Loads of positive feedback followed my first Really Late Review last Friday. It seems I’ve found common ground with plenty of people who don’t leap on the next new thing the minute it comes out. Several readers promised to submit their reviews and Sharon Whiteside was first through the gate with her podcast review. I’m definitely going to listen to this one. Some podcasts are amazing, some are disappointing, but there’s nothing like a first-person review from someone you can trust. And that’s the whole idea. Enjoy Sharon’s RLR!
I often take the TTC to work and while it is about a forty-minute commute, it can be up to an hour if the weather is bad. I tried reading a book on the subway, but it either makes me dizzy, or I get too involved and miss my stop, or I can’t get a seat and standing and holding a book and turning pages while juggling my gym bag and purse requires WAY too much coordination for this gal. So I tried music, but it got boring to listen to the same tunes every day and too expensive to keep buying new songs from iTunes. Then I tried downloading books from various free sources including the library but found I couldn’t follow the story properly and also read an actual book at other times of day, and if I didn’t finish in the allotted time, it disappeared and I was left hanging.
So, listening to co-workers talk about Podcasts I started searching and found the lovely and talented Aisha Tyler and her Girl on Guy podcasts. It advertised itself as ” a podcast about guys stuff love, brought to you buy the ultimate guy’s girl”. I don’t really know what that means, but I enjoy seeing Aisha on Whose Line Is It Anyway and Criminal Minds, and sometimes watched The Talk when I was unemployed, so figured it was worth a try. I am “late to the game” as she started the podcasts in 2011, and I’ve started with the most recent episodes first, but I am loving them and will probably end up purchasing older ones. So far I have listened to her interviews with Chelsea Handler, Charlize Theron, Dave Navarro and Neil deGrasse Tyson – all names I have heard of but really didn’t know much about them. The interviews are pretty casual and not super structured, but they do move along well and cover a lot of ground. She likes to start with ” where were you born” which is a great opening and really takes each guest in a different direction. Most podcasts are an hour, and she also does a “listener questions” at the end of each year. They are funny, informative, sometimes sad and often thought provoking. I look forward to to listening to more episodes.
Sharon Whiteside