Lyrics: “Little Changes” – Frank Turner, 2018
I recently stopped using the podcast app Pocket Casts, where I had signed up for a free account a long time ago. I refuse – or at least try to limit – my use of the big players (Spotify, Amazon, Google) to listen to podcasts. Diversify and all that. When my Pocket Casts app startscreen was getting crowded recently I realized I’d have to switch to the paid account to be able to use folders so I looked into alternatives and found AntennaPod. Free / open-scource is not a must-have for me, but always nice and when I read that I could use a Nextcould app – gPodder – to sync devices (my regular phone and my simple backup that I sometimes like to use as distraction free mediaplayer) I was sold. It works on both those devices and also easily on Android Auto, which is a must, as I’ve started listening to podcasts in my car a lot.
I used the slightly tedious job of subscribing / downloading all my regular podcasts and interesting episodes in the new app for some housekeeping; deleting downloaded or queued episodes I know I probably won’t listen to after all, added some new potentially interesting ones. I still struggle with my strange – perfectionist related? – impulse of “I need / want to catch up with ALL the episodes” of a subscribed podcast. I don’t know why I feel like I failed when I don’t.
I have now filed my subscriptions into the following categories:
- History
- Interview
- Politics / News
- Science
- Self-care
- Women Roar
The latter is basically also interviews and at least one I could have just as well put under self-care. But these days and age I very much enjoy listening to female hosts with a distinct feminist lens in their interviewing / chatting. Because I am SO sick of cis white guys talking to each other in front of a microphone. One of my male self-care podcasts hosts recently shared that he was included in Hollywood Reporter’s “44 Most Powerful Players in Podcasting in 2025” list. Good for him, but when I looked at the complete list over 75% of the podcasts had male hosts, 22% were female only, and the rest were a 1 men / 2 women panel of hosts, but that doesn’t really change the ratio. So yes, I’d like to hear more women roar.
Why am I talking about podcasts to this length anyway? One of the single episodes (not sure yet if it’s worth a subscription) I finally listened to was a German one about how to make the most of our leisure time (or as we in German call it “free time”) from a neuroscience / psychological point of view. (“Gehirn Gehört” – Folge 57: Freie Zeit – Wie erholen wir uns wirklich?) I found lots of it quite eye opening and I think I probably should have known all that already, but it was a helpful reminder: the brain doesn’t need relaxation like a muscle does, in the way that resting and not using is relaxing. The brain best ‘relaxes’ with different activities – like literal activity – or with having your brain focus on stuff, but do something different than you do during your working part of the day. Play an instrument, do a jigsaw puzzle, go out and really listen to nature or do a guided tour of a city or. All is better for your brain than consuming media on your sofa at home (TV, music, books to some extent), because the brain doesn’t engage when it’s just watching / listening, but not doing anything more. Does that makes sense? I find it difficult to translate it from German into English.
With all that in mind I had originally planned to take myself away for the day today: Take the long drive to the ocean for just the day or do another part of the St. James Way. Either way, just take myself away for the day and be a bit active. Because my work week was rather stressful for a variety of reasons – formalities, budget restrictions, interpersonal stuff – and a lot of my “free” time was taken up with my civic engagement in local politics. That was equally stressful for a lot of other reasons, which I won’t go into. But by Friday afternoon I realized that things need to be done (by me in front of a computer) even on this Sunday. So taking off for a whole day was not an option, sadly.
In the spirit of at least “doing something” in my leisure time I took myself of for a sort of mini break to Düsseldorf (45 minutes drive) last night: Dinner at my favourite burger place (restaurant chain), seeing a movie (with my unlimited card) and after that taking some photos at the media harbour at night.
Over 12.000 steps and keeping my brain active by needing to make lots of decisions: which building, which perspective, which camera settings. Not too bad. Neither are the results, I think.
