There are only three English language radio stations here. One is the Qatar Foundation station, which has strange programming, beginning with a meditation hour which is followed by an English morning show (your typical two DJs and their cast of characters, with sports, interviews, and music thrown in. And by music, I mean Jefferson Airplane and Elton John, etc.). Want to feel completely out of your depth? Listen to a British sports announcer discuss what happened in cricket and soccer over the weekend. I have NO IDEA what anyone is saying ever! After the morning show, classical music and instrumental oldies are interspersed randomly interspersed with recorded interviews with members of the Qatar Foundation describing their work and bizarre information pieces on topics like the origins of ice cream or comets. I like the morning show, but it doesn't start until after I drop the kids off at school, and the later programming is sometimes frustrating because you never know when there is going to be music, muzak, or talk.
The second station, Qatar Radio, plays international music sung in English, which mainly consists of wacky songs from all sorts of genres (mostly pop songs by Filipino artists) mixed in with a few top 40 UK or American artists (I just switched to that station and they were playing Royals by Lorde followed by Want Dem All by Seal Paul...? Never heard of it? Me either. Apparently he's Jamaican?) Most of the pop is really frenetic, and I find it difficult to listen to that music while dealing with the crazy traffic so I mostly skip this station.
The third station is the audio feed from the English language station of Al Jazeera television. You knew Al Jazeera was based in Qatar, right? It's one of the country's greatest claims to fame--or infamy, depending on your perspective--and certainly the country's biggest contribution to the international scene. And as much as I love listening to the news, I can only take so much of it. The world is far to depressing for a steady diet of news.
So what to listen to when trapped for long periods of the day in the car? Ladies and gentlemen, I have become the queen of the podcasts!
You see, it occurred to me shortly after I arrived here andwas pushed into got an iPhone that surely there was something within all those available apps that could help me. And what was this new kind of broadcasting all the kids were talking about...five to ten years ago? (I live in the vanguard of technology, I know!) After a little searching, I found the podcast app, and I have never looked back. I'm hooked!
Right now, I am sticking with mostly but not exclusively NPR podcasts. My favorites by far are Snap Judgment (stories with a beat, totally new to me but the clear winner so far), Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (already a favorite from my radio days), and Radiolab (which I actually used to listen to on NPR whenever I could find it which was not often enough), followed closely by This American Life (another old standby), since I apparently like the longish narrative format best. Happily, J can't tell the difference between the podcasts and the "news" since I listen in the car via a cable connecting my iPhone to the car's sound system, but he likes the story format much better than the news since he often asks me to turn it back on when we are traveling and that NEVER happened when I used to try to listen to straight NPR in the States. Winner!
I have been steadily trying to add new podcasts to my repertoire, with mixed success. The TED Radio Hour is great (I don't have the patience to sift through the thousands of TED talks to find the gems so I love that someone will do that for me). The seemingly perfect-for-me Pop Culture Happy Hour is a bit of a snooze-fest, though this may be partly because I am so far removed from the American entertainment scene these days. I had high hopes for Books on the Nightstand, but I find that I can't listen without wanting a pen and paper, which is not ideal for driving. I tried All Songs Considered, but I haven't been able to listen to a whole episode without getting bored yet, so I'm not sure it's for me. Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project was interesting but a little too much like guys talking in a garage to each other but not to me. Next up is the NPR: Ask Me Another podcast, which I gather is another quiz show with which I am totally unfamiliar.
My criteria for deciding what to listen to are simple: no explicit language (since sometimes the kids are listening and besides, I'm really not fond of explicit language any way, so why?), nothing that has anything to do with Adam Corolla because he is both explicit and annoying (who knew he was the king of a podcast empire?), and nothing purely educational (because I am not able to concentrate that closely, I need my education thoroughly leavened with entertainment). Got any recommendations that meet these criteria? I would love to take a listen!
The second station, Qatar Radio, plays international music sung in English, which mainly consists of wacky songs from all sorts of genres (mostly pop songs by Filipino artists) mixed in with a few top 40 UK or American artists (I just switched to that station and they were playing Royals by Lorde followed by Want Dem All by Seal Paul...? Never heard of it? Me either. Apparently he's Jamaican?) Most of the pop is really frenetic, and I find it difficult to listen to that music while dealing with the crazy traffic so I mostly skip this station.
The third station is the audio feed from the English language station of Al Jazeera television. You knew Al Jazeera was based in Qatar, right? It's one of the country's greatest claims to fame--or infamy, depending on your perspective--and certainly the country's biggest contribution to the international scene. And as much as I love listening to the news, I can only take so much of it. The world is far to depressing for a steady diet of news.
So what to listen to when trapped for long periods of the day in the car? Ladies and gentlemen, I have become the queen of the podcasts!
You see, it occurred to me shortly after I arrived here and
Right now, I am sticking with mostly but not exclusively NPR podcasts. My favorites by far are Snap Judgment (stories with a beat, totally new to me but the clear winner so far), Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (already a favorite from my radio days), and Radiolab (which I actually used to listen to on NPR whenever I could find it which was not often enough), followed closely by This American Life (another old standby), since I apparently like the longish narrative format best. Happily, J can't tell the difference between the podcasts and the "news" since I listen in the car via a cable connecting my iPhone to the car's sound system, but he likes the story format much better than the news since he often asks me to turn it back on when we are traveling and that NEVER happened when I used to try to listen to straight NPR in the States. Winner!
I have been steadily trying to add new podcasts to my repertoire, with mixed success. The TED Radio Hour is great (I don't have the patience to sift through the thousands of TED talks to find the gems so I love that someone will do that for me). The seemingly perfect-for-me Pop Culture Happy Hour is a bit of a snooze-fest, though this may be partly because I am so far removed from the American entertainment scene these days. I had high hopes for Books on the Nightstand, but I find that I can't listen without wanting a pen and paper, which is not ideal for driving. I tried All Songs Considered, but I haven't been able to listen to a whole episode without getting bored yet, so I'm not sure it's for me. Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project was interesting but a little too much like guys talking in a garage to each other but not to me. Next up is the NPR: Ask Me Another podcast, which I gather is another quiz show with which I am totally unfamiliar.
My criteria for deciding what to listen to are simple: no explicit language (since sometimes the kids are listening and besides, I'm really not fond of explicit language any way, so why?), nothing that has anything to do with Adam Corolla because he is both explicit and annoying (who knew he was the king of a podcast empire?), and nothing purely educational (because I am not able to concentrate that closely, I need my education thoroughly leavened with entertainment). Got any recommendations that meet these criteria? I would love to take a listen!
What about Fresh Air (sp?) ?
ReplyDeleteHi Jen!! I did try Fresh Air and much as I liked to listen to it in DE, for some reason Terry grates on my nerves here. I think maybe the pace is too slow for driving here? Or something like that.
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