Download Often, Download Early
Download Often, Download Early
Archive those educational podcasts
Like “mortal men doomed to die,” podcasts are mortal, and … you know … doomed to die. In some instances, expiration will occur, to great fanfare and promises of sequels, when a series has run its course. More often, a podcast will simply disappear.
I like to think that the untimely demise of so many podcasts owes much to the realization that the regular production of a worthwhile audio program requires too much in the way of time, trouble, and treasure. In the age of the Clotshot, when so many friends and relations have fallen victim to “safety and effectiveness,” I fear that a good number of unheralded cessations stem from force majeure.
Whatever the cause, whether once productive podcasters are growing daisies, or pushing them up from below, the remedy for “sudden podcast death syndrome” is the same. Whenever you find a podcast that suits your purposes, download as many episodes as you possibly can.
The worst way to do this is to uses Podcast program bundled with recent (OS 10.15 et sequentes) versions of the Macintosh operating system. Rather than saving episodes in a well-marked folder, it hides them in the bowels of the operating system. Worse, it replaces the plain-language name of each file with an essentially random list of digits. (“They’ve given you a number, and taken away your name.”)1
The best way to download podcasts begins with paying for the privilege. Whether you do so directly (e.g. History of England Podcast) or through an intermediary (e.g. History of Europe, Key Battles), this will usually provide you wish access to ad-free versions of previously published episode, bonus episodes of various kinds, and, in many cases, early access to freshly minted materials. (Persons of the parsimonious persuasion will be tempted to time their contributions ways that minimize the price that they pay for access to a podcaster’s back catalogue. However, the rapidity with which a program can fall off the edge of the earth makes this technique - tip of the hat to Bonnie Tyler - a “fool’s game.”)
Once you have downloaded a bunch of episodes, be sure to make lots of copies. Better yet, make the latter-day equivalent of mix-tapes for your fellow autodidacts.
You were expecting Johnnie Rivers, weren’t you?