# 2 Love in The Top 5 Things I Love & Hate About Podcasts
Top 5 Things I Love & Hate About Podcasts
I love that podcasts are archived for the future , and that you can start with the latest episode or with the first one. Sometimes, the first ones are over a decade old, but for various reasons having to do with the subject matter, they provide insight perhaps in a way that they didn’t even when they were first published. In this way, podcasts are similar to books. Some books gain significance the older they get. A book isn’t “relevant” only when it is first published. This is why we have libraries.
Libraries are supposed to preserve records from the past, not merely carry the latest fad, and not merely to preserve what is consistent from the past with what is the latest fad.
There are a lot of records, and there are finite resources. So, which records should be preserved, and why ?
My alma mater, Denver Seminary, recently got rid of print editions of Eternity magazine — original copies — because they didn’t think they had enough “room” for them going forward. These editions carried articles from Denver Seminary faculty as well as people like CS Lewis and other famous Christian thinkers, not to mention advertising and popular culture ephemera from the era that one would not have access to without the print edition. Denver Seminary thought this was not “relevant” given space constraints. I happen to disagree with this decision. I think it’s horrendous to throw stuff like that out in the name of “saving space.” The library’s job is to make space for stuff that cannot be replaced, windows into the past, when it clearly fits with the history and mission of the institution that creates and maintains the library.
I think of podcasts as a potential record in a library. One of my favorite podcasts, for instance, is Econ Talk, and they keep accessible records of each episode going back to the first one back in 2006. If one starts at the beginning, one can hear interviews from top thinkers in Economics at that time discussed things that were on their minds back then, including the book Moneyball before it was made a film, and including — can you imagine — commentary on such things as Single Payer health or the so-called financial crisis — in addition to issues going back to the New Deal and before in American history. If this record only extended to 20 episodes or so back, a potential learner would be deprived of commentary and discussion of great significance to our nation’s history, theory, and development, in some cases in real-time (at the time).
Some very good podcasts don’t provide such records back very far. For example, the podcast “Capital Record” only includes the past quarter. It’s interesting to ask why ? Maybe there’s a good answer to that, but to me, the lack of a record for a podcast with the word “record” in its name is somewhat ironic.
The podcast producer is responsible for maintaining the record of the podcast he or she produces, and it does cost money. But if the podcast is good, it’s worth preserving. And it’s usually free to the listener. Which is why this is my #2 love in the Top 5 Things I Love & Hate About Podcasts.
Next time, I’ll get to the #3 Love.
Dr. Lucas J. Mather, Ph.D. is the producer and host of The Republican Professor podcast. He teaches in the government department at Azusa Pacific University in Lost Angeles County, Calif.