Okay, I’m totally into the podcast-while-running thing. Music gets dull after a while when I’m just using it as something to keep me going (or distracted), not something to actually sit down with and appreciate. But I guess podcasts work for me. Today I ran from Kapi’olani Park around Diamond Head, past the community college and the dog park (which was full of BIG BEAUTIFUL DOGS – I want a dog!) and then back down to Waikiki, where I rested and stretched and watched the sun start to sink before I headed home. I listened to a few podcasts from the New York Review of Books, and a few from NPR. Nerd, yes. But I’m okay with that.
I think the best thing I heard during the run was an interview with Orlando Figes on the NY Review of Books podcast – he’s written a new book called The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, which I would LOVE to read and certainly will as soon as school is out. In the interview he talks about his experiences gathering memoirs and other personal documents as well as discussing and archiving people’s stories and memories from the Stalinist era – it’s fascinating to hear about. I still haven’t read his book Natasha’s Dance, about Russian culture, although I gave my sister a copy for Christmas. Maybe I can “borrow” it back one of these days.
