{"id":1773,"date":"2013-08-12T12:47:49","date_gmt":"2013-08-12T19:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1773"},"modified":"2013-08-12T12:47:49","modified_gmt":"2013-08-12T19:47:49","slug":"podthoughts-the-faroe-islands-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1773","title":{"rendered":"Podthoughts: The Faroe Islands Podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.crwflags.com\/fotw\/images\/f\/fo.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Vital stats:<\/strong><br \/>\nFormat: interviews with the movers and shakers of an archipelago you probably haven\u2019t heard of<br \/>\nEpisode duration: 15-45m<br \/>\nFrequency: 2-5 per month<\/p>\n<p>When I first heard of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/faroepodcast.blogspot.com\/\"><em>The Faroe Islands Podcast<\/em><\/a>\u00a0[<a href=\"http:\/\/faroepodcast.libsyn.com\/rss\">RSS<\/a>] [<a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/WebObjects\/MZStore.woa\/wa\/viewPodcast?id=303476954\">iTunes<\/a>], I heard it as a sort of punchline. \u201cOh man, this archipelago off of Europe? That only has 50,000 people? The Faroe Islands? There\u2019s\u00a0<em>an entire podcast<\/em>\u00a0about it.\u201d But really, how far does this separate it from so many other podcasts? This show covers all aspects of life on the Faroe Islands, and going by its episodes on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/faroepodcast.blogspot.com\/2009\/07\/faroese-tv.html\">Faroese broadcasting<\/a>, any media pertaining to the place manages near-automatically to draw the attention of a sizable chunk of the population. A reasonably successful podcast about, say, one particular\u00a0<em>Doctor Who<\/em>\u00a0Doctor might attract five or ten thousand listeners. But a Faroe Islands news broadcast pulls in an astonishing\u00a0<em>fifty percent<\/em>\u00a0of the viewership. More than a few of those 25,000 \u2014 or of the English-speaking fraction of that 25,000, anyway \u2014 would, I wager, want to take a listen to\u00a0<em>The Faroe Islands Podcast<\/em>, a production about a niche country in a niche-friendly medium, even if only out of curiosity.<\/p>\n<p>This narrow focus has another advantage. Listening the show\u2019s 182-and-counting episodes, I kept thinking back to, of all books, Robert Pirsig\u2019s\u00a0<em>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance<\/em>. In it, Pirsig relates a story from his alter ego Phaedrus\u2019 teaching days at Montana State College. One of his students wants to write \u201ca 500-word essay on America\u201d but can think of nothing to say. When Phaedrus suggests she write about just the city of Bozeman instead, she still comes back empty-handed. He then tells her to write just about Bozeman\u2019s main street, but she again comes back without a paper. He finally suggests she write only about the front of Bozeman\u2019s opera house, beginning with its upper-leftmost brick.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maximumfun.org\/2013\/08\/12\/podthoughts-colin-marshall-faroe-islands-podcast\">Maximum Fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vital stats: Format: interviews with the movers and shakers of an archipelago you probably haven\u2019t heard of Episode duration: 15-45m Frequency: 2-5 per month When I first heard of\u00a0The Faroe Islands Podcast\u00a0[RSS] [iTunes], I heard it as a sort of punchline. \u201cOh man, this archipelago off of Europe? That only has 50,000 people? The Faroe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podthoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1773"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1776,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions\/1776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}