How I Prevent Myself Getting Bored by Listening to an Interesting Podcast
Some restless people, including myself, would probably want to spend their time in solitude after a long day by maybe doing some hobbies or chores at home. Sometimes when it is too quiet to your liking because you are alone at home, you may want to listen to something when you do these things that require your hands to keep moving; such as cooking, crocheting, mopping, or maybe folding your laundry. But, you don’t want to watch TV, because it’s distracting your eyes, or you don’t feel like listening to your music playlists or audiobooks. So you wanted to listen to something else. So, what do you listen to then?
As for me, I like listening to podcasts. We must have a favorite podcast to listen to, right? Maybe it is a true-crime story, an interview, or a book discussion. I also like listening to my current favorite podcast when I do chores, especially when I am folding my laundry, or just drawing. It is called ‘Ologies with Alie Ward’.
Okay, cool. But, what is this ‘Ologies with Alie Ward’ podcast, you say?
So, ‘Ologies with Alie Ward’ or simply just ‘Ologies’. What does that mean? That is also my initial thoughts when I saw the podcast name. But then a fast understanding came by. The word came from the suffix ‘-(o)logy’ which in English means ‘a field of study’ or ‘a subject’, which in the case of the podcast’s theme is much inclined to the ‘a field of study’ one, thus the podcast specifically talked about various interesting ‘ologies’ topics and I was amused by the creative take on the catchy naming.
There are so many ‘ologies’ that had been discussed for the past four years when this podcast aired in 2018 on Spotify, since then, this podcast had released 130 episodes and counting. Each episode of the podcast is always interesting to listen to. The title of each episode indeed discussed interesting and intriguing ologies that I either didn’t know existed or I was aware of yet didn’t know they had a name for it.
For example, Gelotology, a study of laughter. Yes, my friend, they had a study talking about laughter. This episode discussed as I quoted from the page, ‘[to] learn about what makes a joke a joke, the science behind happiness, why you laugh when you’re nervous, if comedians are naturally depressed or if that’s a myth, and why some people get paid to tickle rats’, which from the quote we can see, it’s quite a scientific and mad interesting bean of thoughts.
There is also a study that specifically talked about stories and storytelling. Mythology is not only about myth, they studied the narrative structure and how stories existed from a certain culture also similar to another culture. This episode really piqued my curiosity as a person who studied stories. Well, I did study stories and literature since I majored in English Literature, we also studied the narrative structure as well and then studied the political aspect of it. But I didn’t know that the study of narrative or storytelling itself was also called Mythology when the word ‘myth’ alone means ‘story’ in Greek. It feels like a name that we secretly agreed upon yet we just did not talk about it and then just went along with it. Perhaps there will be a study of the ‘ologies’, an ologiology? A metaology? Who knows?
So, how do I find this podcast?
Ah, podcast. The word ‘podcast’ wasn’t really familiar to me back in the day because I’d never been in possession of any Apple products, so I didn’t know what it meant. In my initial thought, maybe it was kind of something from a radio (because it was a familiar association?), then I found out that wasn’t really the case. Sometime later, I signed up to Spotify solely for the music and saw several podcasts there, still had no idea what it was. Until I discovered that podcast was actually kind of like a series of videos on a Youtube channel but with no picture. So, I tried to listen to a few podcasts that I liked.
To be honest, I am very picky and prefer listening to neutral topics for my peace of mind. However, I found so few podcasts that interest me; most topics available are not that neutral either. Sometimes, we need a break from political and argumentative topics. So far, I only listened to some history or language-related monolog podcasts. So yeah, I am very much picky and prefer monolog podcasts over everything.
Ah yes, monolog podcasts. That means I only need to listen to one person talking. Podcasts with more than two people speaking are literally torture for me. In particular, those who were podcasting a group discussion, I legitimately cringed in introvert, and especially to those people who chaotically talked to each other — or were laughing obnoxiously for 45 minutes or more — so careless about the state of the listeners’ poor ears. It was… mildly horrifying.
I always feel like my energy is drastically drained just from listening to people trying to talk to other people for long minutes. However, I think the ‘two people podcast’ is the lesser of two evils for me. That’s why sometimes I also listened to those interview types of podcasts, and I usually listened to those people whose voices were calm, clear, and just as chill as cucumbers while talking. It is so therapeutic, especially when the interviewers are also interesting and had a good sense of humor. That would be awesome. And it was basically a haven to me once upon a time when I discovered the ‘Ologies with Alie Ward’ podcast on Spotify.
But, who is the person behind the podcast, and where did the idea come up?
So, there is a real person behind the podcast. Shocking, I know. Anyway, after my fascination and huge interest in the podcast, I became curious about the quirky and kind persona from the podcast. So, I did some digging, as to who is actually Alie Ward, the fun and curious podcaster. And I found her Wikipedia page, of course, also the articles, and her website. The omniscient website-pedia stated that Alie Ward is an author, a journalist, and an artist, and aside from hosting the coolest podcast I’ve ever known, she is also hosting the CW ‘Did I Mention Invention?’. It’s an American TV program that talked about, as I quoted from IMDB, “fascinating stories of invention while shining a light on everyday innovators” and also is a contributor to Netflix’s ‘Brainchild’ series.
And I also found out, that she is not actually new to the world of the magic picture box. Before hosting TV programs and being a contributor to a Netflix series, she had an acting career for some roles in several TV series, and the one that I am familiar with is Grey’s Anatomy. That being said, Alie Ward is basically a different kind of unicorn (affectionately), in my opinion.
So, how did this podcast exist? From what I read, Alie came up with the idea of this Ologies podcast, she told LAMag.com, that after her journey from googled ‘curiology’ which she thought was a study for curiosity and found out it was actually a study of writing with pictures, and that led her to a posting that shared a list of ‘ologies’ in a Geocities website. She thought it was fascinating, for some people to dedicate themselves to one specific study and she wanted her listeners to know about these people.
She is awesome, right? But, what did I like about this podcast though?
So, several articles which discussed this gem of a podcast I read mostly said that this is a science podcast. Well, in my understanding, not necessarily. The ‘ology’ topics varied from science to cultural studies. I mean, they could be talking about birds yesterday and on the next day, they will be talking about how feasts are held in different cultures. This podcast had a really wide range of topic discussions as long as they got the ‘ology’ in it. But, let’s settle this as a science podcast, shall we?
Anyway, what makes this podcast a gem? I would say because each episode always offered fascinating, intriguing, and informative ologies to discuss. Each episode is like, when you saw the title, you might be thinking “huh, what this about?” and decide to listen to it to satisfy your intrigue.
My favorite episode so far is Felinology, which is a part of zoology that talks about cats. It is such an informative episode for me because I like cats, they are fascinating creatures. And the part from the mentioned episode that blew my mind the most is that cats kind of had similar psychology as an adult-human, maybe the introverted ones? They will only be comfortable with us if we are not the ones initiating contact after we acknowledge them, and as I quoted from the episode, ‘just ignore them’, let them become proactive and approach us if we are worthy of their attention. We only have to chill, accept their attention and give them the attention they deserve if they are really comfortable with us.
Or if you’re secretly a vampire (eh, you don’t have to tell me, it’s okay to have secrets), or you are curious about the mystery of blood, you might be interested in Hematology. This episode particularly talked about blood cancer, the research journey of cancer, and the medical inventions so far. For me, it is so intriguing because, from what we know, cancer mostly happens in our body parts, yet how does blood have cancer? And as I quoted from the episode, that blood cancer is “confusing because it’s everywhere but it’s nowhere all at once” and how up until now we have no clue what exactly caused it. And now I was informed about how dangerous blood cancer is.
It is a very informative podcast and it didn’t feel too heavy to listen to.
In addition, in every episode, there is something that I like about the Podcaster when she interviews people, or to be specific, the Ologists is that her questions are always genuine and curious about the Ologists’ answers to the matters of their work. If I could say, she ‘exploited good-naturedly’ the answers from these experts with her brilliant curiosity. And I, for that matter, really enjoyed her intelligent questions and her little side notes that explained some stuff from their answers to help us understand more clearly, plus her witty sense of humor that is right up my alley.
And she also came up with the most engaging place for us to satisfy our curiosity. I mean, there is a Facebook group and a Patreon page for us to discuss each episode and to ask questions to these passionate people of science.
It resonates so clearly when I listened to the first episode, the podcast tagline, ‘ask smart people stupid questions’, immediately caught my attention. I always thought that the tagline is a different kind of self-awareness.
I mean, when we faced the big word Science, we the good ol’ laymen, somehow felt stupid or not confident enough to ask some people of science what they do or what they study in those fields, and we always opened our talks with ‘okay, this may sound dumb as heck, but…’, and then proceed asking very genuine, curious, and interested to know questions about the unfamiliar study. However, these ‘ologists’ are all so nice and genuinely content to answer the questions thrown at them. I mean, it is really clear they really love and understand what they are doing. As a wise person once said, they know their onions.
It also kind of indirectly encourages people to ask their questions without getting worried your questions sound dumb by stating them to be dumb, I don’t know, reverse psychology? I think it is such a kind thing to do.
Also, it came to my attention that this podcast interviewed various people. When we are faced with the word ‘scientist’ or ‘experts’ in the media, they always present some white men from the field to give them scientific opinions on something. As if scientists are only one species or something. However, in this podcast, I found a number of women and people of color in each episode passionately talking and geeking out about their field of study and their recent research. Love me some passionate women of science. And I love that Alie broke the stereotype of scientists. It is one of the things that I like about this podcast.
Alas, in a world full of drama and good ol’ political conflicts, it is such a good time to listen to an unproblematic science podcast and start to broaden our knowledge of the wonder of science and awesome ologies. This is how I prevent myself from getting bored doing chores and sometimes, getting inspired! Maybe you may find some inspiration too!
