Cramped Style

I listen to a lot of podcasts. Really, I am a podcast fiend. I’ve all but stopped listening to music at this point. I listen in the car, on walks, while I work out (except for running…I still need a borderline repellent thumping beat for that), when cooking, when folding laundry, while making lists…you name it. I mainline audio content.

And with the Overcast app, I even organize them into topic-specific playlists — “News + Politics,” “Psych,” “Work,” “Stories,” “Feministing,” “Foodie,” “True Crime + Spooky Stuff.” There’s more, but letting you in on this, um, habit is starting to make me self-conscious.

Overcast lets you prioritize your playlists, and in my “Master Playlist,” the one I listen to most, I prioritize my favorite daily news podcasts like the NYT’s “The Daily,” Vox’s “Today, Explained,” “NPR Politics,” BBC’s “The World Tonight,” NPR’s “Up First,” and Crooked Media’s “What a Day.” I also prioritize the non-daily news podcasts. (I warned you…it’s a sickness.)

As you probably are not surprised to hear, all this news is not great for my mental health right now. I mean, it was probably never good for my mental health considering this habit really took hold in November 2016 (a date that will live in infamy). But now it’s really out of control thanks to that pain in the ass, coronavirus.