So I figured I would go all meta and talk a bit about my passion for podcasts. Back in the Spring of 2005, the noted webcomic presarios over at Penny Arcade put up a link to video of Will Wright talking about this up and coming, revolutionary game called Spore. Now Spore wound up being fun but not necessarily worth the hype but the real story was that the website where this video was being hosted also had a podcast by a guy who called himself Gaming Steve.
I owned an early generation iPod at this point but found myself mostly listening to Gaming Steve on my computer while I played video games and avoided doing homework for my education degree I was pursuing. Regardless of how I listened, I found I was hooked. I was mostly interested in getting all the information I could on Spore but I found myself really like Steve and his soft-voiced discussions on the gaming industry, reviews of games I would never play, and all around pleasant demeanour.
That Summer, I began to yearn for more content and iTunes had started listing podcasts and so I just typed in “Geek” and the world was opened up to me. In the last eight years, podcasts have quickly replaced TV, Music, and Books as my primary input medium. Only Netflix has managed to make a decent dent in it as I find it marginally more conducive to playing video games.
There’s something oddly intimate about podcasts, both in how we select them and hone our preferences more than just sitting down to see what’s on TV and in the way those voices in your ears become friends and companions. When a podcast is late, I feel genuinely sad, as if I’m being stood up by a good friend for a scheduled get together.
I was very fortunate to find a lady who also became hooked on podcasts. Having a dog doesn’t hurt. Over the years, I’d thought about different podcast ideas and it was really a bolt out of the blue when Rachel and I sat down, brainstormed, and here you are. I have a lot more to say about the subject so expect to hear more but for now, know that I’m not just a podcaster, I’m also a customer.