Lately, all my conversations are interspersed with me saying: “On that great new podcast I discovered, I just listened to an interview with (fill in the blank with the name of a person who just discussed the very thing we are talking about.)” Or not. As a friend of ours says when she wants to change the topic at hand: “Speaking of something completely unrelated…”

You see, I get a lot of input from the outside world via podcasts these days. And not necessarily new ones either. I know some people who shake their head sadly at me when I demonstrate complete ignorance at what is going on in the world on a daily basis. But if I fall in love with a podcast, I will happily go back two, three, four years into the catalog and “catch up”.

I was thinking about my podcast history recently – basically trying to remember when I started downloading and binging. It was definitely over ten years ago when my sister-in-law and I discovered an iTunes show about – wait for it – scrapbooking. But I always listened to the shows on my computer and it was painful waiting week to week for the new episode, because there was “nothing to listen to” in between. It wasn’t until I got an iPhone that I figured out how to listen to more “iPod broadcasts” – hence podcasts – on the go and that’s when I discovered This American Life. And then the whole syncing with the car radio thing happened and voila! Here we are in 2021 with the serious problem of hundreds of podcasts and thousands of episodes to choose from. And I’m sure I’m being conservative.

That tidbit about where podcasts got their name? I just heard it on this great new podcast I discovered. It’s funny, because I’m actually kind resistant to adding new podcasts to my repertoire because I have my favorites and keeping up with all those episodes can be hard enough. Chances are you’ve heard of Neil Pasricha before – he started a blog counting down 1000 Awesome Things which then was turned into The Book of Awesome. And all that was to counteract some bad juju that happened in his life. I was intrigued by this approach which I first heard about when he was interviewed on another one of my favorite podcasts What Should I Read Next? which is “dedicated to the answer that plagues every reader” what they should read next. Which I was ALSO resistant to listening to until she was endorsed on yet ANOTHER one of my favorite podcasts – basically it’s the Faberge Organics Shampoo commercial for how I got here: “…and you tell two friends and they tell two friends and so on and so on and so on…”

What’s great about 3 Books with Neil Pasricha is 1. It’s about books. (Hello?) 2. He has really AWESOME guests (see what I did there?) and 3. He’s Canadian – which is just always a cool thing to be. The whole schtick that Neil promotes is to interview his guests about their three most formative books – in a somewhat personal quest for him to read the 1000 best books on the planet before his thousand months is up – the average lifespan for us humans. He touts it as “the world’s only podcast by and for book lovers, writers, makers, sellers… and librarians.”

I think what I like so much about this particular show is the conversations (not interviews). Neil flies in to wherever each guest is located (Key West to talk to Judy Blume, San Diego for Frank Warren, New York to meet up with Mitch Albom) and they have a real sit-down-and-chat with the actual three books in their hands. Listening to Angie Thomas talk about reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Tupac Shakur’s The Rose That Grew From Concrete demonstrates a pretty straight through-line to her novel The Hate You Give. And I love sitting in on conversations and getting writing advice from the likes of Dave Barry and Tim Urban. Awesome.

Occasionally, one of those great guests has a great podcast, too. Sigh. I still have a couple years worth of 3 Books to go. I know I don’t have to listen to ALL the pods or read ALL the books. But I can just enjoy one conversation at time about 3 Great Books.