Happy Friday!  I want to give my sincere thanks to everyone who completed the reader survey.  Your feedback has been very valuable to me.  (If you haven’t taken it yet, the survey is still open.)

One of the things I learned is that most of you don’t listen to podcasts and don’t plan to start listening to them any time soon.  With that information in mind, I’ve decided to discontinue the Weekend Listen series.  A few of you commented that you do appreciate the recommendations and enjoy hearing about new programs.  If you’re in that camp, don’t despair — you can follow me on Twitter, and I’ll share some of my favorite episodes there.  Additionally, because the things I listen to inform my thoughts, I’ll probably continue to reference podcasts in my posts, using interesting interviews and discussions as launch pads for longer, more substantive posts.

If you’d like another way to learn about excellent podcasts, check out the #trypod hashtag on social media or listen to NPR’s The Big Listen, a broadcast about podcasts.

Since this is the last day of Podcast Awareness Month, I want to leave you with one final recommendation.  I just finished listening to Dan Harris’s interview of Jewel on the 10% Happier Podcast, and it is well worth your time.  I vividly remember listening to Jewel’s debut album on repeat back in the mid-90’s, and I knew a tiny bit about her back story from what I’d read in teen magazines (she grew up in Alaska and lived in her car as a teenager), but I learned a lot more from this discussion.  Jewel is an incredibly wise woman.  I haven’t really followed her career and wouldn’t have considered myself a fan, but I kind of feel like she’s my spirit animal now.

And here’s a bonus recommendation of a super-short podcast that is pretty much guaranteed to make you smile.  It’s called Kind World, and each week, in less than ten minutes, it tells a story of everyday people whose lives were transformed in some way by kindness.  This week’s episode is titled “After His Wife Died, A Four-Year-Old Gave Him Purpose.” Touching and uplifting.

Thanks for reading The Weekend Listen for the past three months!