Hacker News Reader

Comment by MathYouF | Hacker News Reader

All of you people really listen to podcasts and youtube videos and lectures at more than 1x speed? What about just enjoying the emotional journey, the pregnant pauses, having time to consider possibilities and implications between narrative sections?

I only ever met one person who basically always sped up any media they consumed, but I wonder if it's more common and if so what you think about your habit. Seems useful only in rare occasions where it's an information based media and the person is exceptionally slow.

View on HN

personally, i listen to mostly informational podcasts (darknet diaries, select episodes of freakonomics, selfhosted, etc) - even if there's a story setup to it, it's not really what i'm there for - i'm not a genius or anything but usually don't need an artificial pause and consideration time - if i really need it i'll pause it myself or rewind briefly to listen to something again. I tend to listen to podcasts when i can't be doing anything else (waiting rooms, airplanes, maybe commuting, etc)

However, i'm not a 2x'er - i'll do 1.2-1.5 depending on who's talking - some others (in my weaker languages) i'll do at 0.8x

Personally not a fan of music between sections or artificial reflective moments ("did you get that?! wow...") or trying to make things grandiose. Though i guess i wouldn't like a monotonous drone either.

It's interesting you view those as informational because I see them as narrative stories. Also you might think you don't need the time to ponder but you don't know what you've missed by not taking the time the show makers decided to put in there for pause. Also changing the speed changes their voice and therefore some subte things about the delivery. Pure information media is like Strangs Linear Algebra course or some similar MIT OCW mathy course. Would you also consider radiolab something informational that you might speed up?

haven't listened to radiolab in a while so can't remember off the top of my head what speed i'd put it at - but i think the difficulty there with speeding it up is how much they intersperse and cut things in to each other.

I mean, yeah, these are narratives - sometimes i like that and sometimes i just want the juice. If i can't keep up with it i obviously slow it down. If i find my mind has wandered i'll pause/rewind - if that keeps happening i'll stop and come back to it another time cos i'm obviously not giving it enough attention.

I'm not pretending to be a genius but English is native to me and I have tangential knowledge of what they're talking about already often enough so it's rare I have to hang on every word and ponder every implication.

I tend to adjust speed depending on 1) what i'm doing and 2) how noisy it is around me/how well i can focus/hear what they're saying. If i'm not keeping up or it's way too much effort, i slow down. That said, I'm never past 1.5x cos i just don't enjoy straining.

I had a biochem professor in college who talked extremely slowly, like we are talking 2x speed just to approach normal talking (and her lectures were all online). I usually listen to stuff at 2x or greater depending on the content.

I speed up most. It allows me to fit them into a commute.

Why not slim down the number of podcasts?

Why not learn less? Why would I do that?

Unless you are some anomaly with super memory abilities, speeding through 10 different podcasts won't make the day any shorter (or longer).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com