Now You Can Listen

The Live Life Rare podcast brings you insight in audio format

Audio is a personal experience, bringing listeners into an upclose relationship with storytellers through the power of the spoken word. Podcasts deliver that experience while allowing listeners to engage simultaneously in physical activities such as exercise, housework, and outdoor events. Photo by Anna Keibalo on Unsplash

Listen up! Insight, inspiration, and encouragement are headed to your ears with the launch of the Live Life Rare podcast.

I’ve wanted to create an audio companion to this newsletter for months, but if you’ve been following my story you understand that 2023 has been “a bit of a challenge,” to put it lightly.

Why a podcast? After all, the written word is my first love — mostly because that’s where I do my best work. Writing gives me time to think about structure and phrasing, about cadence and punctuation. It’s where I wrestle with the words and beat them into submission so I can best communicate my thoughts to those interested enough to spend a few minutes with them.

Audio is different. Creating good audio is a more technical exercise. It calls for a different way of thinking about how words work together. And the voice. Oy. I’ve never been satisfied with how my voice sounds recorded and presented — and that’s only gotten worse thanks to the challenges of myasthenia gravis.

So why did I start a podcast? Because I believe in the power of the spoken word. I respect it. I treasure it. I’m in awe of it. I mean, it’s the medium of choice for when God created our world and everything in it. He didn’t write it into being (that would have been cool), but instead used His own voice to bring about all we know and see.

When you listen to a podcast, you are inviting the speaker into a special moment of communion. The two of you (or more, depending on the format of the show) engage in a conversation. You may not be speaking to them directly, but you are engaging in your brain. Audio is a very personal experience.

I could continue with statistics about the growth of podcasting, how audio is increasing in popularity across several formats, etc., but I won’t bore you with all that. Let me illustrate those truths this way …

1. I don’t remember with any precision what the page of any book I’ve ever read looks like.

2. I can’t quote long passages from any books or magazine articles with much accuracy.

3. But, I can sing the entire jiggle to many commercials from my childhood, including those from brands such as Tennessee Pride, Slinky, Big K, Oscar Mayer, Band-Aid … well, you get the point.

Audio has a way of sneaking past the barriers of distraction and resistance in your brain, finding its way into your mind, and finding a nesting place. The human voice resonates with our souls. How much more powerful is a conversation with a person when compared to an email or text message?

This is why I’ve been determined to launch a companion podcast to the Life Life Rare written newsletter. The first few episodes are, for the most part, audio versions of posts I’ve written here in the past. I’ll do more of those, but I also plan to interview people for future episodes. I love doing interviews, engaging folks and seeing where the conversation takes us. Again, the power of the spoken word.

You can find the Live Life Rare podcast on your favorite podcast player, or visit this link for the show’s hub. There’s also a handy button toward the beginning of this article.

Want to help me with the show? There are three ways:

1. Listen to it, subscribe, and leave a review with a comment (especially on Apple Podcasts and Spotify). This really helps other listeners discover the show.

2. Pass along ideas for future topics or folks you’d recommend for an interview (please include an overview of their story, or why you think they’d be a good fit for the show). Reply to this newsletter with your tips.

3. Share an episode with your friends and followers on social media. For a podcast to reach new ears it has to be shared.

Thanks for subscribing to this newsletter. I hope you’ve been blessed and encouraged by the content so far. And I hope you’ll give the podcast a listen to see if it’s for you. Working together, we can help spread the word about rare disease, facing challenges in our lives, and learning to cope and overcome. That’s what it means to discover and pursue our rare life!

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Do you know someone who wants to discover and pursue what a rare life means to them? Please pass along this newsletter. We’ll continue to encourage one another as we grow this community.

Question? Thoughts? Please share in the comments!

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