Support for WPR comes from St. Luke's Burthing Center, providing expectant mom's low intervention options,

with labor tubs, remote telemetry, and nitrous oxide. More information is at slh Duluth.com

slash baby. It's to the best of our knowledge, and Strange Champs is out this week.

I'm Sarah Nix.

With all the talk about podcasts, we're wondering about the future of listening.

Where else to start, but with the sound of cereal.

All right.

More precisely, it's the sound of a podcast listening party.

One December afternoon, a bunch of people gathered in a conference room to listen to the final episode of the breakout hit podcast, cereal.

It's not actually about breakfast foods, but anyhow.

It was launched last fall by some producers from This American Life, and by the end of its 12-episode run, it had been heard more than five million times through iTunes alone.

And it's become this phenomenon. They're listening parties all over the country.

Sitting in that conference room felt a bit like being in one of those old photographs.

You know the ones where there's a family gathered in the parlor to listen to a radio drama.

We don't really do that anymore.

Now people are more likely to obsess about the next season of Game of Thrones or Sherlock,

which they can watch when they like thanks to streaming services like Netflix.

That on-demand streaming is available for audio too,

and it could be that listening is again becoming

central to our lives. Unlike traditional broadcast radio, smartphones and podcasts make it possible

for us to hear what we want, when we want. And some people are placing their bets on the power

of podcasting.

...