Greetings everyone!
I am hoping that all of you who are in different places in the 365 episodes of the DBRP will get this news. I’m going to use the initials DBRP for Daily Bible Reading Podcast several times in this message. At around 12:01 midnight GMT on February 1st, I am going to flip a switch that will probably change the way both the Daily NLT and the Daily GNT podcasts will display in your podcast app. It is likely that you may notice a change in the ordering or appearance of the podcasts. However, there should be no problem in finding the podcast that you want to play next.
For many years now, my podcasts have been scheduled to be re-released each day according to my Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. (By the way, if you want a PDF of the reading plan, it is always available on the front page of dailybiblereading.info.) So one podcast was released every morning as if everyone started the 365-day plan on January 1st and never missed a day. So if you went to the dailygntbiblereading.info website on January 31st, episode 31 would be at the top. I thought that this would be the most user-friendly way to release the podcasts. But it turns out that it is not like what other podcasts do, and is not what is expected by most podcast apps.
Now, starting on February 1, when a new listener subscribes to the Daily NLT Bible Reading podcast in a podcast app, he/she will probably see episode 365 and need to scroll down to find episode 1. After that, the podcast app will most likely play them in ascending order. OR some podcast players give you the option of reversing the order, so that you can listen to the podcast going downward in the list instead of upward. The new organization of the podcasts will also help people who like to download all or many podcasts at home, so that their cell phone doesn’t need to be streaming them while they are commuting to work.
However, the new organization may make it so that using the two websites for the DBRP will be less efficient. You won’t want to scroll down 365 episodes at dailygntbiblereading.info on a cell phone. You certainly would not want to do that daily.
HOWEVER, there is a problem here I want you to be aware of. Most podcast aggregator apps will forget your place in the DBRP episodes if you also use the same app to listen to other podcasts. So this is what I do each morning. I listen to my daily Bible reading first, then I listen to The World and Everything in it. (I highly recommend that podcast!) But if I do that on the same app, then my place will be lost in the 365 DBRP episodes, and I will have to scroll and search again the next morning. So the answer to the problem, at least for me, is to dedicate one podcast app to the DBRP, and use another good app for your other podcasts.
I found a new favorite app for my podcast listening! It is Podcast Republic, and that app is available for both Android and Apple devices. This app checks all the boxes for me, except one. Podcast Republic is very customizable, and the programmer did a brilliant job of giving popup hints that help you learn what to do. Podcast Republic allows you to set the order you want your podcasts to play, and whether you want the app to stop after playing each one, or whether you want it to keep going to the next episode. You can easily set the playing speed for individual or all episodes. (I like 1.2.) Podcast Republic makes it easy to see episode notes and episode artwork. It does show Google advertisements at the very bottom of the screen, and I felt it was worth $4 to turn them off permanently. The one thing I haven’t found in this app is how to keep it from forgetting my place if I switch to play The World and Everything In It. So I use Antennapod (my previous favorite app) for all my other podcasts.
When I release extra podcasts on the 7th day of each month and at other times, you will find them in two places. I will release them according to the reading plan calendar location where I suggest listening to them, and also as the most recent podcast. So for the February 7th Reader Take Note podcast, you will find that as numbered the same as the Bible Reading podcast for day 38, the episode that falls on February 7th. You will also find that same extra episode temporarily posted as the most recent one, in other words, somewhere after the Bible podcast for day 365.
The Reader Take Note podcast for February 7th will be entitled, “What most people don’t know about Bible translations. By giving it that title, it means that I think the topic to be very important.
I am so thankful that you have listened to this announcement.
I picked a new verse to post on my office door the other day: Deuteronomy 8:3 in the GNT:
He made you go hungry, and then he gave you manna to eat, food that you and your ancestors had never eaten before. He did this to teach you that you must not depend on bread alone to sustain you, but on everything that the Lord says.
This verse goes along with what I keep noticing: That the Lord has a plan in the things we each encounter, with difficult work situations, and all kinds of suffering, and not having things we need. In the end, may we be thankful that God uses these things to bring us back to the sustaining power of his Word. As you read ‘everything that the Lord says’ this year, may the Holy Spirit make your heart glad.
Gale and I send our greetings: May the Lord bless you ‘real good’.
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