
Five podcasts to take on your next walk
Listening to a podcast is a great way to exercise your mind as well as your body when you’re out on a walk. Frances Bain, Paths for All Operations Manager and captain of team Home Working Heroes, shares her top five go-to podcasts.
Walking is a fantastic way to take a break from everyday life, pressures and demands. It’s one of the few things you can do almost automatically, allowing your brain to unplug and thoughts to come and go as they please. I love this about walking and will always take the opportunity to use it as a tool for relaxation and recharging.
Sometimes though, I like to use my walk to get stuck into a good podcast. I’m a bit of a laggard when it comes to new platforms and media so discovered podcasts relatively late in the game. But once I began to delve into this world I was hooked! I love the fact that it’s seamless multitasking, you can get your exercise and learn something new at the same time.
The topics are endless and you can choose from everything from comedy to current affairs. If you’re anything like me, it’s been a long time since school and opportunities to learn about new things are maybe limited to books and documentaries, which can feel like hard work sometimes. It’s also hard to find time during the working day to spend on personal development; podcasts are a great way to do this. They allow you to dip into topics and hear from a huge variety of experts and inspirational people at the touch of a button and most importantly away from the ever present screens.
Everyone’s interests are different and there’s something out there for everyone, but here are a few of my ‘go to’ podcasts when I’m pounding the pavements.
Great for long walks! These cover all aspects of health, wellbeing and personal development. Some are pretty out there and there’s a healthy helping of cheesy Americanisms but check out episode 401 on forming habits and 407 on social media use.
This is a great fun podcast where an interviewer takes a celebrity for a walk with their dog and they walk and talk. It’s really nice example of how conversations when you’re walking with someone are so much better!
Having never studied history, there’s an embarrassing gap in my general knowledge. This podcast is a hilarious and fun look at some of the more obscure topics in history! I can now answer quiz questions on Aztecs and Witches.
For any foodies out there this is a fun series where famous faces sit down for a chat and some food and put the world to rights.
This is an oldy but a goody and is now a TV series too. Following a real life murder conviction, a journalist tries to find out the truth about what really happened.
And do check out this podcast from our recent Expert Lecture speaker Prof Shane O’Mara on all things walking and obviously we recommend our mindfulness walking podcast and Paths for All's Voices of the Walk podcast series too.
Hop on to Twitter #StepCountChallange and let us know what your favourites are, we’re always on the look-out for something new!