The Story Of The Pod James O’malley dishes on the history of the podcast, and why it’s so popular

In the modern world, we’re being constantly bombarded with information as our days consist of switching from one screen to another. We’re watching TV as we scroll on our phones through an unending Facebook news feed, pumping a steady diet of news, opinion and distraction directly into our brains.

But what about those precious moments when we’re not able to use our phones, such as when we’re in the shower, driving or doing the washing up? The good news is that there’s another technology available that can help squash the very possibility of having our own, independent thoughts in our heads.

I’m talking, of course, about podcasting. According to research by emarketer, roughly 14.6 million people in the UK already listen to podcasts at least once a month. And in the US, the total spending on advertising on podcasts is expected to top $1bn for 2021 alone. In other

128 words, podcasting is big business.

There are tens of thousands of downloadable audio shows currently in production—ranging from hobbyists in their bedroom to professional productions worked on by dozens of people at some of the biggest companies in the world.

But the strange thing is that podcasts have been around for 20 years—so why are they getting so much attention now?

Unusually, the podcast wasn’t actually invented by a big tech corporation looking to make money, but by amateur coders, looking for a new way to share audio recordings.

The problem they had was distribution. Recording audio on computers was easy by the year 2000, but unlike radio, where you can switch it on and hear the DJ talking immediately, to listen to these recordings (which were invariably mostly people chatting about niche computer programming topics), you’d need to go to a website and check for anything new.

Enter a new technology known as a