Before a podcast was a “podcast,” it was… well, it wasn’t really much of anything. It was in 2004, though, that many of the earliest names in on-demand audio began to smush “iPod” and “broadcast” into the word we’ve come to know as the way we all download and listen to shows now. In this episode, we go back two decades to the first days of the podcast. Then we hit the skip button to today and look at where podcasts are headed next.

Further reading:

From PodNews: The history of the word 'Podcast'
From The Guardian: Audible revolution
From Wired: The First Podcast: an Oral History
From The New York Times: An MTV Host Moves to Radio, Giving Voice to Audible Blogs

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They're called "Podcasts"