
How Podcasts Became a Seductive and Sometimes Slippery Mode of Storytelling - tontonius
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/19/how-podcasts-became-a-seductive-and-sometimes-slippery-mode-of-storytelling
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mayneack
> In the first years of podcasts, a decade or so ago, technological
> limitations militated against their widespread adoption: they had to be
> laboriously transferred from a computer to an MP3 player or an iPod.

I started listening to podcasts back around 2008 I'd guess. I don't remember
exactly what the process was for getting them onto my iPod, but I don't
remember it being laborious.

I wasn't exactly a geek either. This was from a shared family computer and I
was pretty clueless about computers back then.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
I wouldn't call the process laborious but it was manual and that meant that
you had to hook it up regularly to get new content. I definitely started
listening to way more podcasts after I got a good data plan and an iphone.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
But you need to charge your iPod anyway, and iPod batteries were small enough
they could be reasonably charged via a computer rather than a power brick.

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xte
Well... We start to have non-written mass communication media for the first
time of our human history, so we have to develop antibodies for those "new
media". We learn (at least in medium, in the past before actual neo-
analphabetic era) to distinguish written propaganda from news, science from
fiction. We have to learn in medium also for nice, barkers, audio/video
contents.

For me however podcasts are good things, a natural evolution of TV, a
potentially free and "distributed/decentralized" youtube&c alternatives since
they can be distributed by individual subjects with well-known and open
standard RSS/Atom, users can listen in streaming but can also download for
offline usage and personal archives. So well, I like them, and as any
instruments I know they can be used for good, bag, etc.

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SonicSoul
Off point but holy crap! Who designed that main graphic up top? It’s superb!
Pure perfection. I want to subscribe to your newsletter

~~~
shubb
This guy apparently: [http://toddstjohn.com/](http://toddstjohn.com/)

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billfruit
"That changed in 2014, when Apple added a Podcast app to the iPhone, making
subscribing almost effortless.".

I do think, it wasn't necessary to plug that in the article, pod casts being
popular without Apple having to release an app for it.

And whole article does seem like the old media('Gatekeepers are good' is a
common theme at New Yorker) whining against the new.

~~~
the_watcher
> And whole article does seem like the old media('Gatekeepers are good' is a
> common theme at New Yorker) whining against the new.

I got the same vibe. The "manipulative" implications the author is making
could be applied towards print journalism just as accurately.

~~~
HenryTheHorse
> The "manipulative" implications the author is making could be applied
> towards print journalism just as accurately.

Yes - and it does apply. Editorial control and fact-checking are the two MOST
vital aspects of good journalism. Any idiot - I mean, any Fox news anchor -
can make up facts and report them.

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8bitsrule
Pretty decent article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_podcasting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_podcasting)

