I’m a podcast listener. In the car, while I work out, while I clean the kitchen, anywhere and everywhere. I find podcasts a quick way to throw some knowledge into my earholes while I’m busy doing something tedious. And since a large part of what I love to do / have to do for hours and hours involves sitting in one place (drawing, not meditating as you might have assumed), podcasts are just the perfect burst of information I need to keep me chugging along.

Usually, I tend to prefer longer podcasts – 30 minutes to an hour. That way I can be immersed in a story or series of short stories without having to get up every couple of minutes to fast forward through the intro/outro before the next podcast comes on. Some of my all-time favorites are Stuff Mom Never Told You, RadioLab, Mysterious Universe, and Savage Love. It covers a good gamut of topics – general knowledge about female stuff, science stuff, ghosts, sex. Y’know, what everyone needs to know about!

Lately I discovered three new podcasts I thought I’d give a whirl: The Nutrition Diva, Money Girl, and The Domestic CEO, all from Quick and Dirty Tips. All three seemed likely candidates for providing me with some quick knowledge I could absorb into my arsenal of Ideas That I Plan on Putting to Use Some Day. Unfortunately, all three are under ten minutes per episode – they must assume that listeners have either a short commute or attention span. And that might seem like plenty of time at first, until you realize with the intro, outro, and random ads sprinkled throughout, it’s hard to glean the real stuff out of the middle of the podcast.

So far I’ve found The Nutrition Diva to be the most informative and sensible. I’ve mainly listened to the episodes focusing on extremes in eating habits – over eating, over dieting, is red meat bad for me, should I go gluten-free, etc. and I like the way she simply breaks down the scientific process of what certain foods are doing to the body. The information that’s stuck with me the most so far is to think of health habits as a grade point average. You can binge one day and purge the next, but it won’t do much to affect the overal marathon of your consistent eating/exercising habits. In other words, pig out on Thanksgiving and go sweets-free for a week but don’t expect magic to happen.

The Domestic CEO is also full of some good suggestions, and I found the host here to be the most pleasant out of the three. She has almost a hesitant, semi-awkward way of reading her tips that I can’t help but find endearing. I nerded out over hearing her method for rearranging my closet/drawers (totally going to try this) and I know Heather and Jessie might find something useful in the How to Pick Paint Colors episode.

The Money Girl podcast was the most grating of the three. I appreciated a financial advice podcast, but this one struck me as being the most similar to a one-day conference that promises to teach you something complicated in three easy steps and instead just teaches you buzz words. However, I did eventually find some of her episodes on whether to buy/rent and how to structure regular financial talks with your significant other to be  particularly helpful. Word of warning, though – she ends every episode by saying “CHA-CHINNGGGGGGG” and letting that GGG drag out there for like, forever.

As with most of these “5 Easy Steps to _____” type deals, a lot of the suggestions will be common knowledge. They’re not necessarily always Useless Tips, maybe more Tips You Would’ve Guessed If You Were More Type A and Had More Free Time on Your Hands to Implement. I don’t know why I’m always such a sucker for these things, the Real Simples, etc. But I do know no matter how doubtful my face is going in, I usually remember at least one thing I bring back and incorporate into my daily life (hollah, using hair conditioner as shave gel, circa Real Simple 2008!).