I think podcasts are one of the most wonderful technological developments of my lifetime. I’ve been downloading the ’pods for over 15 years now, and I’m not getting tired of them. In fact, I like them more.
I follow podcasts about technology, sports, movies, theology, health, entrepreneurship, history, crime, comedy, politics, and sheer nonsense. I listen to podcasts by celebrities and podcasts by guys I’ve personally known. I listen to enriching, intellectually-stimulating, virtue-instilling content regularly, and then I go listen to mindless, down-dumbing, borderline-depraved podcasts.
“Podcast” is a portmanteau of the words “iPod” and “broadcast”, which is really a remarkable achievement by Apple, to have their branding uniquely tied this genre. You can’t even buy a new “iPod”, per se, anymore, and yet the name podcast is with us forever.
I certainly didn’t have an iPod when I started listening. What I had, at the time, was a Fujitsu laptop, running Windows Vista, and a tiny, pinkish purpley Samsung MP3 player that I’d acquired in 2006. I’m a bit color blind, and the chrome finish reflecting off the bright lights in Best Buy threw me pretty good, and I probably thought this was some sort of acceptably masculine color, like gunmetal grey, with a blueish tint.
It is not at all gunmetal grey, as I’ve been since informed. Fortunately, it was extremely small, and so I could hide it easily in a pocket and nobody had to see it. Getting podcasts onto this was kind of a process. I would need to download the MP3 file from somewhere, and get it onto the hard drive of my laptop. Then I’d need to use a USB cable to connect to the Samsung player, and pray that the Windows Vista laptop would choose to recognize the device. Next, it was a simple matter of locating the MP3 file in my downloads, copying the file, and then navigating to the folder named “Samsung YP-F1” in “My Computer”, pasting the MP3 into that folder, pressing eject, and whullah! Portable podcast!
It’s a lot simpler now, thank goodness. Podcasts are streaming on-demand from seemingly everywhere. From Spotify, to rinky-dink independent apps, there are too many ways to even properly summarize. Even Substack is trying to establish itself as a podcast hosting service.
It makes sense that I like podcasts so much, because my upbringing primed me for audio entertainment. I grew up in a home with no television. I’m going to sound like I’m 83 years old here, but in my early years, the richest media I was exposed to came from the radio and the record player.
Yup, a record player. Other kids watched Sesame Street and The Muppets, but I listened to Sesame Street and The Muppets, on records. If I was lucky, there’d be some pictures from the actual production on the album jacket, and I could use that to piece the rest together in my imagination. Then I’d get a nickel from my parents, hitch the horse to the buggy, and head to town to fetch the week’s groceries from the general store.
Everything but the last sentence is true, though tape cassettes supplanted records before too long. I’m possibly genetically predisposed, as well, to podcast listening. Both my parents listened to a ton of talk radio, and since it was long before the days of earbuds, everybody else in the house or car heard their talk radio too. My dad was big into Prairie Home Companion, and enjoyed the occasional Click & Clack, and my mom was round-the-clock listening to whatever the local AM talk-radio station was serving up.
The talk radio chatter was non-stop, and I liked it. Podcasts are very similar to talk radio, and yet, they carry some major, significant improvements. The commercials are, practically speaking, gone. Even more importantly, editors and humorless producers are gone (or at least, very compromised). Whoever has a podcast can say pretty much whatever they want to say, and take as long as they’d like, to say it. I remember listening to morning drive-time hosts, and savoring those few minutes they were allotted to show their creative comedic chops, and riff on the news. One would have to endure a lengthy penance of commercials and overplayed songs, to be rewarded with maybe just 3 short minutes of a couple guys with good on-air chemistry trying to do a bit.
And now we have successful podcasts that can regularly consist of 4 uninterrupted hours of the same types of guys, just bantering. They’ve been set free; having lived through pre-podcast times, there’s something satisfying in witnessing their liberation.
Podcasts might be particularly on my mind here and now because, due to a rapidly developing toddler situation in my current place of residence, I once again find myself living in a home with no TV. We had to pack ours away temporarily, for safety and sanity purposes. I mean, it’s not exactly like my childhood home; we watch plenty of video content on our phones and laptops, and we don’t have a record player. Nonetheless, I lean more than usual on audio these days, for entertainment and media.
I have a lot more thoughts to share about podcasts, in general, but also about specific ones. With that said, I’m looking for a different direction to take this blog next year. I mentioned, at the top of my last article, that nobody reads my Chromebook articles. I need another go-to topic, and, given the sheer volume of podcasts that I consume, I believe writing about podcasts may be a more promising avenue for me to pursue.
This article is now over 900 words long, so maybe I’m onto something.