Key Takeaways
- It’s completely unnecessary to listen to podcasts at anything other than normal speed.
- Speeding through podcasts means you won’t retain the information, and will miss any nuance or emotions expressed.
- The practice of listening to podcasts at higher speeds is also extremely disrespectful to the podcasters.
You may or may not be aware that some people listen to podcasts at 2x their normal speed. And they think they’re being oh-so-clever by doing so. But they really aren’t. There are multiple reasons why this is a frankly ridiculous thing to do, and why it needs to stop.
If You’re Listening to Podcasts at 2x Speed, Please Stop
If you’re reading this because you are one of the people who listen to podcasts at 2x speed, please stop. You haven’t discovered a genius life hack, and you aren’t outsmarting the rest of us who listen to podcasts normally. You’re doing yourself a disservice by rushing through a medium that deserves the same respect as any other.
Yes, there are a lot of podcasts out there, with more cropping up every single day. And as someone who has listened to podcasts since before they became popular, I can understand the desire to consume as many of them as possible. But speeding through them at twice the speed is not the answer.
There are too many books in the world to ever read them all. So much so, that you likely can’t remember the author or title of books you’ve read. There are too many movies to ever see them all. There are too many potential holiday destinations to ever visit them all. Etc. Such is life.
Rather than rushing through podcasts by listening to them at 2x the speed, learn to zero in on the ones you absolutely need to hear. Once you accept that you’re never going to be able to listen to every podcast you like the sound of, the pressure is removed. It’s then about prioritizing the must-listen pods, and listening to those you’re in the mood to listen to at any given time.
4 Reasons Why 2x Speed Is Unnecessary and Pointless
There are many reasons why listening to podcasts sped up is nonsense. All of which add up to mean that when you listen to podcasts at 2x the speed, you’re doing both yourself and the podcaster whose work you’re listening to, a disservice.
1. You Will Not Understand or Retain the Information
The most obvious reason why you shouldn’t listen to podcasts at 2x the speed is because it will prevent you from actually taking in what’s being said. You may think that your clearly oversized brain is not only capable of understanding what’s being said, but also able to retain that information for later recall. But you would be wrong to think that.
Without conducting scientific experiments, I can’t say for sure how much less information you’ll be able to retain. But there’s a reason we don’t all talk to each other at superfast speeds. Nature has determined that there’s an optimum pace at which our brains can take information in and process it. And it isn’t at 2x the normal talking speed.
2. You Will Miss Out on Any Emotion and Nuance
Even if you think you’re capable of absorbing the information being laid out in a podcast, listening to it sped up means you’re going to miss out on any emotion or nuance expressed.
If you like listening to true-crime podcasts, that serious lilt in someone’s voice will, like the rest of the podcast, be turned into someone more akin to Mickey Mouse. Which, while mildly amusing, is hugely inappropriate.
If you prefer comedy podcasts whose only need is to make you laugh, by listening at 2x speed, you’re ruining the timing and wordplay. In essence, no genre benefits from this.
3. You Will Not Be Able to Enjoy the Podcast Fully
If a podcast is worth listening to (and if it isn’t, why are you bothering with it?), then it’s worth enjoying in full. Why have podcasts seemingly been singled out for this treatment? I know some people claim to be able to skim-read books and still enjoy them, but not only are they also wrong, why hasn’t this also been applied to other forms of media?
I could burn through all 11 hours of the extended versions of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy on fast-forward, but why would I? Would I have actually watched these films? And know what had happened? And why? In a word, no.
Should we all start listening to music sped up too? After all, if someone speaking words into a mic can be sped up, why not someone speaking into a mic while people play some instruments in the background?
4. You Are Disrespecting the Podcasters Responsible
Even if you’re not bothered about how listening to a podcast at 2x the speed affects you, spare a thought for the podcasters responsible for the content you’re consuming. Do they really deserve such contempt that their content can be listened to in a way they never intended?
Sure, most podcasts are sponsored or paid-for in some other way these days. But then so are other entertainment mediums that no one has ever thought of speeding up. Podcasters spend time and energy writing and recording podcasts for your aural enjoyment, so the least you can do is listen to them at the speed they intended for you to listen to them.
Is Normal Speed the Only Way to Listen to Podcasts?
I have obviously rallied against listening to podcasts at 2x normal speed here. But is the normal, 1x speed, the only legitimate way to listen to podcasts? After all, the podcast apps that allow you to change the speed at which you listen to podcasts have more options than just 1x and 2x speeds.
For example, Spotify, the podcast app I choose to use, offers everything from 0.5x speed to 3.5x speed, with increments of 0.1 for both extremes. The extremes are, as you may have expected, ridiculous, making the podcast unlistenable. But is there any speed other than 1x that is at least listenable?
Having tested them all out on one of my favorite podcasts, I found a very small window where my enjoyment wasn’t sullied. And that is anything from 0.9x speed to 1.2x speed. That’s it! Anything slower than that, and the podcasters sound like they’re slowly drowning, and anything quicker than that, and they sound like a highly-caffeinated Mickey Mouse tribute act. Neither of which is desirable.
The bottom line for me is that you should be listening to podcasts at the speed they were recorded at. Not only is it how the content creators wanted them to be listened to, it aligns with what nature has determined to be the optimal speed for us to understand and retain the information being imparted.
If you want to think you’re cleverer than the rest of us, speed your podcasts up to 1.2x speed, but any more than that, and you’re making a mockery of the medium as a whole.
