Bad Ideas

I Tried Listening to Podcasts at 3x and Broke My Brain

‘Podfasters’ listen to their favorite pods at 1.5x, even 2x speed. But how fast is too fast?

Illustration: Minet Kim

Welcome to Bad Ideas, a column in which we examine the practical limits of technology by considering the things you could do, and then investigating exactly why you shouldn’t. Because you can still learn from mistakes you’ll never make.

Most of us are familiar with binge watching and speed reading, but there’s a relatively new mode of conspicuous consumption that’s emerged in recent years: podfasting. First profiled in 2017, podfasters love listening to podcasts so much that they’re speeding them up — 1.25x, 1.5x, and even 2x speed — in order to fit more into their day.

Podfasters often draw the ire of podcast creators, who object to listeners steamrolling over their carefully edited audio. Meanwhile, podfasters argue they’ve identified a “flaw” with the podcast as an information delivery medium: People speak out loud at an average of 150 words…