Happy International Podcast Day!

Remember when Serial came out? I remember thinking at the time that sure, podcasts have been around for a minute, but I just hadn't gotten into them much, so maybe they weren't for me. Serial was fascinating, but after Season 1, almost a year passed before I found another podcast I wanted to listen to regularly*.

But now, two years later, and about a year since I last discussed podcasts on Mindfully Modern, I am a devout podcast listener. They're great to listen to during my commute, walking to/from the grocery store, or while I'm doing house chores. I don't even mind the commercials, that's how much I like 'em.

Now I wanted to share what I'm listening to these days. And I swear, I started typing this on Friday afternoon and thought, it would be interesting to see what the history of podcasting looks like, and then Google told me that Saturday is International Podcast Day! I know every day is some hashtag holiday so hey, I'm down to celebrate this one as well.

Fun facts from InternationalPodcastDay.com:

• The podcast was invented in 2004, with credit to 2 dudes (including an MTV VJ), although Wikipedia says "audio blogging" goes back to the '80s... and let's all remember Felicity's tapes of the late 90's / early aughts
• "podcast" = "iPod" + "broadcast"
• iTunes started supporting podcasts in 2005 (I use iPhone's Podcast app but link to other sources here as well)
• George W. Bush was the first POTUS to release his weekly address as a podcast, 2005
• Marc Maron launches WTF, 2009
• Apple reaches 1 billion podcast subscribers, 2013

And here are the podcasts I have listened to, fairly regularly, over the past year:

This Book: Tell Me Something, She Said

aka “What It’s Like to Fail.” a memoir from a once-successful writer in Hollywood who ended up homeless for a little while. You can read an excerpt here (it’s great) and order the book in hard copy or Kindle with the link above. I’m buying it for the next plane ride.

This Book: Tell Me Something, She Said