Apparently there are some rare species of runners who survive—and even thrive!—without listening to music when they run. I haven’t seen too many of these in the wild, but I’ve been assured they exist. I myself most emphatically do NOT belong to this group. When I drowned my ipod in a rainstorm earlier this year, it was all I could do to keep running back to the car and not fling myself into the nearest puddle in solidarity.

Running and music are inextricably linked for me. I first started running when I was living abroad and I had only a cheap walkman (walkman! I’m old) and a half-dozen tapes (tapes!) with me. I just about wore out those tapes running in slow circles around the park. To this day, I get chills when I hear U2’s Elevation album because I so clearly remember those months when I was first teaching myself to run a mile, two miles, three miles, without stopping.

So even though I respect people who run with just their thoughts and the music of their breaths, I don’t think I could ever be one of them. (In fact, I’ve stopped doing the Death Valley Marathon because they have a strict no-earphones policy and I just can’t get behind that.) One of the things I look forward to the most is putting new music or podcasts on my player, and having uninterrupted time to digest the words or songs on my run.

Here are a few music podcasts and collections that I’ve been enjoying, ranked in order from least to most embarrassing.