Sometime around the start or middle of 2010 [1] I got heavily into Podcasts [2], and now that I write that at aloud sounds like I had a ‘podcast problem’, which is certainly not the case. I can stop any time I swear. I just don’t want to.
Podcasts then weren’t a new thing at that time by any means. I remember first listening to a lot of Ricky Gervais’s show when that was popular (people often credit him for pushing the format out to the masses), but I never strayed far from there. I remember trying out a few other Podcasts at the time, however most of them failed to live up to the same standard set by Gervais. While the content or the talent would be entertaining enough, they’d usually sounded like they were being recorded in the world’s biggest airplane hanger on a single microphone made out of a toilet roll. You’d spend half of your time straining to hear one presenter, and the rest jumping on the volume-down button for fear of making your neighbours think you were fighting with the other. And I never really took advantage of the ‘Pod’ aspect of the Podcast, instead preferring to listen to them on my laptop, usually when I couldn’t get to sleep. Don’t ask me why but the sound of Gervais’s high pitched giggling at his off-sider Karl Pilkington would help put me to sleep [3].
So while you could say Gervais was my gateway, it wasn’t until 2010 that I dove into a deeper and more dedicated relationship with Podcasts.
of False Starts & Frustrations 