For the past three years of me being able to drive, I have always listened to my favorite playlist on Spotify, adding new songs as I see fit. It has been a reliable source of entertainment for me when driving for short periods of time, like to school and back. As I began to drive more and had to drive for longer periods of time as a delivery driver, I began to get tired of the same old music that I had always listened to.

I opened up the curious purple app on my phone called podcasts because I needed a change from my music. I looked through and found tons of content that I thought was interesting and started listening to them while driving. First I explored the most popular podcasts like Serial and all of the many ones made by NPR.

Then my own two brothers suggested to me a podcast called My Brother, My Brother, and Me, a comedy advice show where three brothers are posed with questions by their listeners and taking other insane questions from Yahoo Answers. They also sold me on it by saying that Hamilton mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda was a huge fan of the show.

As I would drive I would listen to more and more podcasts. I found that they were good for more than just driving. They work perfectly for when you're doing chores around your house or dorm or even while doing homework. I think the fact that podcasts are purely auditory with no visual aspect to them allows them to be on in the background without distracting the listener.

Whenever I would do the same thing with movies or other videos, I would always be drawn to the visual aspect of them, because without the visual, the experience is cut in half. But with podcasts, that distraction doesn't exist, and this makes them superior to things like Netflix when multitasking in my opinion.

With the ubiquity of videos on streaming services and other places like Youtube, I think it's clear that videos have become the new standard for entertainment. This standard has been to the detriment of things like books, podcasts, and other forms of entertainment without the same visual stimulation.

This is why I believe that podcasts and other forms of non-visual entertainment are seriously underrated because we expect visual stimulation and these things cannot deliver that. In order to appreciate them, one must first realize the differences between podcasts and videos. Without first understanding the differences, one will become disappointed with the experience of listening to a podcast or reading a book. It's not a question of which one is better, it's about understanding and appreciating the different aspects and uses of each.