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:

Summer Travels: NY-NJ-DC

ESB

I just spent about a week across the country back in New Jersey, New York City, and Washington, DC. Since I'm from/have lived in these places, I stayed with family and friends. My luggage mostly stayed in one spot, and I'd have a tote bag of everything I needed for the next 1-2 days (all hail the mighty tote bag). Even though I was out there for a whole week, it still felt like a whirlwind because there's always so much to do and so many people to see.

New Jersey to me is always family time, first with my family and now including my husband's. I don't have any pics from that time but I enjoyed seeing the relatives as well as catching up with old friends. Usually in the summers I get to go down the shore at some point, but this year I just didn't have the time, although the weather hadn't been that great for the beach so that's how I'm comforting myself. This trip did have a some mall shopping (NJ loves its malls and no sales tax on clothes), breakfast at a diner, and late night disco fries, so that it was good quality Jersey time. 

New York is always fun because even though I'm fairly certain I'll never live in the city again, I love going back to visit and walking around to see what's changed and what is still the same. Even though it was ridiculously humid on the days I visited, I walked about a cumulative seven or eight miles through the city. I was in Brooklyn (walked from downtown to Fort Greene), Chelsea, Midtown and Harlem. I finally got to go to The Grange which my friends had recommended for a while now... I am a little sad it didn't exist back when I lived up the street. 

Ft Greene

Yo is Brooklyn in the house...

street art

Then the reason for traveling this specific week was actually to end up in DC for a friend's wedding... actually two classmates of mine from when I went to grad school in DC ended up falling in love and getting married, and they decided to have their wedding near where they met. It was at a beautiful vineyard in Virginia, the weather was perfect, the music was this awesome 90s cover band whose concerts we loved back in school, and of course it was wonderful to have such a wonderful reason to hang out with good friends.

Bluemont Vineyard

Of course being a whirlwind trip, we ALSO saw a friend of mine from undergrad - a friend I had met when we studied in Spain, who moved to DC after I moved out of there. I hadn't seen her since my own wedding and it was good to spend a little time with her and her husband, see their new condo, and meet their adorable rescue dog. Again it was fun to see all the latest changes in a city I used to live in and see old friends make their home there.

And now I'm back home, back on the grind. It'll be another few months before I head back East but I am already looking forward to it.

homeward bound