Among their podcast offerings, Minnesota Public Radio have started offering speedcasts: speeding up the audio but keeping the pitch down so the speakers don’t sound like chipmunks. Suddenly I’m more likely to listen to that hour-long show because it’s only half an hour.

Why there are separate feeds for hours 1 and 2 of Midmorning, I do not understand. That should change.

I am not an aural learner. I listen to a lot of podcasts — well, maybe 15-20 hours a week, I don’t know if that’s a lot — in part to help develop better listening skills. It still takes concentrated effort to absorb what’s being said. This is doubly true of the speedcasts, but that might change as I get used to the speed. Who knows, it might help my listening skills even more. We shall see.

Incidentally: most people I know who use screen readers have them set to read faster than the speedcasts.