Podcast is a dirty word

Most people my age have been aware of podcasts for a long time. Hell, some of us have probably been listening to the same podcast since the nineties or early two-thousands.

But back then, it was “internet radio”. And unlike how “podcast” feels nowadays, it didn’t feel strange to hear. “Radio” felt more professionally accurate, more akin to what it wanted to be, and the “internet” preface was just used to describe an amateur interpretation; meaning, created by a small team and the difficulties therein.

In the two-thousands, when the term “podcast” became commonplace, from inception it felt and sounded like a cheap alternative. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a time where the word “radio” was used extensively, but to me if you had a “podcast” or were “podcasting” you sounded cheap. It always felt like you were describing a single, straight white guy sitting in a dark room with a Blue-Yeti microphone shouting into his laptop about nothing to nobody. And you often were.

Even the commercialisation, which tends to be at the forefront of the modern dirtiness, was there from the start. I can’t remember how many times I had to skip through advertisements for “Audible” or “GoDaddy”.

So when your favourite comedian sighs in disgust when they say “I’m doing a podcast now”, it’s cool. Podcasts have always been dirty, it’s just that they’re only now being exposed to it.