Secret Histories of Podcasting | Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything

Hey, Aaron —

Loved the episode, but it felt a little like it was specifically about the history of radio-style podcasting. Just as ToE and 99PX aren’t the amateurish programs Dave was talking about (and all due respect to him, thank god for no three-minute gaps and the like), there are also entire swaths of podcasts that don’t feel like ones that NPR-minded folks were behind.

And these aren’t just recent ones. Idle Thumbs, a video game podcast, ran a hugely successful six-figure Kickstarter nearly six months before 99PX (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/idlethumbs/idle-thumbs-video-game-podcast). And there are so many successful podcasts that are shorter (Grammar Girl) or longer (Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History) than the standard 30-50 minute show, and don’t seem built around the journalism/storytelling/interview model.

I love the stuff in that journalism/storytelling/interview range (which is what I expect from Radiotopia, Panoply, Infinite Guest, WNYC, and other networks I find a lot of my ‘casts in), but that really does seem to just be one corner, and I’d love to know more about how, say, the History Podcast community, or the VIdeo Game, or the longform fiction (Night Vale, or more recently The Message) ones have evolved.

https://toe.prx.org/2015/10/secret-histories-of-podcasting/
https://huffduffer.com/misener/274000
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