Power of Podcasts (Editorial)

The popularity of podcast listening continues to grow globally. This has seen a rise in the number of sport science-related podcasts providing content on nutrition, strength and conditioning, sports medicine and sports psychology. The format of such podcasts typically consists of an interview with an individual or group of individuals with expertise in a specific discipline, either from the applied world or research environment. Podcasts can be downloaded or streamed to Desktop, Smartphone or Tablet. Podcasts can be found via the native Podcasts app for iOS (Apple) users. Smartphones and Tablets that use Android operating systems will need to a thirdparty app such as Spotify. Often, the website of the podcast provides the opportunity to stream podcast episodes. To demonstrate how popular podcasts have become, a quick search using the terms ‘Sport performance’ on Spotify returns results for over 100 podcasts. Once you find a podcast of interest you can ‘subscribe’ to the podcast, meaning that when each new episode becomes available, it will download the episode automatically to your library. Listening to podcasts that have highly respected guests being interviewed, offers a number of benefits. These include, listening to the views of established academics and practitioners, research dissemination and application of research. We recommend researchers to engage with podcast hosts as a means of disseminating their own research. Doing this will provide a platform to communicate research findings and applied practice recommendations to a large audience in an expedient fashion compared to more traditional means. Podcast listening raises awareness of key issues within their respective field. In addition, advice for up-and-coming researchers/practitioners is often provided, such as the importance of growing one’s network and enhancing interpersonal skills. Due to podcasts being open access, these benefits are free to take advantage of and the portability of phones and tablets can provide flexible listening during a commute, for example. More and more podcasts are becoming readily available and despite the benefit of raw authentic discussion and the sharing of ideas, it should be noted that there is no formal quality control process. Therefore, it is recommended to continue to think critically when listening, with regards to the accuracy of information being discussed. To help inform readers’ listening choice, in the future issues of The Sport and Exercise Scientist we will be reviewing podcasts in addition to books and apps. In the next issue, the Pacey performance podcast will be reviewed (www.strengthofscience. com/pacey-performance-podcast/). Please click subscribe and start listening to the podcast prior to our review in the next issue