WEBVTT - TechList: The History of Podcasting 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:09.600 Hey there, it's Jonathan Strickland, and I'm here to introduce 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:14.560 a playlist of ten episodes of my podcast tech Stuff 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:20.000 that are all about entertainment and entertainment related fields, from 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:25.720 video games to television series, two films to internet videos 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:30.440 from yesteryear. So I hope you guys enjoy these episodes. 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:34.440 You can go to the tech Stuff podcast page and 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:38.000 subscribe to listen to all sorts of episodes about tech 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:42.240 from all realms, and hopefully this will provide a little 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:46.040 bit of entertainment, a little bit of education, and probably 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:49.000 more than a few puns, because that's kind of how 0:00:49.080 --> 0:01:06.240 I roll. Enjoy this playlist. Welcome to text Stuff, a 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:13.760 production from my Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:16.600 tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:18.840 producer with I Heart Radio, and I love all things tech. 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:21.720 And we're gonna listen to another classic episode in our 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.880 entertainment playlist. This one's on the history of podcasting, a 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:30.039 very interesting topic, a topic in which I play a 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:33.920 very very small part. Although honestly, by the time Tech 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:38.640 Stuff came around, podcasting was already established, it just wasn't mainstream. 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:42.399 But yeah, I was a listener of podcasts even into 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:45.759 the early days. Not quite as early as the earliest days. 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.800 I came around, probably in the second wave, but um, 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:51.480 it was interesting to go back and look into how 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:56.000 they all got started. So enjoy. I realized that while 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:58.720 I've talked about podcasting in an episode or two, I've 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:04.760 never done a full episode about the history of podcasting itself. 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:07.600 And so that's what we're going to talk about today. 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:10.680 We're going to look at the history of podcasting, how 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:15.760 it evolved, how it got its name, the earliest examples 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.840 of podcasts, and then we're gonna talk a little bit 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:22.640 about the how stuff works history with podcasts, at least 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:27.880 based upon what information I could glean from my Taciturn coworkers. 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:32.920 So sit back, relax, and let's learn about some history, y'all. 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.840 It's the stuff you missed in history of podcasting. I'm 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.720 Jonathan Strickland. So this particular story is a complicated one. 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:43.079 It's filled with a lot of different people, a lot 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:47.560 of different things have happened over the course of the 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:51.519 evolution of podcasting. There are incidents and accidents, their hints 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:55.519 and allegations. As Paul Simon would say, so let's dive 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:59.520 in now. If you look at the story for like 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:02.440 Go Anywhere and you look for the history of podcasting, 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:04.800 you just type that into Google and you pull up 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:08.520 some stuff you including an article that we have on 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:11.400 house top works dot com. You will frequently see that 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:14.680 podcasting dates back to two thousand four with Adam Curry, 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:18.639 who I remember from my childhood. He was a VJ 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:24.400 on MTV, which used to show music videos, and that's 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:27.280 where a lot of the histories start. They say two 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:31.120 thousand four, Adam Curry made the first podcast, but uh, 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:35.520 it's not entirely accurate. Actually, the story dates back before 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:40.160 two thousand four, and it's the first podcast was not 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:44.760 from Adam Curry, not really. So I thought we could 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:49.040 probably dispel some myths and learn about the truth here. Uh. 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:51.880 And there are also a few different threads to this story, 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:53.880 as it turns out, and one of those threads I've 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:56.800 already covered in an episode of tech Stuff from about 0:03:56.800 --> 0:03:59.360 a year ago. I thought it was more recent than that, 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:01.640 but as I was looking through the archives to pull 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:04.720 up my notes, I realized that I my notes dated 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:08.280 from two thousand and sixteen about the history of the 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.760 MP three standard and This just shows how bad I 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:13.640 am at being able to keep track of time. I 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.320 was convinced that I had done the MP three episode 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:18.279 maybe a month or two ago, and it is August 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:22.159 as I record this now. I'm not gonna go over 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:24.800 all of the history of the MP three standard again, 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.640 because it's all there in that episode. But I'm going 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.760 to give you the cliffs Notes version. Our cliffs Notes 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:34.839 still thing. Someone tell me if cliffs notes still exist. 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:37.200 I'm pretty sure I've asked that in a previous episode, 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:40.720 but i've I've clearly forgotten again. Anyway, I'm gonna give 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:44.760 you a summary of what I talked about that previous episode. 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:48.680 A research institution in Germany formed a group that dedicated 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:53.600 itself to developing compressions strategies for digital audio files. So 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:56.599 a raw audio file, if you didn't compress it at all, 0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:00.880 it represents a pretty decent amount of digital information. It 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:04.320 obviously depends upon how long the audio track is. Right, 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:08.080 the more the more information is there, the longer the file, 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:11.720 the larger the file size will be. So a three 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:16.200 minute song is going to have more information packed into 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:21.640 it than say a minute of quiet room tone. So 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:26.640 you've got this fairly large amount of data, especially for 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:28.800 the time that we're talking about, which was late nineteen 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:32.440 seventies early nineties, there was a need to find a 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:36.240 way to compress that data down so it didn't take 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:39.120 up as much space, and that then you could transmit 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:43.080 it over various media like telephone lines. And that's what 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:45.080 this group in Germany was trying to do. They wanted 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:49.560 to be able to transmit digital audio over telephone lines, 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.960 but in order to make it efficient, they needed to 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:56.440 find a compression strategy or else the files were just 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.719 gonna be too large. Now these days, while the file 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.640 side haven't really changed, I mean, the raw audio is 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:06.440 still what it is, we definitely have much faster throughput, 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:09.960 Like we're able to send a lot more information in 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:12.400 a shorter amount of time than what we used to 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:14.280 be able to do. So it's not as big a 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:17.599 deal today unless you're talking about just trying to store 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.520 a ton of audio on a relatively small storage device. 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:26.120 But back in the nineteen seventies and eighties, this was 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:30.520 a pretty tough challenge. Now, whether they were successful or 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:35.600 not in creating a compression strategy that makes the file 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:40.159 sizes smaller without affecting the audio quality depends upon a 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:43.200 couple of things. For one, it depends upon your sense 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:46.279 of hearing, because some people are more sensitive to it 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:49.039 than others, and for one person it may sound perfectly fine, 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:51.600 and another person may say, no, I can hear all 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:55.960 sorts of problems from the compression in that audio. For another, 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:58.400 it depends on the settings of the compression itself. You 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:02.560 can compress it at different rate, and that will determine 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:07.520 how how much it affects the audio file itself. Broadly speaking, 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:11.440 their compression strategy was to create what was essentially a 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:15.600 virtual ear approach, in which a computer program would analyze 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:20.160 audio an attempt to remove extraneous data. In other words, 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:23.000 it was looking for any sounds that would lay outside 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:26.360 the typical range of human hearing and then chuck those 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:29.680 sounds out because people wouldn't be able to hear them anyway. 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:33.440 So any sound that was at a frequency above or 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:37.240 below what your typical human can hear, that would be 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:40.520 removed because you wouldn't be able to hear it anyway. 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.440 Sometimes it would be sounds that might be a soft 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:47.520 sound that follows a very loud sound, because that loud 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.160 sound would mask the softer sound, and if we can't 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:54.440 hear the softer sound, then there's no reason to include it, 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:58.360 at least according to this compression strategy. And that was 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:00.440 a way of getting rid of information in so that 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:04.000 you could compress everything together and make smaller file sizes. 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:07.680 So really the goal was just to keep only the 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:10.320 data that humans would really be able to perceive. And 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:13.560 it took some time for them to tweak this and 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:15.760 make sure that they could come up with an algorithm 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:20.880 that worked and didn't result in a really choppy, unpleasant 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:24.480 audio experience. So, depending upon how you set your compression rates, 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:26.840 you might manage to reduce a file size and not 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:29.920 notice a huge difference in quality, or you might end 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:33.560 up with something that is truly unlistenable. If you remember, 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:37.720 the people working on the MP three standard back in 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:41.640 the day would use Tom's Diner as a way of 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.320 measuring their success, and they said that the first few 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:50.680 times they tried to make a compression formula, it turned 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:55.440 Tom's Diner into an unlistenable mess. Some of the uncharitable 0:08:55.480 --> 0:09:00.520 among us might claim that the completely uncomp rest version 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:03.080 of Tom's Diner is an unlistenable mess, but that's that's 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:06.120 just being mean. Spirited. I would say the MP three 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:09.920 would later make podcasting practical, but it was not a 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:13.000 quick leap from m P three's too podcasts. There was 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:15.840 a good amount of time between the development of the 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:18.880 MP three and the rise of the podcast But the 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:22.720 MP three development sort of leads us into other things 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:28.440 that will eventually allow podcast to become a reality. Now 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:31.760 let's skip ahead to the early nineties. The development of 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:34.760 the MP three largely happened in the eighties, but didn't 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:40.040 really start making a debut until the nineties. Anyway, the 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:43.120 mainstream world was scratching its head over something called the 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:48.200 Internet in those early nineties. Before then, the only people 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:52.200 who really had access to the Internet were academics, government officials, 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:54.959 and scientists who had been using it for quite some time. 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:58.400 But the rest of us really didn't have any exposure 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:00.920 to it. It was not something thing that your average 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:04.400 person had any access to. Your average Joe hadn't really 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:07.600 had any contact with it at all. Computer hobbyists had 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:11.000 been cutting their teeth on bulletin board systems or bbs is. 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:15.320 Now these were message boards and file repositories that typically 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:20.040 sat on someone's spare computer. So with your very basic 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:23.000 bulletin board system. The way it would work is you 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:25.679 would have a phone number and that phone number would 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:30.520 go to the modem connected to this other computer, the 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:34.679 computer that houses the BBS. You would use your computer 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:37.920 to dial into that number that would connect you to 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:40.600 this other BBS, and you would then be able to 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:43.640 browse the files that have been uploaded to that particular 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:47.800 directory for the BBS, play games, leave messages, that kind 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:52.680 of thing because you're dialing in. Typically a lot of 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:55.880 those smaller BBS has had maybe one phone line, sometimes 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:59.440 up to three, where that's how many people could connect 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:03.439 to anyone time. So there were various ways to discourage 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:07.200 people from spending too much time on the BBS and 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:11.559 thus keeping it busy for everybody else. For example, UH, 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:14.240 some of them would charge for a certain amount of time, 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:17.920 like after a certain number of minutes had passed, you 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:22.200 would have to pay to keep access to the BBS. UH. 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:25.320 Some would just have a time limit and after that 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:27.400 the when you hit your time limit, it would just 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:29.920 kick you off and you would have to wait another 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:34.520 day to be able to log back into your BBS. Eventually, 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:37.240 you had some BBS is on what was called Fido Net. 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:40.800 This was a network that allowed bbs is to exchange 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:44.480 information with each other. So it's almost like post offices. 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:46.800 Think about going to a post office and you would 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:49.400 drop a letter off, and that letter would then be 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:52.600 sent to another post office, someone else's BBS and they 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:57.079 can receive it. That was kind of the world before 0:11:57.559 --> 0:12:01.480 the Internet had really taken off, and the Internet really 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:04.040 is a different beast altogether. Instead of dialing into a 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:08.000 single machine and browsing what was on that machine, you 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:12.120 could suddenly connect to a network of networked machines. In 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:16.280 something very important happened in the United States, the Federal 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:20.400 Communications Commission the f c C made an important decision 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:24.000 that encouraged explosive growth on the Internet. That that decision was, 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:29.959 they're going to lift some restrictions. Up until there was 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:33.680 a restriction on commercial uses for the Internet. You you 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:36.360 weren't allowed to use it for commercial purposes. It was 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:40.160 meant for research, it was meant for government use, and 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:42.319 that was it. But in ninety one, the f c 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.360 C said we're lifting those restrictions, and it became the 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:48.640 Wild West for a while where lots of companies said, 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:52.040 I'm not sure how we can use this to our advantage, 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:54.559 but I'm sure it's huge and we have to use 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:56.400 it to our advantage. So there were a lot of 0:12:56.440 --> 0:13:00.360 different parties rushing into the space because now it was 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:04.400 possible to make a commercial use of it, but no 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:07.400 one had really figured out how to actually do that yet. 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:10.520 There was a lot of competition to try and figure 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:13.760 out how can we dominate this space, and no one 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:18.640 really had the answer yet. So how did this affect 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:22.480 Internet use? Well, before the FCC lifted restrictions, there were 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:27.160 around one thousand Internet hosts connected to this network of networks. 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.040 There were more than a million Internet hosts. But for 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:34.480 our story, the important bit is that people and companies 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:40.120 could launch commercial interests in the Internet, including radio stations. Now, 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:43.240 Carl Malamud gets the credit for being the first person 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:46.520 to launch an Internet radio site, and this was called 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:52.240 Internet Talk Radio. Malamud launched this show in and he 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:55.240 launched it with a program called Geek of the Week. 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:58.400 You can actually find recordings of some of those old 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.839 episodes online and they tiply feature various important people in 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.560 the computer and text spheres, and Malamouda would just interview 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:09.160 them about whatever subject they wanted to talk about, and 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:12.280 those were the programs that went out live on the Internet. 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:19.280 On June, the band Severe Tire Damage became the first 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:23.640 musical act to perform a concert on Internet radio. Their 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:27.480 show went out over mbone. It's the letter M as 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.520 in merry and bone, B, O and E. That stands 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:34.360 for multicast backbone, or it's actually a protocol that sat 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:37.680 on top of the multicast backbone, which made it feasible 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:41.880 to send data to multiple viewers around the world simultaneously. 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:46.640 So I thought it would be helpful to understand how 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:50.840 this works. Generally speaking, I p multicasting involves setting up 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:53.880 a great big convoy, and more specifically, it has to 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:58.640 do with packets. So the Internet sends information in packets. 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:02.480 Anytime there's data passing between computers on the Internet, you're 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:05.560 generally talking about packets that are going back and forth. 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:08.960 And a packet is a unit of data and it 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:12.120 includes a few types of information within that packet. So 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:15.400 the first type of that information is the data that's 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:19.320 necessary to deliver it to the right destination. So you've 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:23.360 got these sort of headers and footers inside of a packet, 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:25.040 you know, at the very top and the very bottom 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:29.280 of the packet, that helps tell the Internet system at 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:33.080 large where that packet needs to go. It's essentially like 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:36.640 the address you would find on an envelope in the 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:41.320 post office. So the packets have that part of the information. 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:44.440 They also have the payload, the actual data that they're 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:47.800 carrying to the destination. Let's say it's a web page. 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:50.800 It would be a little part of that web page, 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:54.520 would be a small portion of the web page. And 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.720 then you have a third part, which is uh the 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.160 way that that packet fits in with other packets to 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:05.520 complete whatever that payload is. So again, in the case 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:07.000 of a web page, let's say you're going to how 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:09.480 stuff works dot com, and just for the sake of 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:14.240 this example, we're just gonna use a nice round, simple 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:18.760 number of one hundred packets. It takes one packets to 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:22.840 load up the home page of how stuff works dot com. 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:26.280 Those headers and footers will tell the packets where they 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:28.800 need to go, which would be your browser because you're 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:31.280 the one who typed in www dot how stuff works 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:35.840 dot com. And they also tell your browser how they 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:39.040 all fit together so that it can construct the website 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:41.040 and you can see it on your side. On the 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:45.760 client side of this exchange, Uh, packets tend to be 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:48.600 relatively small, so you typically need a lot of them 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:53.720 to deliver any information of significant size. This brings us 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:56.680 to that third type, that that bit of information that says, hey, 0:16:57.120 --> 0:16:59.200 I'm the puzzle piece that goes in the top right corner. 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.160 It's not exactly how it works, but it's a decent 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:06.359 enough analogy to kind of understand what's going on. Now, 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:08.600 why would you send data and packets. Why wouldn't you 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:13.000 just send the entire piece all at once. It's meant 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:16.520 to be a way to ensure the delivery of information, 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.600 and by dividing it up into packets, you can actually 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:22.680 make a better case for that information, making it to 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:25.080 where you wanted to go. If you're sending it all 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:27.320 out as one big file, one thing that can happen 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:29.960 is it can slow everything down because depending on the 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:32.400 size of the file, it might start to tax certain 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:37.360 parts of the system, and if it fails, you're you've 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:39.360 got to send it all over again. It just becomes 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:42.720 a big nightmare. So the founders of the Internet, who 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:45.080 as we all know, put the Internet on top of 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:47.320 Big ben because that's where it gets the best reception, 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:51.000 figured that by breaking information up into packets and sending 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:52.960 them along the network, you had a better chance of 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:56.000 actually receiving the information you wanted. And the reason for 0:17:56.040 --> 0:18:01.000 that is twofold. It's redundancy, and packet switching. Redundancy means 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:03.520 that a server is sending out multiple copies of the 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:05.840 same packet to make sure that one of them gets 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:08.480 to their destination. So this is kind of like if 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:12.680 you had critical message and you've got you make three 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:15.879 copies of it and you send a copy each with 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:20.120 a different messenger and they all rush out. Well, that 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:22.760 means that you're more likely to get your message to 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:25.080 where it needs to go, because even if one of 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:28.280 them fails along the way, you have three others going. 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:30.880 Remember us at three copies, so you have one original, 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:35.280 that's four total, so one of them is likely to 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:38.600 get there. So that way you can send those writers 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:40.199 off to gone door to let them know the row 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:45.000 end is coming out to help them or something. Packet 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:47.359 switching is the method of sending the packets themselves, and 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.720 this involves each packet taking its own path. Typically it's 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:53.800 whichever path is the most efficient for that packet at 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:56.720 that time for it to get to its destination and 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:59.080 packets that all belong to the same document or file 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:01.600 can travel very different pathways. So if you go and 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:04.359 you're trying to pull up how supports dot com, the 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:07.240 packets that represent that web page could be taking very 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:10.280 different paths in order to get to your computer. Remember, 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:14.479 the network is this network of networks. It can be 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:17.080 bouncing from all sorts of different machines before it finally 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:20.640 gets to you. The destination computer then assembles all those 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.320 packets back into the document or file or whatever it 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:25.720 may be. And this is really cool because it means 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.359 that the Internet is really robust. If nodes on the 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:32.480 Internet go offline for whatever reason, if if certain computers 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.680 between you and the computer you're trying to get information 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:39.000 from go down, well the packets can route around that. 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:42.240 They don't come up to like a sinkhole in the 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:44.600 middle of the road and say well, we wanted to 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:46.840 get there, but we can't. No, they can take a 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:50.560 different pathway, and you just have to make sure that 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:55.520 you are, you know, having that redundancy there, which, by 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:57.239 the way, you don't have to do t C P 0:19:57.320 --> 0:20:01.280 I P does it for you. But as long as 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:03.879 that's in place with the redundancy, you don't even have 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:06.080 to worry if some of those packets somehow lose their 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:10.480 way for whatever reason, whatever it may be, you'll likely 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:12.679 end up getting the information you asked for, may not 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.160 be as fast as you wanted, depending upon the problems, 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:18.320 but you'll get it. So back to Inbone, it's a 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:21.800 little different from the approach I just mentioned. The basic 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:25.480 packet switching strategy works great for static files and pages. 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:28.040 So if I have a photograph and I want to 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:32.800 send that information across to some other computer, it works 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:35.879 great for that. Photographs don't change. It's gonna be the 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:39.520 same photograph no matter what, so it's very easy to 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:41.960 send that. And now I'm not talking about photo editing 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:44.760 software here, obviously, I'm just talking about sending an image. 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:49.440 But if you want to send something like a video 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:54.280 where you have stuff constantly changing both the image and 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:58.520 the audio, or even more so live video which is 0:20:58.600 --> 0:21:01.280 persistently changing and you're not sure when it's going to end, 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:07.400 another approach was pretty important. So broadcast represents this ongoing 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:11.199 creation of information, and how do you disseminate that across 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:15.919 the network? Inbone would keep all the packets together, like 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:19.280 packed together like a like a convoy, as I said earlier, 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:23.399 until the last possible moment before they would split up 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:25.960 and move through different routers and go through the rest 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:28.960 of its journey. So it's more like a fire hose 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:31.520 approach in the first half until you get to a 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:34.440 point where you absolutely have to split things up because 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:37.520 they will not get to their destination otherwise. This allows 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:40.280 for a more efficient transmission of live content, and it 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:42.479 helped make sure that those packets would arrive at their 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:46.000 destinations at more or less the same time, because you 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:47.920 want it to be like a broadcast. You want the 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:49.840 people who are watching it to all have the same 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:53.280 experience that around the same time. Otherwise you could end 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:55.639 up in a situation where one person is watching the 0:21:55.680 --> 0:21:58.320 concert on a slight delay and someone else might be 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:00.920 more than a minute or two behind. And this does 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:03.040 still happen, by the way, I can't tell you how 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:05.639 many times I've watched the w w E network and 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:07.640 have been in a Facebook chat about what was going 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:09.600 on with a pay per view, only to have someone's 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:13.240 boil something for me because I was lagging a bit 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:16.399 behind the rest of the live feed for everybody else. 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:20.240 But that's the price we pay for this amazing technology. 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:24.840 Xerox Park was the group that created the inbone extension 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:29.480 and the Internet Engineering Task Force adopted it in nineteen two, 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:31.840 so it was all well in place for the Internet 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:36.280 Radio Days of nine and Severe Tire Damage performed at 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:39.840 Xerox Park. You remember, Xerox Park is also the research 0:22:39.880 --> 0:22:43.120 and development area where we got things like the graphic 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:46.639 user interface and the computer mouse, as well as a 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:50.040 ton of other stuff. A lot of interesting research and 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:56.240 development came out of Xerox. So their audience Severe Tire 0:22:56.280 --> 0:23:00.119 Damage for this initial concert pretty much consisted of a 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:04.480 dude in Australia, which is really true. There was a 0:23:04.520 --> 0:23:07.560 researcher in Australia who was helping along with this project 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:10.200 and he was the intended audience for the Severe Tire 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:17.199 Damage concert of In slightly more famous band called the 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:21.040 Rolling Stones performed their first live concert on the Internet, 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:25.000 and cheekily, Severe tire Damage performed a set just before 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:27.680 The Rolling Stones were scheduled to go on and then 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:30.120 they put their set out over the Internet, this time 0:23:30.160 --> 0:23:34.960 broadcast to the Internet at large. So Severe Tire Damage said, 0:23:35.359 --> 0:23:38.720 we were happy to open for the Rolling Stones, even 0:23:38.720 --> 0:23:41.119 though we're not in the same city as the Rolling Stones, 0:23:41.560 --> 0:23:43.520 and that was kind of making a point saying you 0:23:43.560 --> 0:23:47.240 could now have this sort of experience where people from 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:51.560 different parts of the world could address an audience in 0:23:51.880 --> 0:23:55.000 a sequence and they didn't have to be in the 0:23:55.080 --> 0:23:57.800 same place at the same time. The Rolling Stones, for 0:23:57.800 --> 0:23:59.800 their part, were pretty good natured about it. I think 0:23:59.800 --> 0:24:02.960 at first they called him weird furry guys from from 0:24:03.200 --> 0:24:06.600 uh Palo Alto, California. But they also said to The 0:24:06.600 --> 0:24:08.560 New York Times that it was a good reminder of 0:24:08.600 --> 0:24:12.119 the democratic nature of the Internet. There was a college 0:24:12.200 --> 0:24:15.359 radio station called w x y C still Is that 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:18.719 became the first terrestrial radio station to start broadcasting on 0:24:18.800 --> 0:24:22.320 the Internet. They began their simulcast in the fall of 0:24:22.400 --> 0:24:25.800 n now They first started off with their off air 0:24:25.880 --> 0:24:30.119 signals using a Cornell University utility called see You See Me. 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:34.320 On November seven, the radio station became the first to 0:24:34.400 --> 0:24:38.400 simulcast it's broadcast live over the air and on the Internet. 0:24:38.640 --> 0:24:43.240 A few months later, w R. E. K reck Over 0:24:43.320 --> 0:24:47.040 at Georgia Tech went live with its simulcast technology. And 0:24:47.400 --> 0:24:49.480 it's kind of interesting because they had actually hooked up 0:24:49.480 --> 0:24:52.160 their Internet client on November seven, which was the same 0:24:52.240 --> 0:24:54.920 day w x y C went live, but it would 0:24:54.960 --> 0:24:57.520 take a few more months before Georgia Tech Broadcast hit 0:24:57.560 --> 0:25:01.840 the Internet, and since then tons of different university and 0:25:01.880 --> 0:25:05.399 then commercial radio stations as well as public radio have 0:25:05.640 --> 0:25:08.840 joined on and used the Internet for broadcast. Now we're 0:25:08.840 --> 0:25:10.640 gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, 0:25:10.680 --> 0:25:14.600 we're going to talk about how this technology of streaming 0:25:14.720 --> 0:25:18.840 radio gradually gave people the idea of creating sort of 0:25:18.840 --> 0:25:24.240 an episodic content that would be digestible in a downloadable 0:25:24.280 --> 0:25:28.720 format and thus eventually evolve into podcast But first, let's 0:25:28.720 --> 0:25:38.640 take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, So 0:25:38.800 --> 0:25:42.639 streaming radio was now available online, and to listen to 0:25:42.760 --> 0:25:46.560 any streaming radio station you needed to use an audio player, 0:25:46.960 --> 0:25:49.720 Real Audio and other companies were making software that would 0:25:49.720 --> 0:25:51.960 allow you to listen to audio over the Internet. But 0:25:52.040 --> 0:25:56.679 what about podcasts? Well, jumping back to that's when a 0:25:56.720 --> 0:26:01.840 Canadian science news program called Quirks and Works hit the Internet. 0:26:01.880 --> 0:26:04.760 The radio show had been airing on terrestrial radio since 0:26:04.880 --> 0:26:09.399 nineteen Each show lasts about an hour and consists of 0:26:09.480 --> 0:26:14.199 segments about science, news and interesting facts. The Internet versions 0:26:14.240 --> 0:26:19.159 were recorded episodes stored in MP three format available for download, 0:26:19.520 --> 0:26:24.399 and this would become really important later on. Similarly, in 0:26:25.960 --> 0:26:29.359 CNN launched its Internet newsroom, and the company began to 0:26:29.359 --> 0:26:33.560 make shows available for download and included an updated compilation file. 0:26:34.160 --> 0:26:39.480 This too would become really important later on. Meanwhile, a 0:26:39.480 --> 0:26:42.760 guy named Jim Logan had founded a company called Personal Audio. 0:26:43.280 --> 0:26:47.000 According to Alan Martin of a l phr dot com, 0:26:47.040 --> 0:26:50.440 so we're gonna call it Alpha. Personal Audio's original goal 0:26:50.520 --> 0:26:52.960 was to create a digital audio playing device, but that 0:26:53.000 --> 0:26:55.560 didn't work out. However, in the process of trying to 0:26:55.600 --> 0:26:58.360 make this happen, the company had filed four and been 0:26:58.400 --> 0:27:03.359 awarded several pat dealing with digital audio distribution on the Internet. 0:27:03.800 --> 0:27:07.520 And this would be around the mid nineties, nine six 0:27:07.560 --> 0:27:11.560 and later, and this also becomes incredibly important. That's a 0:27:11.560 --> 0:27:14.200 lot of foreshadowing right there. Some of you are way 0:27:14.200 --> 0:27:16.600 ahead of me on this, I'm sure of it, but 0:27:16.880 --> 0:27:19.960 let's get back to the nineties. Over the next few years, 0:27:19.960 --> 0:27:23.359 the MP three file format began to gain popularity, and 0:27:23.480 --> 0:27:27.199 in nineteen nine, Napster became perhaps the best known of 0:27:27.240 --> 0:27:30.280 the peer to peer networks that made sharing MP three's 0:27:30.320 --> 0:27:34.200 across computers incredibly easy. And while I would never say 0:27:34.240 --> 0:27:38.680 that Napster caused piracy. It definitely made it a lot 0:27:38.800 --> 0:27:42.359 easier to do. You could rip tracks off of a 0:27:42.440 --> 0:27:44.840 disk with one of a dozen different programs. So you 0:27:44.920 --> 0:27:47.000 buy a CD or you get a CD, you put 0:27:47.040 --> 0:27:49.119 it in your computer, you pull the music off of it, 0:27:49.359 --> 0:27:52.439 convert those files into MP three format, store them on 0:27:52.480 --> 0:27:56.760 a drive on your computer, download the Napster interface, and 0:27:56.800 --> 0:27:59.960 then you could authorize Napster to use that particular draw 0:28:00.040 --> 0:28:05.280 I've to share all those files, and the music industry 0:28:05.280 --> 0:28:08.200 got really scared. So in short, the way peer to 0:28:08.280 --> 0:28:12.119 peer works is that you have some software that allows 0:28:12.119 --> 0:28:15.760 your computer to direct directly connect in to a network 0:28:15.800 --> 0:28:19.080 of other computers running that same software. And this network 0:28:19.119 --> 0:28:21.840 is constantly changing, with some computers being connected and some 0:28:21.840 --> 0:28:24.359 computers going offline. It all depends on who's using their 0:28:24.400 --> 0:28:28.159 computer for what. And you can search that network to 0:28:28.200 --> 0:28:30.440 see if there are any copies of a particular type 0:28:30.440 --> 0:28:33.439 of file you want, and when you download, you can 0:28:33.440 --> 0:28:37.600 actually download from multiple sources at the same time. So 0:28:38.320 --> 0:28:42.040 if there's one source that is particularly slow because of 0:28:42.080 --> 0:28:46.520 whatever reason, maybe there's some problems like there's congestion and 0:28:46.560 --> 0:28:50.800 the internet between you and that particular server, then you 0:28:50.840 --> 0:28:54.440 can start getting packets from other servers that also have 0:28:55.160 --> 0:28:59.960 that same file, and it's all decentralized, and it was 0:29:00.080 --> 0:29:02.920 a very quick way to spread files across and there's 0:29:02.920 --> 0:29:06.440 nothing illegal about that, right You can you can spread 0:29:06.480 --> 0:29:08.320 any sort of file you like, and if you have 0:29:08.360 --> 0:29:12.600 the legal authorization to distribute that file, then peer to 0:29:12.640 --> 0:29:15.920 peer networks are completely valid. The problem was a lot 0:29:15.920 --> 0:29:19.680 of people were using them to spread m P three's 0:29:19.720 --> 0:29:23.720 that did not technically belong to them. Maybe they had 0:29:23.800 --> 0:29:27.560 bought an album and then they uploaded or they rather 0:29:27.640 --> 0:29:30.680 made available all of the tracks off that album and 0:29:30.680 --> 0:29:33.800 so people could get it for free. Well that's not great. 0:29:34.560 --> 0:29:37.680 It's kind of violating copyright law, and it it helped 0:29:37.760 --> 0:29:42.160 precipitate an era in which we saw crazy amounts of 0:29:42.200 --> 0:29:45.600 work in digital rights management, and it was not a 0:29:45.760 --> 0:29:50.080 bright and shining moment in Internet history. That being said, 0:29:50.520 --> 0:29:53.000 there are so many valid reasons to use peer to peer. 0:29:53.200 --> 0:29:56.680 It's a real shame that Napster and other peer to 0:29:56.760 --> 0:30:01.480 peer platforms are forever associate ned with this concept of piracy, 0:30:01.720 --> 0:30:05.560 just because that was a pretty big use for a 0:30:05.560 --> 0:30:07.920 lot of these networks, and it got a lot of 0:30:07.960 --> 0:30:13.600 press around this same time, we also started seeing MP 0:30:13.720 --> 0:30:16.920 three players popping up. Now, the earliest players were pieces 0:30:16.920 --> 0:30:20.520 of software running on your computer, not exactly convenient for 0:30:20.640 --> 0:30:23.000 on the go listening. I did a couple of episodes 0:30:23.040 --> 0:30:25.720 about the history of MP three players, including the rise 0:30:25.760 --> 0:30:28.320 of the iPod. So again I'm not going to go 0:30:28.360 --> 0:30:32.120 into it too much, but Apple's iPod really helped push 0:30:32.240 --> 0:30:35.560 MP three's even further into the mainstream, and the iPod 0:30:35.680 --> 0:30:39.440 became the device most associated with this relatively new form 0:30:39.480 --> 0:30:45.800 of consuming audio simultaneously. So much is happening that's important 0:30:45.800 --> 0:30:49.800 to podcasting. We got the birth of the RSS feed. 0:30:49.880 --> 0:30:54.160 Now RSS stands for well, it depends upon whom you ask. 0:30:55.120 --> 0:30:58.280 It could stand for rich site summary, or maybe it 0:30:58.280 --> 0:31:01.640 stands for really simple syndicate sation. It just depends upon 0:31:01.720 --> 0:31:04.600 the authority you're asking at the time. But whatever it 0:31:04.640 --> 0:31:07.600 stands for, what it does is pretty cool. It is 0:31:07.640 --> 0:31:11.960 a format for delivering updated content to people. So in 0:31:12.000 --> 0:31:14.880 the old days, you go on the web, and web 0:31:14.880 --> 0:31:17.400 pages were pretty darn static. If you went to a 0:31:17.440 --> 0:31:19.640 web page one day and you looked at it, chances 0:31:19.680 --> 0:31:21.640 are the next day it was going to look exactly 0:31:21.680 --> 0:31:25.240 the same way. There were not that many dynamically changing 0:31:25.280 --> 0:31:28.240 web pages. It just wasn't very easy to do and 0:31:28.240 --> 0:31:30.719 there wasn't much call for it. But over time we 0:31:30.760 --> 0:31:33.680 started building in more functionality on the web. We started 0:31:33.680 --> 0:31:37.880 creating more dynamic elements, and that created a new problem. 0:31:38.000 --> 0:31:41.560 How could you, as a user know if your favorite 0:31:41.600 --> 0:31:45.080 websites have been updated. You could go and check them 0:31:45.120 --> 0:31:49.280 every single day and look for differences, or you could 0:31:49.360 --> 0:31:52.880 use rs S and RSS was this set of rules 0:31:52.920 --> 0:31:55.720 that people running these websites could use. They could incorporate 0:31:55.760 --> 0:31:58.760 it into their website. You could then subscribe to that 0:31:58.840 --> 0:32:02.120 website and anytime there was a change, that change would 0:32:02.120 --> 0:32:05.720 get reflected in your RSS aggregator. You would open up 0:32:05.720 --> 0:32:07.800 your aggregator and it would give you kind of like 0:32:07.960 --> 0:32:12.160 headlines of the latest changes that had happened in the 0:32:12.200 --> 0:32:16.440 pages that you are subscribed to. So once you were 0:32:16.480 --> 0:32:21.200 able to do that, it really transformed the browsing experience. 0:32:21.240 --> 0:32:24.400 You no longer had to do all this legwork yourself 0:32:24.440 --> 0:32:27.760 and just have your laundry list of websites that you 0:32:27.920 --> 0:32:30.760 visit every single day. You could actually take a quick 0:32:30.760 --> 0:32:33.080 look at your RSS aggregator and see if there's any 0:32:33.120 --> 0:32:36.880 reason to go to that website well. That RSS model 0:32:36.880 --> 0:32:40.400 would later become helpful to podcasts. It could alert podcatching 0:32:40.400 --> 0:32:43.400 services and users to new episodes as they joined the list, 0:32:43.760 --> 0:32:46.440 removing the need to visit the home page of the program. 0:32:46.680 --> 0:32:49.240 And there was a way of enclosing audio files that 0:32:49.280 --> 0:32:52.120 would be developed a little bit later, and that really 0:32:52.240 --> 0:32:56.160 sealed the deal. All of this was happening around to 0:32:56.280 --> 0:32:59.760 the early two thousand's. In December two thousands, a software 0:32:59.760 --> 0:33:02.440 develop br named Dave Winer found himself in an unlikely 0:33:02.480 --> 0:33:06.040 partnership with Adam Curry that former MTV v j I 0:33:06.080 --> 0:33:08.800 mentioned earlier, and they were trying to adapt the RSS 0:33:08.840 --> 0:33:12.280 feed so that it could include audio. So Weiner was 0:33:12.320 --> 0:33:15.080 the guy who created that modification for RSS, and he 0:33:15.160 --> 0:33:18.760 demonstrated it in early by using it to enclose a 0:33:18.920 --> 0:33:21.520 song by The Grateful Dead, and he put it in 0:33:21.560 --> 0:33:24.200 a blog he was writing, so people who were following 0:33:24.200 --> 0:33:27.760 his blog were subscribed to it could immediately get access 0:33:27.840 --> 0:33:31.240 to that song. And while this provided the skeletal structure 0:33:31.320 --> 0:33:34.960 upon which podcasts would be built, very few people were 0:33:35.000 --> 0:33:38.680 actually using it back then. In September two thousand three, 0:33:38.680 --> 0:33:41.640 Winer adapted his approach on behalf of a colleague named 0:33:41.680 --> 0:33:45.720 Christopher Leiden over at the Harvard Brookman Center, and Lydon 0:33:45.840 --> 0:33:49.240 really wanted to create an interview show with audio tracks 0:33:49.360 --> 0:33:52.240 saved in the MP three format. He was thinking of 0:33:52.240 --> 0:33:56.160 it as like an audio blog, so he's regularly interviewing 0:33:56.200 --> 0:33:58.560 people and uploading those files, and he wanted there to 0:33:58.600 --> 0:34:01.080 be a way for people to subscribe to it. He 0:34:01.200 --> 0:34:06.080 was interviewing bloggers, futurists, and political figures, and this would 0:34:06.080 --> 0:34:09.560 eventually become a show called Radio Open Source and is, 0:34:09.640 --> 0:34:13.520 by most accounts, the first actual podcast, though at the 0:34:13.560 --> 0:34:16.839 time it wasn't called a podcast. So if you hear 0:34:16.880 --> 0:34:19.319 the Adam Curry had the very first podcast and it 0:34:19.440 --> 0:34:22.520 launched in two thousand four. Just know that two thousand 0:34:22.560 --> 0:34:29.680 three saw Christopher Leiden's show Radio Open Source, and by 0:34:29.719 --> 0:34:32.719 all measures, that really was a podcast, It just didn't 0:34:32.760 --> 0:34:35.640 have the name yet. Later in two thousand three, and 0:34:35.800 --> 0:34:39.879 influential jet named Kevin Marks whipped up some interesting technological 0:34:39.880 --> 0:34:44.120 wizardry in connection with the two thousand three Blogger Cohn event. 0:34:44.640 --> 0:34:47.000 He showed off a program that could take the audio 0:34:47.080 --> 0:34:52.239 files housed in an RSS enclosure and transfer them automatically 0:34:52.360 --> 0:34:55.719 over to Apple's iTunes and then you can use the 0:34:55.840 --> 0:35:00.840 iTunes management software to synchronize to an i hot Now, remember, 0:35:00.840 --> 0:35:05.040 in these days, you had to physically connect an iPod 0:35:05.600 --> 0:35:09.520 to a computer and use iTunes to transfer music across 0:35:09.680 --> 0:35:14.799 the cable to your iPod. There's no wireless way of 0:35:14.840 --> 0:35:17.080 doing this yet. The iPod had no access to the 0:35:17.120 --> 0:35:20.719 iTunes store directly. You had to download things or rip 0:35:20.840 --> 0:35:24.200 things from your music collection directly to iTunes and the 0:35:24.200 --> 0:35:28.040 import those things from iTunes over to your iPod or 0:35:28.160 --> 0:35:31.919 other m P three player. I had a creative zen 0:35:32.760 --> 0:35:35.440 back then and I used it with iTunes and it 0:35:35.560 --> 0:35:41.080 was a headache, but it would kind of work. But 0:35:41.200 --> 0:35:44.719 this was huge, this approach to having this automatic conversion 0:35:44.760 --> 0:35:47.640 and something that I don't think Apple necessarily anticipated when 0:35:47.640 --> 0:35:51.320 it built in the synchronization capability and iTunes. The purpose 0:35:51.360 --> 0:35:54.400 for the feature was convenience. So let's say you've got 0:35:54.480 --> 0:35:57.520 a decent music collection and you put all your songs 0:35:57.600 --> 0:36:01.640 over on iTunes and you want them to transfer those 0:36:01.640 --> 0:36:05.600 songs to your brand spanking new iPod. That's not so 0:36:05.640 --> 0:36:07.520 difficult to do the first time, though it can take 0:36:07.520 --> 0:36:10.960 a while. You just connect your iPod to iTunes and say, 0:36:10.960 --> 0:36:13.040 all right, I want all these files to be moved over. 0:36:13.920 --> 0:36:16.680 But then later on, let's say you add more music 0:36:16.800 --> 0:36:21.000 to your library. So how do you add that to 0:36:21.120 --> 0:36:24.680 your iPod. You've already got a music library on your iPod, 0:36:25.000 --> 0:36:28.560 You've got new songs in your iTunes library on your computer. 0:36:28.880 --> 0:36:32.560 How do you get those two to match up again? Well, 0:36:32.640 --> 0:36:36.640 one thing you could do is individually move those files over, 0:36:36.680 --> 0:36:38.480 but that's gonna take a while. You could try and 0:36:38.560 --> 0:36:40.840 highlight them in a batch, but that's kind of irritating. 0:36:41.080 --> 0:36:45.480 So Apple built in this function where you could have 0:36:45.520 --> 0:36:48.680 synchronization turned on and if you plugged your iPod into 0:36:48.800 --> 0:36:52.680 your computer with your iTunes library, it would automatically pull 0:36:52.840 --> 0:36:57.319 any new tracks, anything that had been added after the 0:36:57.400 --> 0:37:01.359 last time your iPod had been synchronized and add them 0:37:01.360 --> 0:37:04.320 to your iPods library, so you didn't have to wait 0:37:04.920 --> 0:37:08.919 and do it all manually. That was the secret that 0:37:09.440 --> 0:37:11.640 was able to you know, they were able to use 0:37:11.719 --> 0:37:16.000 to make this automatic updating for podcasts or what would 0:37:16.080 --> 0:37:20.160 become podcasts. But again, I don't think Apple was necessarily 0:37:20.200 --> 0:37:23.120 thinking that when they included that feature. Kevin Marks was 0:37:23.160 --> 0:37:25.440 able to take it and turn into something really useful 0:37:25.480 --> 0:37:29.160 for people who wanted to create this episodic audio content. Now, 0:37:29.200 --> 0:37:31.840 Adam Curry would make a piece of code available that 0:37:31.840 --> 0:37:35.640 would automate this RSS and closed audio to iTunes process 0:37:35.840 --> 0:37:38.800 to his blog visitors, and it's called I Potter, I believe, 0:37:38.880 --> 0:37:41.640 is what the script was named. And he also began 0:37:41.719 --> 0:37:44.520 to contact other bloggers who are interested in using audio 0:37:44.600 --> 0:37:47.160 to reach an audience in this same sort of way. 0:37:47.280 --> 0:37:50.080 On February eleven, two thousand four, The Guardian published an 0:37:50.160 --> 0:37:54.520 article titled Audible Revolution. It was written by Ben Hammersley, 0:37:54.560 --> 0:37:56.600 and he was writing about the use of the Internet 0:37:56.719 --> 0:37:59.480 as a means to distribute audio content. And in that 0:37:59.520 --> 0:38:06.120 piece Hammersley asks, quote, but what to call it? Audio blogging, podcasting, 0:38:06.480 --> 0:38:10.040 guerrilla media end quote? And so this may very well 0:38:10.080 --> 0:38:14.080 be the origin of the term podcasting. Now it's possible 0:38:14.360 --> 0:38:17.520 that the word podcasting had been mentioned by someone before, 0:38:17.640 --> 0:38:21.080 but this is the earliest piece in writing that I 0:38:21.120 --> 0:38:25.080 can find that mentions that term, and it happened at 0:38:25.080 --> 0:38:28.400 that point entered into the general conversation about audio distribution 0:38:28.560 --> 0:38:33.400 through the Internet. On September two thousand four, Danny J. 0:38:33.560 --> 0:38:38.319 Gregoire used the term podcaster in a discussion about the 0:38:38.400 --> 0:38:43.560 technical issues surrounding publishing and distributing podcasts, and this section 0:38:43.840 --> 0:38:47.560 in which he said this would go like this. Here's 0:38:47.560 --> 0:38:50.680 a quote. I can see there being the desire of 0:38:50.800 --> 0:38:54.239 users in some instances to be able to easily subscribe 0:38:54.280 --> 0:38:58.319 and get older posts slash episode slash shows. What are 0:38:58.360 --> 0:39:02.040 we calling these things? Any way? How about pode or 0:39:02.239 --> 0:39:05.600 sewed for short that no longer appear on the RSS 0:39:05.640 --> 0:39:08.520 feed right now? If, for example, someone wanted to listen 0:39:08.560 --> 0:39:12.359 to all the daily source codes back to sewed number one, 0:39:12.920 --> 0:39:15.680 they would have to manually go through the archives and 0:39:15.760 --> 0:39:20.600 download any seds not automagically received, somewhat defeating the purpose 0:39:20.680 --> 0:39:23.279 of an I potter. Not too much of a problem now, 0:39:23.400 --> 0:39:26.160 But I guess one could argue that this is simply 0:39:26.239 --> 0:39:31.399 an RSS slash server side issue, and that the podcaster, yes, 0:39:31.480 --> 0:39:34.759 I like making up new words, should be responsible enough 0:39:34.800 --> 0:39:37.600 to offer a page of separate feeds of old sods 0:39:37.880 --> 0:39:42.200 by month slash year, slash, season, slash etcetera. End quote. 0:39:43.160 --> 0:39:47.240 So he also used the word podcaster. Two days later, 0:39:47.280 --> 0:39:51.160 in the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, Dave Slusher had this 0:39:51.280 --> 0:39:55.440 to say, somebody has registered podcasting dot net and I 0:39:55.480 --> 0:39:58.759 saw a podcaster or podcaster dot net, and I saw 0:39:58.760 --> 0:40:02.440 a podcaster hitting as a user against hitting my RSS 0:40:02.480 --> 0:40:04.640 feed and I went and looked at it. And right 0:40:04.680 --> 0:40:08.000 now it's just a coming soon page, but I'm going 0:40:08.040 --> 0:40:10.320 to pay attention to that. I want to see who's 0:40:10.360 --> 0:40:13.279 got that and what they're going, what they're doing with 0:40:13.400 --> 0:40:17.040 that term. I think they've coined the term, so iPod 0:40:17.040 --> 0:40:20.200 platform just doesn't spring from the tongue. But what I'm 0:40:20.200 --> 0:40:23.560 doing right here, and what Adams doing meaning Adam Curry, 0:40:23.840 --> 0:40:25.800 and what Dave Winer is doing, and what I T 0:40:26.000 --> 0:40:30.440 Conversations are doing, that's podcasting. I think that is the term. 0:40:30.480 --> 0:40:32.680 I'm using that from here on out. You know, so 0:40:33.200 --> 0:40:36.279 I am a podcaster and they are podcasters, and I 0:40:36.320 --> 0:40:40.520 am podcasting right now, and you listen to my podcast. 0:40:41.640 --> 0:40:45.960 The name stuck. That's an understatement and it's something that 0:40:46.000 --> 0:40:48.400 we all know because you wouldn't be listening to this 0:40:48.480 --> 0:40:53.480 if it didn't. In November two thousand four, Libson launched 0:40:53.920 --> 0:40:56.200 l I B S. White End. This was the first 0:40:56.280 --> 0:40:59.799 podcast service provider and it still exists to this day. 0:41:00.080 --> 0:41:03.279 I've actually used it. It's pretty pretty useful, pretty easy 0:41:03.320 --> 0:41:08.359 to use, not totally intuitive, but not difficult and these 0:41:08.360 --> 0:41:11.320 services make it easier for podcasters to get their content 0:41:11.560 --> 0:41:14.480 up online. They handle all the RSS feeds and all 0:41:14.520 --> 0:41:16.520 the technical side of things. All you have to do 0:41:16.600 --> 0:41:18.680 is fill out a few fields and then you can 0:41:18.719 --> 0:41:21.520 start uploading your content to the service, where we'll host 0:41:21.600 --> 0:41:24.640 your files and make them available for various podcatching services. 0:41:24.719 --> 0:41:30.080 Later on, in February two thive, Public Radio International launched 0:41:30.280 --> 0:41:34.279 The World, which was the first daily public radio news podcast. 0:41:35.200 --> 0:41:38.400 The next month, March two thousand five, the Public radio 0:41:38.480 --> 0:41:41.200 show on the Media would become the first to also 0:41:41.239 --> 0:41:44.719 be distributed as a podcast in full. In April two 0:41:44.719 --> 0:41:48.360 thousand five, Leo Laporte, who had worked in traditional media 0:41:48.400 --> 0:41:51.840 for years as a technology news communicator, a reviewer, and 0:41:51.880 --> 0:41:56.520 an educator, formed This Week in Tech, a network also 0:41:56.600 --> 0:42:00.000 known as twit. This would become one of the first 0:42:00.000 --> 0:42:02.840 podcast networks in the world. In other words, it became 0:42:02.840 --> 0:42:07.759 the umbrella to multiple shows in podcast format. On June six, 0:42:07.840 --> 0:42:11.040 two thousand five, iTunes four point nine launched with a 0:42:11.080 --> 0:42:14.640 podcast directory added to the iTunes Music store, and this 0:42:14.760 --> 0:42:17.080 made it much easier for iTunes users to find and 0:42:17.200 --> 0:42:20.800 download episodes, and it became really important to podcasters that 0:42:20.880 --> 0:42:24.279 they get their shows onto Apples directory because that was 0:42:24.320 --> 0:42:26.800 the place to be. That's where most people were getting 0:42:26.840 --> 0:42:29.479 their podcasts from in those days, so if you weren't 0:42:29.480 --> 0:42:32.319 showing up an Apple's directory, it felt like you were 0:42:32.360 --> 0:42:35.919 missing out on the people who would otherwise be able 0:42:35.960 --> 0:42:40.560 to subscribe to your show. This move also forced a 0:42:40.600 --> 0:42:43.920 different company to change its course, and that company was 0:42:44.000 --> 0:42:48.680 called Odeo o d e O. Odio's purpose originally was 0:42:48.719 --> 0:42:51.520 to create a podcasting directory as well as a suite 0:42:51.520 --> 0:42:55.320 of tools for creating podcasts. It was poised to launch 0:42:55.440 --> 0:42:58.200 in the summer of two thousand five, but then Apple 0:42:58.320 --> 0:43:00.520 got into the game with podcasting, and the people at 0:43:00.560 --> 0:43:02.640 Odeo saw the writing on the wall. There just was 0:43:03.000 --> 0:43:05.319 no way they were going to compete against Apple in 0:43:05.360 --> 0:43:09.040 that space, So rather than abandoned ship entirely, they decided 0:43:09.080 --> 0:43:12.239 to change what their company was going to do, and 0:43:12.280 --> 0:43:15.960 they also ditched the name. Instead, Odeo would become a 0:43:15.960 --> 0:43:18.800 company that would allow people to send out little messages 0:43:18.880 --> 0:43:21.880 to their friends using SMS messaging or a web client, 0:43:22.719 --> 0:43:26.960 and that's how Twitter was born. Yep, Twitter exists because 0:43:26.960 --> 0:43:32.440 of iTunes sort of. In August two five, NPR officially 0:43:32.440 --> 0:43:35.680 got into the podcast game. Making show segments available as 0:43:35.760 --> 0:43:39.120 podcast downloads. So while their rise in popularity a few 0:43:39.200 --> 0:43:42.120 years later makes it seem like they were latecomers to podcasting, 0:43:42.440 --> 0:43:44.200 the fact is they were around in some of those 0:43:44.200 --> 0:43:49.120 earliest days. The New Oxford American Dictionary would name podcast 0:43:49.200 --> 0:43:52.040 as their word of the year on December third, two 0:43:52.080 --> 0:43:55.640 thousand five, and the following year podcast would become a 0:43:55.719 --> 0:43:59.080 new word in the dictionary. We've got a lot more 0:43:59.120 --> 0:44:01.879 to talk about to wrap up, and actually to talk 0:44:01.880 --> 0:44:05.200 about some of the other influential podcasts that came out 0:44:05.239 --> 0:44:07.439 in those early years. But before we do that, let's 0:44:07.440 --> 0:44:17.080 take another quick break to thank our sponsor. So in 0:44:17.120 --> 0:44:20.799 two thousand six, Edison Research held a survey to find 0:44:20.800 --> 0:44:24.800 out how many people were aware of podcasting in general. 0:44:25.560 --> 0:44:28.880 So two thousand six is still early days for podcasting, 0:44:29.480 --> 0:44:32.200 and the survey bears it out. According to their report, 0:44:32.280 --> 0:44:37.399 twenty two of Americans who responded to this survey said 0:44:37.440 --> 0:44:40.959 they had heard about podcasting, but only half as many 0:44:41.120 --> 0:44:44.640 only eleven percent, had ever actually listened to a podcast. 0:44:45.560 --> 0:44:47.879 And this is why, in those early days of doing 0:44:47.920 --> 0:44:50.560 tech stuff, just a couple of years later, I found 0:44:50.560 --> 0:44:53.359 it really challenging to explain to people what it was 0:44:53.400 --> 0:44:56.520 I was doing. I'd say things like, yeah, it's an 0:44:56.560 --> 0:45:00.319 audio show, kind of like a radio show. No, no, 0:45:00.400 --> 0:45:03.840 it's not. It's not on the radio. It's it's on 0:45:03.880 --> 0:45:07.439 the internet. No no, no, you you don't. You don't 0:45:07.480 --> 0:45:10.520 stream it, you download it and then you then you 0:45:10.600 --> 0:45:12.520 listen to it on an iPod or like an NP 0:45:12.640 --> 0:45:17.400 three player. I've had that kind of conversation so many times. Well, 0:45:17.440 --> 0:45:21.200 in February two thousand six, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me 0:45:21.280 --> 0:45:25.839 becomes nbr's first full program podcast, which means I've been 0:45:25.840 --> 0:45:30.840 a subscriber for more than a decade. Wow. Before that, 0:45:31.120 --> 0:45:35.799 NBR had been uploading segments of shows, but not entire episodes. 0:45:36.000 --> 0:45:37.560 So wait, Wait Don't tell Me. It was kind of 0:45:37.600 --> 0:45:41.840 their experiment what would happen if they allowed an entire 0:45:41.960 --> 0:45:45.160 show that would go out on NPR to also be 0:45:45.239 --> 0:45:48.360 downloaded as a podcast. As it turns out, people would 0:45:48.360 --> 0:45:52.480 go bunkers for it. That really showed up when they 0:45:52.480 --> 0:45:57.360 started doing this American Life. Also that month, in February 0:45:57.360 --> 0:45:59.680 two thousand and six, the Ricky Gervais Show entered the 0:45:59.719 --> 0:46:02.279 gain US Book of World Records as the most downloaded 0:46:02.320 --> 0:46:06.120 podcast in history. Though, come on, be fair. Two thousand 0:46:06.280 --> 0:46:09.000 six is pretty early in the podcast game. I mean, 0:46:09.040 --> 0:46:11.919 I hadn't even started tech Stuff yet, and it could 0:46:11.920 --> 0:46:15.120 have waited a bit, to be honest. That record would 0:46:15.160 --> 0:46:19.400 be broken later on, in the spring of two thousand seven, 0:46:19.640 --> 0:46:24.279 Jack and Stench start a subscription based podcast at five 0:46:24.360 --> 0:46:28.239 dollars per month per subscription. The Jack and Stinch Show 0:46:28.320 --> 0:46:32.240 grew out of a radio program called Jamie Jack and Stinch. 0:46:33.239 --> 0:46:36.440 Their radio company had canceled their show, so they were 0:46:36.440 --> 0:46:39.360 out of a job, and that's when the creators decided 0:46:39.400 --> 0:46:40.839 that they were gonna they were gonna try and make 0:46:40.880 --> 0:46:43.920 a listener supported series and see if they can make 0:46:43.960 --> 0:46:46.359 it work. And it turns out it did work. They're 0:46:46.360 --> 0:46:49.080 still podcasting today and it's still five dollars per month 0:46:49.239 --> 0:46:51.640 or cents per show, as they say on their website. 0:46:52.920 --> 0:46:56.080 Other subscription based shows would soon follow, and so you 0:46:56.160 --> 0:46:59.280 began to see a few different ways to monetize podcasts. 0:46:59.640 --> 0:47:03.399 There were these listeners supported shows through subscriptions or later 0:47:03.520 --> 0:47:08.000 on through platforms like Patreon. Then there are sponsors supported 0:47:08.000 --> 0:47:11.360 shows such as tech Stuff, where we monetized by having 0:47:11.400 --> 0:47:15.400 ads in our shows. There's also fully sponsored content in 0:47:15.400 --> 0:47:17.600 which a company will pay for a full episode of 0:47:17.600 --> 0:47:20.200 a program, so there are a few different ways to 0:47:20.239 --> 0:47:23.040 make money from podcasting, though I'd say the vast majority 0:47:23.040 --> 0:47:26.320 of podcasters out there aren't really making a big profit 0:47:26.440 --> 0:47:31.560 from it. On April two thousand eight, Josh Clark and 0:47:31.760 --> 0:47:35.839 Chris Palette became Internet superstars forever and ever when the 0:47:35.960 --> 0:47:40.000 very first episode of Stuff You Should Know published. That 0:47:40.160 --> 0:47:43.080 is our most popular podcast here at how Stuff Works 0:47:43.120 --> 0:47:45.680 dot com and Stuff you Should Know the very first 0:47:45.680 --> 0:47:49.640 episode April two thousand eight, Chuck was not a co 0:47:49.760 --> 0:47:53.400 host yet, it was my former editor Chris Polette. The 0:47:53.480 --> 0:47:56.840 topic they covered was how grass aline works and the 0:47:56.880 --> 0:48:00.520 show was just nine minutes long. Those are the episodes 0:48:00.520 --> 0:48:03.320 saw Josh work with a couple of different potential co hosts. 0:48:03.680 --> 0:48:06.719 So there was Chris Palette and there was also Candice, 0:48:06.840 --> 0:48:08.400 who would later go on to be one of the 0:48:08.400 --> 0:48:12.240 original hosts of Stuff You Missed in History Class, which, 0:48:12.320 --> 0:48:15.600 by the way, it was originally called Factor Fiction. Chuck 0:48:15.680 --> 0:48:19.600 Bryant would join Josh for the episode why does Toothpaste 0:48:19.680 --> 0:48:24.120 make orange Juice Taste Bad? Which published on May two 0:48:24.160 --> 0:48:28.000 thousand eight, and the charisma between the two hosts was undeniable. 0:48:28.239 --> 0:48:32.240 Josh and Chuck would become the definitive voices of stuff 0:48:32.239 --> 0:48:35.359 you should know, and they still are today, and they 0:48:35.400 --> 0:48:39.399 sit on either side of me. Chuck's on my right, 0:48:39.600 --> 0:48:43.360 Josh is on my left. Other house stuff works shows 0:48:43.440 --> 0:48:46.319 that launched around that same time, where Brain Stuff, which 0:48:46.320 --> 0:48:50.160 originally featured our founder Marshall Brain giving short explanations of 0:48:50.200 --> 0:48:53.680 interesting stuff, and then stuff you Missed in History Class, which, 0:48:53.719 --> 0:48:57.799 as I said before, started life as Factor fiction. And 0:48:57.840 --> 0:49:00.920 there there was a little show called tech Stuff, tiny 0:49:00.960 --> 0:49:04.080 little show that you're listening to right now. The first 0:49:04.160 --> 0:49:07.440 official episode of tech Stuff because we recorded a few 0:49:07.600 --> 0:49:10.960 that never published, a bunch of test episodes so that 0:49:11.000 --> 0:49:14.240 we can get used to being on the microphone, and 0:49:14.360 --> 0:49:18.439 they were bad and we should feel bad. I don't 0:49:18.480 --> 0:49:21.799 think they exist anymore. I'm pretty sure there's no existing 0:49:21.840 --> 0:49:24.959 recording of those early episodes, or I would release them. 0:49:24.960 --> 0:49:27.040 Why not, I would be I would group them together 0:49:27.080 --> 0:49:29.080 and say, you want to listen to what the show 0:49:29.160 --> 0:49:32.160 sounded like back in two thousand and eight, because this 0:49:32.239 --> 0:49:36.319 is it. So the first official episode went live on 0:49:36.440 --> 0:49:39.720 June tenth, two thousand eight, and that episode was called 0:49:39.880 --> 0:49:45.640 how the Google Apple Cloud Computer Will Work. The less 0:49:45.640 --> 0:49:51.040 said about that, the better podcasts continued to grow in popularity, 0:49:51.160 --> 0:49:54.719 and podcast networks also began to grow. And then we 0:49:54.760 --> 0:49:58.000 flashed back to that story I mentioned about Personal Audio. 0:49:58.160 --> 0:50:01.680 Back in the ninety nineties, a company, Personal Audio LLC. 0:50:01.880 --> 0:50:05.320 Was what some people called a patent holding company. Me 0:50:05.520 --> 0:50:07.960 the company was in the business of making money from 0:50:08.040 --> 0:50:11.440 the patents it held. It didn't make anything else. It 0:50:11.480 --> 0:50:14.520 didn't offer any services, it didn't offer any products. It 0:50:14.640 --> 0:50:16.880 had these patents. Now, there are a couple of different 0:50:16.880 --> 0:50:18.719 ways you can make money with patents, and they are 0:50:18.760 --> 0:50:24.000 completely viable. One of this is to license your patent 0:50:24.040 --> 0:50:27.719 and designed two interested parties, And again there's nothing wrong 0:50:27.760 --> 0:50:29.920 with that. So let's say I come up with a 0:50:30.000 --> 0:50:33.480 really cool idea on how to do something, and I 0:50:33.560 --> 0:50:37.080 patent that idea and then let companies know, Hey, if 0:50:37.120 --> 0:50:39.359 you want to do this thing in this cool way 0:50:39.400 --> 0:50:41.480 that I thought of, just come on over to me 0:50:41.640 --> 0:50:44.640 and we'll make a deal. Will you'll pay a licensing fee, 0:50:44.800 --> 0:50:47.040 I allow you to use my method. Everything will be 0:50:47.040 --> 0:50:49.720 cool until the patent expires, in which case it becomes 0:50:49.719 --> 0:50:54.800 public property. Or you could go another route, which involves 0:50:55.080 --> 0:50:57.399 just sitting on your patents and looking around and then 0:50:57.440 --> 0:51:00.719 suing people who appeared to be using your patent did ideas, 0:51:01.239 --> 0:51:03.799 Then you can either win money through a lawsuit or, 0:51:03.880 --> 0:51:07.480 as is more common, reach a settlement agreement where a 0:51:07.480 --> 0:51:12.440 company will pay you for using that patented idea. Lawsuits 0:51:12.440 --> 0:51:14.520 are really expensive, and often you'll find parties willing to 0:51:14.520 --> 0:51:17.759 settle out of court just to avoid risking a full, 0:51:18.120 --> 0:51:21.560 full blown court battle where even if you win, it's expensive, 0:51:21.719 --> 0:51:24.799 but if you don't win, it's even more expensive. Well, 0:51:24.800 --> 0:51:27.440 Personal Audio had sued Apple a couple of times in 0:51:27.520 --> 0:51:32.480 an East Texas court over patents involving playlists Why East Texas. 0:51:32.680 --> 0:51:35.920 Personal Audio claimed it had an office nast Texas, but 0:51:36.000 --> 0:51:40.200 a lot of different technology journalists said that that office 0:51:40.320 --> 0:51:42.960 was essentially empty and really was just connected to their 0:51:43.000 --> 0:51:46.400 patent lawyer's office. I don't know if that's true or not, 0:51:46.440 --> 0:51:50.160 but that's how it was reported, and that to East 0:51:50.160 --> 0:51:53.160 Texas was known as being a very favorable court when 0:51:53.239 --> 0:51:58.040 it came to patent litigation. It was very favorable towards 0:51:58.040 --> 0:52:04.480 patent holders. So in Personal Audio sued several parties, including 0:52:04.520 --> 0:52:08.120 Adam Carolla and how Stuff Works, among others. Although technically 0:52:08.160 --> 0:52:10.920 they were going after Discovery because How Stuff Works was 0:52:11.000 --> 0:52:14.239 owned by Discovery at that time. The claim was that 0:52:14.320 --> 0:52:17.240 Personal Audio held the patented approach that these other podcasts 0:52:17.280 --> 0:52:20.200 were using to distribute audio over the web, and then 0:52:20.280 --> 0:52:23.279 a long legal battle followed. Now I was in the 0:52:23.360 --> 0:52:26.880 dark throughout the entire process, for which I am thankful. 0:52:27.040 --> 0:52:29.719 I only learned about developments after they had hit the 0:52:29.719 --> 0:52:33.880 news cycle. The Electronic Frontier Foundation got involved. The e 0:52:34.120 --> 0:52:38.120 f F and they're very much a a consumer based 0:52:38.200 --> 0:52:43.440 organization that tries to look out for protections against corporations 0:52:44.320 --> 0:52:49.400 encroaching upon the Internet. They view the Internet as a 0:52:49.440 --> 0:52:54.799 public utility that should be UH, should be accessible by all, 0:52:55.360 --> 0:52:58.120 and that no company should have this kind of of 0:52:58.480 --> 0:53:02.960 leverage over it. So the tech news sites did some 0:53:03.040 --> 0:53:07.000 digging and made some allegations about Personal Audio about UH, 0:53:07.239 --> 0:53:10.520 the fact that the company had not ever produced a podcast, 0:53:10.560 --> 0:53:13.359 nor ever planned to do so, and so a lot 0:53:13.360 --> 0:53:16.240 of people were throwing around the words patent troll about 0:53:16.320 --> 0:53:19.839 Personal Audio. That's not my place to say, but the 0:53:19.880 --> 0:53:23.960 courts did ultimately find in favor of the podcasters. This 0:53:24.040 --> 0:53:26.520 was after Personal Audio had already started to back off 0:53:26.760 --> 0:53:30.279 from the lawsuits, not because the company was saying they 0:53:30.280 --> 0:53:33.200 didn't have a case. They said, no, we've got a case. 0:53:33.520 --> 0:53:36.040 There's just no money in podcasting, so no one could 0:53:36.040 --> 0:53:39.440 pay us, which was kind of like a back end 0:53:39.520 --> 0:53:42.960 its slap against podcasters. I mean, I can't necessarily disagree 0:53:43.000 --> 0:53:44.880 with him. There's not a whole lot of money in 0:53:44.920 --> 0:53:48.200 podcasting for for the vast majority of podcasters out there. 0:53:48.360 --> 0:53:50.560 You gotta do it because you love it, and maybe 0:53:50.600 --> 0:53:53.319 you wind up finding a profitable approach to it. It 0:53:53.400 --> 0:53:58.760 does happen, but it's hard to do. Now, it turns 0:53:58.800 --> 0:54:02.200 out that all of that was moot because there have 0:54:02.320 --> 0:54:06.440 been further UH lawsuits. The e f F pursued a 0:54:06.560 --> 0:54:10.200 claim that the patents that Personal Audio was depending upon 0:54:10.560 --> 0:54:15.200 are invalid, and that has gone to court, and that 0:54:15.719 --> 0:54:18.920 ended up being decided in the favor of e f 0:54:19.160 --> 0:54:24.640 and against Personal Audio. So there's you know, some of 0:54:24.640 --> 0:54:27.400 those examples I was talking about earlier, like Quirks and 0:54:27.480 --> 0:54:32.359 Quirks and Malamud's Internet talk radio platform, we're exhibiting features 0:54:32.400 --> 0:54:35.719 that were described in the Personal Audio patent. Now, that 0:54:35.760 --> 0:54:38.360 patent that they were really relying upon in this particular 0:54:38.400 --> 0:54:41.440 case was filed in two thousand nine, but it was 0:54:41.520 --> 0:54:45.400 given a priority date of N and this does happen 0:54:45.440 --> 0:54:48.680 in patent law. If you have filed for certain patents 0:54:49.080 --> 0:54:53.600 and you have a later patent that you feel is 0:54:53.640 --> 0:54:57.920 derivative of a previous one, and you want that effective 0:54:58.000 --> 0:55:02.759 date to be early earlier than what you're filing it for, 0:55:02.920 --> 0:55:05.319 you can appeal for a priority date, and they did 0:55:05.360 --> 0:55:09.600 and they got it. It was in but the examples 0:55:09.600 --> 0:55:13.640 of Quirks and Quirks and internet talk radio predated N 0:55:14.719 --> 0:55:16.760 and that led the court to rule that the patent 0:55:16.800 --> 0:55:21.239 was invalid as it was describing something that had already existed. 0:55:21.680 --> 0:55:23.640 So the case went to the Court of Appeals and 0:55:23.680 --> 0:55:26.520 the Court of Appeals upheld that ruling. So as of 0:55:26.520 --> 0:55:28.759 the recording of this podcast, there's been no word if 0:55:28.800 --> 0:55:31.759 Personal Audio will pursue this to the Supreme Court, because 0:55:31.800 --> 0:55:35.319 they could it could go that next step, but two 0:55:35.400 --> 0:55:40.400 courts so far have said, you know, there's evidence here 0:55:40.440 --> 0:55:44.360 that this stuff existed before you described it in your patent, 0:55:44.480 --> 0:55:47.799 and you can't patent an idea that already exists. I 0:55:47.800 --> 0:55:51.640 hope you guys enjoyed this episode of the history of podcasting. 0:55:51.640 --> 0:55:53.840 If you have any suggestions for future episodes, send me 0:55:53.880 --> 0:55:56.480 a message You can send it to me via Twitter 0:55:56.640 --> 0:55:59.520 or Facebook. The handle for both is tech stuff hs 0:55:59.719 --> 0:56:07.200 W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text 0:56:07.200 --> 0:56:10.640 Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts 0:56:10.680 --> 0:56:13.440 from I Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, 0:56:13.560 --> 0:56:16.720 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.