{"id":70397,"date":"2017-10-05T13:48:15","date_gmt":"2017-10-05T20:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=70397"},"modified":"2025-02-16T10:49:44","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T18:49:44","slug":"podcasts-a-primer","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=70397","title":{"rendered":"Podcasts: A Primer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last decade, podcasts have become a popular entertainment and informative media choice.\u00a0 According to Edison Research, around 112 million Americans have listened to at least one podcast, and 42 million Americans listen to at least one podcast on a weekly basis.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

What is podcasting? A\u00a0\u201cpodcast\u201d\u00a0is an\u00a0episodic\u00a0series of\u00a0digital\u00a0audio or video\u00a0files (vodcast)\u00a0which a user can download and listen to. It is often available for subscription, so that new episodes are automatically\u00a0downloaded\u00a0via\u00a0Internet\u00a0to the user’s own local computer, mobile application, or\u00a0portable media player.\u00a0 The word itself is a mashup of \u201ciPod\u201d and \u201cbroadcast.\u201d\u00a0 It has roots in the \u201caudio blogging\u201d field of the 1980s, but it wasn\u2019t until broadband Internet and portable media players, like the iPod, became widely available in 2004 that the whole business really took off.\u00a0 And when Apple added podcasts to iTunes, the field absolutely exploded with content.<\/p>\n

There are podcasts for any field you can think of: business, religion, science, arts, music, news, celebrity interviews, true crime, history, health, sports, radio fiction, and even farming, and that barely scratches the surface.\u00a0 Within those broad fields are a seemingly infinite number of possible shows to choose from.\u00a0 In my field of interest \u2013 history \u2013 there are series on Rome, Byzantium, the United States, the Constitutional Convention, and podcasts that cover different historical subjects that change from episode to episode.\u00a0 Right now, I have at least five podcasts that cover history\/true crime, two on the Beatles, and one on the \u201cgreat albums\u201d of rock music.<\/p>\n

Some episodes are released first on radio before being released as episodes of podcasts.\u00a0 Examples would be A Prairie Home Companion<\/em>, This American Life<\/em>, and pretty much all of NPR\u2019s shows.\u00a0 The attraction is that it allows listeners to listen on their own schedule.\u00a0 If a person wants to listen to This American Life<\/em> while riding a bike or painting the house, they can.\u00a0 However, most podcasts are never broadcast on radio, but rather are exclusively made for podcasting.<\/p>\n

Continuing with history podcasts as my example, I suggest these break down into two main varieties.\u00a0 First are the podcasts that tell a linear story from beginning to end.\u00a0 The History of Rome<\/em> begins with Romulus and Remus and extends through the conventionally-accepted date of its end in 476 AD.\u00a0 Each episode is 20-25 minutes long, with the whole series lasting 180 episodes, which equals roughly 60 hours of content.\u00a0 Not all of them are that long.\u00a0 Karina Longworth\u2019s You Must Remember This<\/em>, which is about old Hollywood, did a 12-part series on the Charles Manson murders, with each episode running about 45 minutes.<\/p>\n

Second are the podcasts that cover history but bounce from subject to subject.\u00a0 The most well-known is Stuff You Missed in History Class<\/em>.\u00a0 For the month of August 2017, the podcast covered the invention of cheese, Charles VI of France, the eugenics movement, the Espy Rebellion of 1857, and eclipses, and that\u2019s just picking a few.\u00a0 History Dweebs<\/em> (adult language and humor) also follows this formula, with topics in August including the murder of Mia Zapata, human lightning rod Roy Sullivan, Titanic <\/em>officer Charles Lightoller, and the Canadian severed feet mystery.\u00a0 True crime podcasts also follow this formula, examples being In Sight<\/em>, Already Gone<\/em>, and Once upon a Crime<\/em>.\u00a0 Sometimes these shows will have a theme for four or five episodes, but usually not much longer than that.<\/p>\n

(Jason Dikes is an associate adjunct professor of US history at Austin Community College and Adult Services Librarian for the Leander Public Library. His <\/em>other two articles in this edition of <\/em>the jonestown report are Podcasting & Peoples Temple<\/a> and Guinn Follows Many Routes on <\/a><\/em>Road to Jonestown. His previous article is <\/em>A Brief and General Overview of Jonestown Historiography<\/em><\/a>. He may be reached at\u00a0<\/em>jdikes@austincc.edu<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> http:\/\/www.edisonresearch.com\/infinite-dial-2017\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last decade, podcasts have become a popular entertainment and informative media choice.\u00a0 According to Edison Research, around 112 million Americans have listened to at least one podcast, and 42 million Americans listen to at least one podcast on a weekly basis.[1] What is podcasting? A\u00a0\u201cpodcast\u201d\u00a0is an\u00a0episodic\u00a0series of\u00a0digital\u00a0audio or video\u00a0files (vodcast)\u00a0which a user can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":70254,"menu_order":25,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-70397","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/70397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70397"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/70397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129494,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/70397\/revisions\/129494"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/70254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}