I listen to a lot of podcasts. Significantly more than I listen to music, actually. 

Many years ago, after some brief research/listening to someones opinion about it (on a podcast), I made the decision to set the playback speed at 1.2x. It's been that way ever since. 

Now, there's a fair amount of debate over the "correct" speed to listen to podcasts. Some will die on the 1.2x hill (myself included). Others may even take it further to 1.5x or even 2x, controversial as that may be. 1.2x feels comfortable for me. Quickened enough to help get through more, but not quick enough that it sounds rushed and there's even a detectable pitch difference. My current queue of episodes is in excess of 20, so I certainly have incentive to get through more more quickly. 

It is, obviously, a matter of preference. But I do think medium and form matters. The podcasts I mainly listen to are largely conversational in nature, so going a little bit more quickly doesn't hurt the actual form and substance of it (I think). It's ultimately a matter of information consumption, and if you can do it at a more rapid pace, why not? It's akin to reading - if you can read an article 1.2x faster then someone else and still get all the same information, that seems perfectly reasonable to do. 

But I certainly don't think the same is true for TV or movies, and especially not for music. For such mediums that have been specifically crafted to a particular tempo, well, tempo matters. Tempo is integral to the product. And I do think that especially for visual mediums, speeding things up feels more noticeable than just on audio. 

And then there's the curious realm of Youtube, where speed adjustments was introduced in 2010, but more granular control was introduced only in 2024 (which to me is shockingly late). And even though I do consume a fair amount of informational content on Youtube (chat shows, interviews, TV episode breakdowns etc), I seldom speed things up. 

Why? I don't even know. Perhaps its entirely habitual. Having spent to much of my podcast-listening-life at 1.2x, that has become the norm for me. Even hearing any of those people in other contexts at just 1x feels odd - i'm so used to a particular cadence. And perhaps the opposite is true - I've become so used to 1x on Youtube that anything different rubs up against my innate sense of pattern recognition. 

But I also think its because on Youtube, there's a greater variety in terms of the types of content available. Sports highlights? I would never speed them up. A 40 minute Actors on Actors conversation? 1.2x would do just fine. But having to regularly adjust according to what I'm watching? I think that's where I subconsciously draw the line. Call me lazy, but i much rather set-and-forget. The defaults are the defaults - it's just that for podcasts, my default is now 1.2x. 

Anyway, what else in life would be good to 1.2x? Boring work meetings, now that's a definite 1.5x.