs, those family shares Will protect him, that you will respect him Yet he tries so hard to please he’s just so keen for you to listen But no-one is listening and when you put it all together There’s the model of a charmless man)

I was laughing at the stereotypes of the songs and thinking I was a way better than that. That I would live my own life, and not according to a modell of any kind. Where am I? I would like to finish this post with a bit of ironical hope:

Every paper that you read
Says tomorrow is your lucky day
Well, here’s your lucky day

It really, really, really could happen
Yes, it really, really, really could happen
When the days they seem to fall through you, well just let them go

Yeah, it really really really could happen. I will make it happen. What is behind “it” is another story to be told, hang on!