“Staring at a laptop or a tablet for hours on end exacts a physical toll; podcasts present a way to re-enter, and move through, the natural world without logging off. In an antidotal, and almost paradoxical way, podcasts are the Internet freed from pixels.” Slate’s Jonah Weiner: Toward a critical theory of podcasting.

+ Part of the rise of the podcast is due to human evolution (you figured out how to work your car’s bluetooth). And that puts you at the center of one of the near-future’s media battlegrounds: Who will own the dashboard?

+ Slate attempts to list the 25 best podcast episodes ever.