Discovering an author whose work captivates me is a great thrill.

And sweeter still when the writer is prolific, boasting a bibliography that will take me months of concerted but pleasant effort to get through.

It is akin to receiving a Christmas or birthday gift every few weeks rather than once a year.

Or beginning a long journey to lands I have not visited in reality but which I have explored thoroughly by map and photo and by the descriptions of gifted writers.

Podcasts will never replace books for me, to be sure.

But these digital audio creations are not invariably ersatz versions of the printed word.

Among the vast online offerings, which these days are comparable to the shelves of a library of modest size — albeit measured in megabytes rather than pages — I have on occasion come across a podcast which was unusually compelling.

And in a few cases the hosts, in addition to talking about topics that interest me, have compiled a catalog even more prodigious than the works of, say, Stephen King.

I have sampled dozens of podcasts over the past decade or so.

Most I discard before I have finished a single episode, either because the host, or hosts, seem to me to know little about their ostensible subject, or, more often, because they bore me.

(Which is not to imply that I could do better. Confronted with a microphone, I immediately abandon even the crumbs of charisma I can sometimes muster in less formal circumstances. I would not care to listen to any podcast in which I had a role other than brief and occasional guest.)

I listen to podcasts mainly during my daily walk or while I’m puttering about in my yard, engaged in the perennial tussle with vegetation which respects my aesthetic tastes not at all.

Almost all of my favorite podcasts deal with music or true crime (the exception being those with a nostalgia for the 1980s, the decade that included the whole of my teenage years).

This is convenient, because the digital airwaves are clogged with music and true crime much as the analog airwaves were larded with the disco beat for the final third of the 1970s.

I have over the past several years winnowed my options to half a dozen or so podcasts.

Among those that deal with music, the hosts in each case share my preference for discussing, and playing passages from, rock and pop music recorded no more recently than the late 1990s.

Although some of these podcasters impress me with their devotion and their consistency, recording a new episode every week, some of which last for two hours or more, inevitably I have listened to the entire catalog.

This is nearly as depressing as reaching the final chapter of the latest book by a beloved author, the terrible turning of the last page, the brutal realization that the story is over.

Podcasts, fortunately, take much less time to produce than a novel or a thick nonfiction book. I don’t have to wait nearly as long for the next episode.

But once I have caught up, so to speak, that initial thrill of discovery, the joy of anticipating so many entertaining hours of listening to come, dissipates.

There is the chance that even one of my favorites will disappoint me. I feel especially forlorn when I log into iTunes, see that there is a new episode, but then read the description and realize the topic interests me no more than does a lengthy treatise on the origins of Sanskrit.

(No offense intended to Sanskrit scholars, to be sure. Many of them, I suspect, would be equally perplexed at my affinity for discussions of the best one-hit wonders of the 1970s. I remain incapable of choosing between “Magic” by Pilot, and “Moonlight Feels Right” by Starbuck.)

Many months, and perhaps more than a year, had passed since my browsing led me to a podcast that had previously eluded me.

But just recently, one of Apple’s algorithms, which most often only annoy and amuse me, enriched my listening immediately and, I’m confident, for quite some while to come.

The podcast is called “Past Tens: A Top 10 Time Machine.” iTunes suggested it based on my previous preferences.

The podcast’s title is explanatory. The hosts, a pair of former college friends, discuss the top 10 songs on the Billboard pop chart from a randomly chosen week in the past — mainly in the 1970s and 1980s.

The podcast so closely hews to my passions that it seems passing strange that I didn’t happen on it years before.

The hosts — Michael “Milt” Wolfe and David Yas — not only share my musical preferences, but they’re close to my age. When they reminisce about their childhoods — the fashions, the trends, and of course the music — I feel not merely familiarity but actual poignancy.

Their musical knowledge is deep, too, so their show informs even as it’s entertaining me.

But all this was secondary.

The main reason I was gleeful, after I listened to a couple episodes and recognized that I was in effect the target demographic, is simple — volume.

As I scrolled down the page to see how many episodes were available, my smile widened.

The pair started the podcast in 2019. And they have recorded almost weekly since.

Even at my pace, when I sometimes listen to six or seven hours of podcasts in a week, my phone’s files won’t be empty for several months at least.

This isn’t as gratifying as sitting in a comfortable chair and turning to the first page of fine book.

But it is a fair substitute.