Issue link: https://imageup.uberflip.com/i/1497658
30 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | MAY 2023 By Steve Benoff Money, money, money. Remember the radio ad, Money, money, money; Money, money, money; Call Local Loan…? One of the benefits of writing a column in a senior-community magazine is being able to refer to things that happened half a century ago and still figure that at least some of you will know what I'm talking about. Money, to say the least, has always been important. But so were many other things – like loyalty. Well, the balance between those two things has certainly shifted. There used to be loyalty between employer and employee. Not so much anymore. Money has grown in importance as a factor in so many aspects of life these days. Just look at college sports – especially football. I'm a big sports fan and college football is high on my list. But just look how money has changed the college football landscape. Who ever heard of "name, image, and likeness?" Now, it's a major factor in the sport. Who'd have envisioned USC and UCLA leaving the Pac 12?! But the comparative riches of the Big 10 were too much to resist. (Actually, there was always money in college sports – just under the table. We look at John Wooden with rose- colored glasses while conveniently forgetting about Sam Gilbert whose money made many of his players come to UCLA. And college football in the southern states has been so important that the NCAA has looked the other way for decades.) All of this is a preamble to what seemed to have happened to my favorite podcast app, Overcast, which I've been happily supporting for years with my annual $10 payment. I say "seemed" because it turned out I was wrong. What was a spate of missing podcasts from Overcast, a fact I attributed to greedy podcast platforms restricting distribution of the content they produced, turned out not to be the case. But it did give me the chance to experiment with a couple of apps. I'm not saying money is a non-issue with regard to podcast distribution, but Spotify's exclusive offering of The Joe Rogan Experience is, at least for now, the exception to the rule. I've sung the praises of the Overcast podcast app for a few years. But I really had no idea how it compared to a couple of competitive podcast apps. So, in my self-imposed frenzy, I downloaded the Apple Podcast app and the iHeart app. I "followed" (their term for subscribe) the three shows I thought I'd lost. My original podcast app used to be Apple's app, and I rather like it. Then, several years ago they made some changes I didn't like. Let me tell you, those changes were nothing to what it looks like now. Rather than present you with your playlist, a term now reserved for music, you get a screen full of other shows you can follow. To get to episodes of your followed shows, you have to go through several screens each time you select the app. Furthermore, there is no easy way to see when an episode was published. The iHeart app is almost as bad as Apple. When you open the app, you have to wait five seconds for the iHeart logo to disappear. Then you get, like Apple, all kinds of shows to follow. You have to scroll down to see your podcasts and then go to another page to see the episodes. Those fortunately have publication dates. Occasionally, when I've selected an episode to play, I've had to wait for a 30-second ad to play before the episode starts. Overcast on the other hand, has a very straight-forward utilitarian look to it. Adding podcasts to it involves just three steps. First find and select the podcast you want to hear regularly. Next, subscribe to that podcast. Lastly, add that podcast to your playlist. After that, any of your shows will be automatically added to your playlist. You can delete episodes. You can change the play order by pressing and moving an episode up or down your list. Other podcast apps allow you to adjust playback speed but usually in fixed increments. Overcast has a sliding scale including the ability to slow playback down as I do with the "In Our Times" and "History of the Second World War" podcasts. I've set my default speed at about 20 percent faster, but I can choose another speed for individual podcasts. Overcast also has a feature to shorten silences within an episode and another feature to boost voice volume. I'm not saying there aren't other podcast apps with many or all of the things I like about Overcast, I'm just saying I'm very happy with it and gladly pay $10 a year to show my support. As memory serves me, Overcast is available free with non-obtrusive ads running on a small section at the bottom of the screen. If you use an app you'd like to share with others, let me know at steve.benoff@verizon.net. THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT! Overcast Outshines Other Podcast Apps