Podcast Vs Essay - WPM

Time for some math. According to this link, podcasts are 150-160 words per minute on average. So, a 10-minute podcast would be 1500 to 1600 words. A 30-minute podcast would end up around 4,500 to 4,800 words. A one-hour podcast would probably end up around 9,000 to 9,600 words. According to this link, the average reading speed for an adult is 238 words per minute on average.

That means an adult could read 2,380 words in 10 minutes, 7,140 in 30 minutes, and 14,280 in one hour. This demonstrates why podcasts are somewhat magical. When reading, you’re required to devote your full attention to the text you’re reading. You can’t read a book and work on Excel spreadsheets at the same time. However, you can listen to a podcast while working on a spreadsheet. Interestingly enough, you can crank up the speed of podcasts. Most platforms will offer 2x and 3x speed. However, I’ve found that the higher the speed, the more I have to focus to follow the content. At around 2.25x speed, I can no longer listen to a podcast while also working on spreadsheets.

Why am I talking about this? Because, when I record a podcast, it takes me a half hour to record and a half hour to listen back to it to make sure I didn’t screw anything up majorly. That half-hour listen back was added after the whole audio corruption debacle that played out. So, for one hour, I can generate about 4,500 words of podcast content.

For the same time, I can generate about 5,000 words of written content. That’s in the zone writing though which only really happens on weekends when I have at least two hours to block off to work on one thing. These Essays are averaging about 1,200 words. So, in the amount of time, I can do one podcast, I can write about four Essays. That’s why there are two of these a week and only one podcast.

I’m not sure anyone cares about this at all, but I was thinking about it on the way to work the other day and I figured I would share the fruits of my mathematical labor. So, consider these fruits shared.