I’ve found that two of the things helping me during our period of COVID-19 isolation pair well together—turning on a podcast episode and taking a walk for its duration is both calming and delightful. Here are two of my all-time favorites to keep you company:
Poetry Unbound
I don’t meditate, but the installments of Poetry Unbound, a podcast hosted by poet Pádraig Ó Tuama, are what I imagine meditation to feel like: they’re grounding and cleansing. He reads a poem, analyzes it, and then reads it again; most episodes are under ten minutes long.
Ó Tuama’s voice rings warm and soothing, and he brings his life experiences to his analyses, so they’re half-English class, half-personal essay. Don’t feel like you need to know anything about poetry to listen—after one episode, you get the sense that he simply wants to bring more people into the fold of loving poetry. Each episode leaves me buoyed by his directive to be kinder and more generous to myself and others.
Start by listening to “A Poem to See What’s Overlooked”—it’s my favorite so far. Or, for an IU twist, try “A Poem to Notice Openings and Closings,” in which IU poet Ross Gay is featured.
Still Processing
Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham, two New York Times culture writers, take on everything from the (seemingly) most frivolous parts of pop culture to national politics in Still Processing. After listening to them, I always want to approach the world around me more thoughtfully. Morris and Wortham are lovable and charming, and their warm friendship alone makes the show worth a listen; but their analyses are brilliant, too.
In “Frosted Flakes,” they dissect the racial and class tensions at play in Netflix’s Tiger King documentary. “How to Learn from a Plague” features a discussion of the similarities between the AIDS epidemic and today’s COVID-19 pandemic. “Circular(s),” a hard look at the scale and impact of individual and collective environmental action, speaks to the part of me that gets hung up over not being able to recycle everything.
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