Happy birthday to something near and dear to all of us: podcasting has just turned twenty years old
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with stories about current events and trending topics. When we were last together, on Monday, I told you that something I know you use recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary.
Now there are very few things that I know everyone in this audience uses—all right, a toothbrush, but other than the basics, there are very few things we all use. That’s how different we all are. But I know you listen to podcasts—and that is the thing that has been around for exactly twenty years.
And we’ll talk about the history of podcasting on today’s story. In the second half of the lesson, like we do every time, we’ll talk about an English expression. Today, it’s “come to mind.” So I’ll show you how to use the expression “come to mind” in the second half of the lesson.
This is lesson number 663, so that means JR, the producer, has uploaded the full transcripts and exercises to PlainEnglish.com/663.
With that out of the way, I think we’re ready to get started. Here we go.
Podcasting turns 20 years old
“Podcasting” is a portmanteau of the words “iPod” and “broadcasting.” To understand how podcasting became a thing, you need to know what an iPod is and what an RSS feed is.
An iPod—don’t laugh, there are people who don’t know what this is—an iPod was a portable music player made by Apple. You could download music onto your iPod and take it wherever you wanted to go: it was more convenient than listening to CD’s and it sounded better than listening to cassette tapes. “1,000 songs in your pocket” was Apple’s slogan for the first iPod in 2001.
So that’s an iPod. An RSS feed is the second thing you need to know about. An RSS feed is written in XML, computer code, and it’s a way for web browsers and mobile apps to get updates to websites. RSS feeds were popular in the early days of blogging: each blog would publish an RSS feed, so readers could see the latest posts of all their favorite blogs on one single page.
So an iPod was about listening to music. An RSS feed was about pushing updates to web sites.
The innovation that created podcasting was to marry the RSS feed with audio files; that happened in 2003, with a new type of RSS feed. This new feed included links to audio files in addition to text. So publishers could release a link to an audio file and include accompanying text like episode titles and summaries. It sounds obvious now, but it wasn’t clear at the time how this could be used.
For a clue, though, look at the very first podcast—even though it wasn’t called a podcast at the time.
The founding fathers of podcasting were a software engineer and a journalist. The engineer is the one that created the new kind of RSS feed, and the journalist used it to publish audio recordings of his interviews. Every time there was a new interview, he’d publish the audio recordings in the new RSS feed, and his audience could see and listen to the updates, with some effort.
This was nifty, but not very useful—at first . Web browsers could pull the RSS feed, but there was no good way for consumers to play the audio file.
It was not until the next year—2004—that the creators partnered up with a TV journalist and created a program called “iPodder.” This program could read an RSS feed with an audio link and (this is the important part) move the audio files onto an iPod. So finally, with iPodder, it was possible for a publisher to send audio files out into the world and for consumers to listen to those audio files on their iPods.
“Podcasting” was born.
The name wasn’t inevitable. iPod was Apple’s brand, but Apple didn’t develop the podcasting ecosystem or come up with the name. But there wasn’t a great alternative: “audio blogging” didn’t sound right; “online radio” wasn’t accurate.
In 2005, Apple officially gave its blessing to the term. The company included podcasts in its iTunes software and Steve Jobs said the word “podcast” on stage for the first time.
Early podcasts fell into one of two broad categories: on the one hand , there were the hobbyists who self-published content, usually once a week; on the other hand , there were big radio stations that republished their live news, talk, and sports programs on their podcast feeds.
For almost a decade, podcasting grew slowly but surely. It was a very American thing in those early days: it was much less popular in Europe and almost unheard-of elsewhere .
Then, everything changed in 2014, when NPR, America’s public media broadcaster, released “Serial.” This was a thirteen-episode investigative report about the killing of an eighteen-year-old student. It sounded like a thriller. It became a cultural phenomenon. “Serial” was the first podcast many people had ever heard; it was the first show to get five million downloads per episode.
After “Serial,” “podcasting” became something people talked about. Listenership in America tripled over the next five years. And the nature of podcasting changed, too. Publishers—big ones, small ones, and hobbyists—they realized there was a whole new way to connect with audiences.
Podcasting offers a very personal connection. It’s not like the radio, which plays in the background. Your attention can wander in and out of a radio broadcast, but listeners tend to listen to complete podcast episodes from start to finish. And, by and large, they listen alone, often with their earbuds in. It really does seem like just one person talking to one other person.
Today , there is much more to podcasting than just enthusiasts and repeated radio content. Most large, diversified media companies have podcasts to complement their other offerings. Think the BBC, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. Podcasting studios have popped up to offer original content. Wondery is the biggest example, but there are many others.
There are podcasting celebrities now. Joe Rogan, Marc Maron, and Tim Ferriss come to mind . Podcasts have been made into television series—if you want a good one, look up “Dirty John .”
Podcasts used to be once a week, and most were about thirty minutes long. The old advice was to make the podcast as long as a typical commute to work. But now, there are daily podcasts. Many still are about half an hour, but some are much shorter—just a couple of minutes. Still others are hours long.
And “podcasting” has even outgrown the audio form. Many podcasts now include a video component. As podcasting has grown internationally, YouTube has become the number one place for people to find new podcasts.
Some people mourn the early days of podcasting, when it was just hobbyists talking about their favorite TV shows, once a week, from their home recording setups. There wasn’t much money involved and everything seemed authentic. Somehow, we went from that to Elon Musk smoking marijuana on Joe Rogan’s video podcast, delighting his millions of adoring fans.
But hobby podcasting is not dead; it’s just different. New platforms make it easier than ever to record audio and get it out to the world. There are over three million podcasts available, and over 200,000 launched last year.
Listeners—and I include myself in that—we are spoiled for choice . With a few taps on our phones, we can find a podcast to be entertained, to stay informed, to brush up on our history, or even to get better at new languages.
Jeff’s take
All right, so on this episode about the anniversary of podcasting, I’ll recommend a few other podcasts to you. I’ll put links to these all in the free transcript at PlainEnglish.com/663.
If you like business news, I recommend “The Journal ,” a really good podcast from Spotify and the Wall Street Journal, and I also recommend “Planet Money ” from NPR.
Another one I like: “Dear Therapists .” Each episode features a one-time therapy session with a real, anonymous patient and two therapists, Lori and Guy. That’s a very good one—they give good advice, too.
“Hidden Brain ” is interesting. That one’s about human behavior, why we act the way we do. If you like science and medicine, you might like the “Huberman Lab ” podcast. It’s a little technical for me, but you all know science is not my strong suit.
And finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention another English learning podcast. “All Ears English ” is a really good English learning podcast, especially if you want to hear something a little more conversational. They have over 2,000 episodes—and that is a real accomplishment.
So, All Ears English, with Lindsay and Michelle, is my recommendation if you want to add—not replace anything—add something to your podcast playlist.
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