Plugging in and riding the podcast wave | Jack Marshall's column

Apple reckons there are more than two million podcasts floating about the digital ether in 2020. Just two decades into its short life, the concept of a digital audio file which can be downloaded and consumed at the listener’s discretion (essentially a pause-able radio show only with more adverts for SquareSpace and Manscaped) has exploded.

Podcasting is now a billion dollar industry. In the 21st century, no matter what you need, there’s an app for it and a podcast about it. There are podcasts on the history of gnomes, knitting on the subway, and repairing pinball machines. There’s even a podcast which does a review episode for each minute in every single Star Wars film.

And podcasts are no longer the realm of sweaty pasty dudes in their basements with nothing but B-O and a mic to keep them company. Celebrities are scrambling Saving Private Ryan-style onto the podcasting beach in a wild attempt to stay relevant to a young audience whose zeitgeist has the attention span of a particularly forgetful goldfish.

This is where I fess up to a mild podcast addiction. Statistics (and my therapist) say that the average podcast listener consumes seven shows a week. Commuting to work, doing housework, maybe at the gym: these are the times during which people scratch their podcast itch.

By last count, I subscribe to 77 podcasts.

Now wait, HEAR ME OUT. Only six of these are daily shows. Another 48 are weekly. Stats (and my therapist) say that 82% of podcast listeners listen to more than seven hours a week and, as per my podcast app, my own 2,761 hours of listening over the past four years averages out at about two hours a day or 14 hours per week. Which isn’t too bad, so there.

My podcast tastes vary wildly. The genre that kicked it all off and got me hooked, the audio gateway drug, was sports: football, cricket, and rugby (recommendations: Set Piece Menu, The Grade Cricketer, and Blood & Mud). My menagerie has grown to incorporate comedy (Gossipmongers), deep-dive interviews (WTF With Marc Maron), trivia and history (Revisionist History, Behind the B*stards), politics (Deconstructed), and lifestyle (This American Life).

I love podcasts. They represent My Own Little World. They’re meditative and informative and enjoyable. Now, please excuse me. I’ve got a podcast to listen to.