WEBVTT - The History of Podcasting 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:12.480 Text technology with tech Stuff from works dot com. Hey there, 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:16.080 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:19.079 I'm a senior writer with how stuff Works dot com 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:23.720 and I've been doing this for a while, like like 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:27.600 a long while. I've been podcasting for so long, and 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:32.279 as I think back to all of those episodes, I've 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:34.960 done more than eight d fifty of them. At this point, 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:39.839 I realized that while I've talked about podcasting in an 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:44.400 episode or two, I've never done a full episode about 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:48.319 the history of podcasting itself. And so that is what 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:50.560 we're going to talk about today. We're going to look 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:54.120 at the history of podcasting, how it evolved, how it 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:59.800 got its name, the earliest examples of podcasts, and then 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:02.280 we gonna talk a little bit about the how Stuff 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:06.320 Works history with podcasts, at least based upon what information 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:12.880 I could glean from my taciturn coworkers. So sit back, relax, 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:16.080 and let's learn about some history. Y'all. There's the stuff 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:20.520 you missed in history of podcasting. I'm Jonathan Strickland. So 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:23.400 this particular story is a complicated one. It's filled with 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:27.160 a lot of different people, a lot of different things 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:31.319 have happened over the course of the evolution of podcasting. 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:35.959 There are incidents and accidents, their hints and allegations. As 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:38.800 Paul Simon would say, So let's dive in now. If 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:42.880 you look at the story for like go Anywhere and 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:45.479 you look for the history of podcasting, you just type 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:48.600 that into Google and you pull up some stuff you 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.200 including an article that we have on house to wars 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:54.800 dot com. You will frequently see that podcasting dates back 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:58.559 to two thousand four with Adam Curry, who I remember 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:02.040 from my childhood. He was a a VJ on MTV, 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:07.080 which used to show music videos, and that's where a 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:09.959 lot of the histories start. They say two thousand four, 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:13.600 Adam Curry made the first podcast, but uh, it's not 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:18.720 entirely accurate. Actually, the story dates back before two thousand four, 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:23.639 and it's the first podcast was not from Adam Curry, 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:27.800 not really. So I thought we could probably dispel some 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:31.440 myths and learn about the truth here. Uh. And there 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:34.320 are also a few different threads to this story, as 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:36.360 it turns out, and one of those threads I've already 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:39.000 covered in an episode of tech Stuff from about a 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:41.520 year ago. I thought it was more recent than that. 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:43.760 But as I was looking through the archives to pull 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:46.880 up my notes, I realized that I my notes dated 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:50.400 from two thousand and sixteen about the history of the 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:53.880 MP three standard. And this just shows how bad I 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:55.760 am at being able to keep track of time. I 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:58.440 was convinced that I had done the MP three episode 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:00.400 maybe a month or two ago, and it is August 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:04.320 as I record this now. I'm not gonna go over 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:06.919 all of the history of the MP three standard again, 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:09.920 because it's all there in that episode. But I'm gonna 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:13.360 give you the cliffs notes version. Our cliffs notes still thing. 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:17.600 Someone tell me if cliffs notes still exist. I'm pretty 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:19.880 sure I've asked that in a previous episode, but i've 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:23.120 I've clearly forgotten again. Anyway, I'm gonna give you a 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:26.880 summary of what I talked about in that previous episode. 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:30.800 A research institution in Germany formed a group that dedicated 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:35.720 itself to developing compression strategies for digital audio files. So 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:38.720 a raw audio file, if you didn't compress it at all, 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:42.200 it represents a pretty decent amount of digital information. So 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:46.440 it obviously depends upon how long the audio track is. Right. 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:50.240 The more the more information is there, the longer the file, 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.800 the larger the file size will be. So a three 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:58.560 minute song is gonna have more information packed into it 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:05.560 than say a minute of quiet room tone. So you've 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:08.920 got this fairly large amount of data. Especially for the 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:11.360 time that we're talking about, which was late nineteen seventies 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.880 early nineties, there was a need to find a way 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.560 to compress that data down so it didn't take up 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:21.400 as much space, and that then you could transmit it 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:25.400 over various media like telephone lines. And that's what this 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:27.320 group in Germany was trying to do. They wanted to 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:31.839 be able to transmit digital audio over telephone lines, but 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:35.360 in order to make it efficient, they needed to find 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:38.840 a compression strategy or else the files were just gonna 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:42.320 be too large. Now these days, while the file sizes 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:45.000 haven't really changed, I mean, the raw audio is still 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:49.200 what it is, we definitely have much faster throughput, Like 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.240 we're able to send a lot more information in a 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:54.640 shorter amount of time than what we used to be 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:56.719 able to do. So it's not as big a deal 0:04:56.839 --> 0:05:00.320 today unless you're talking about just trying to store a 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:04.560 ton of audio on a relatively small storage device. But 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:08.560 back in the nineteen seventies, and eighties. This was a 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:12.880 pretty tough challenge. Now. Whether they were successful or not 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:18.200 in creating a compression strategy that makes the file sizes 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:22.599 smaller without affecting the audio quality depends upon a couple 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.920 of things. For one, it depends upon your sense of hearing, 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:28.919 because some people are more sensitive to it than others, 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:31.240 and for one person it may sound perfectly fine, and 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:34.080 another person may say, no, I can hear all sorts 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:38.120 of problems from the compression in that audio. For another, 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:40.520 it depends on the settings of the compression itself. You 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:44.680 can compress it at different rates, and that will determine 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:49.640 how how much it affects the audio file itself. Broadly speaking, 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:53.560 their compression strategy was to create what was essentially a 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:57.760 virtual ear approach, in which a computer program would analyze 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:02.279 audio and attempt to remove straineous data. In other words, 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.120 it was looking for any sounds that would lay outside 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:08.479 the typical range of human hearing and then chuck those 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:11.840 sounds out because people wouldn't be able to hear them anyway. 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:15.560 So any sound that was at a frequency above or 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:19.359 below what your typical human can hear, that would be 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:22.640 removed because you wouldn't be able to hear it anyway. 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:26.559 Sometimes it would be sounds that might be a soft 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:29.679 sound that follows a very loud sound, because that loud 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:33.320 sound would mask the softer sound, and if we can't 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:36.560 hear the softer sound, then there's no reason to include it, 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:40.479 at least according to this compression strategy. And that was 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:42.640 a way of getting rid of information so that you 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:47.720 can compress everything together and make smaller file sizes. So 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:50.200 really the goal was just to keep only the data 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:52.560 that humans would really be able to perceive. And it 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:55.920 took some time for them to tweak this and make 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:58.000 sure that they could come up with an algorithm that 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:04.440 worked and didn't result in a really choppy, unpleasant audio experience. So, 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:06.960 depending upon how you set your compression rates, you might 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:09.400 manage to reduce a file size and not notice a 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:12.320 huge difference in quality, or you might end up with 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:17.000 something that is truly unlistenable. If you remember, the people 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:20.280 working on the MP three standard back in the day 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:26.080 would use Tom's Diner as a way of measuring their success, 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:28.280 and they said that the first few times they tried 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:33.880 to make a compression formula, it turned Tom's Diner into 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:38.320 an unlistenable mess. Some of the uncharitable among us might 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:43.440 claim that the completely uncompressed version of Tom's Diner is 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:46.400 an unlistenable mess, but that's that's just being mean spirited. 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:50.640 I would say the MP three would later make podcasting practical, 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:53.760 but it was not a quick leap from MP three's 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:57.120 too podcasts. There was a good amount of time between 0:07:57.200 --> 0:07:59.520 the development of the MP three and the rise of 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:02.440 the podcas cast. But the MP three development sort of 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:07.880 leads us into other things that will eventually allow podcast 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:11.800 to become a reality. Now, let's skip ahead to the 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.040 early nine nineties. The development of the MP three largely 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:18.920 happened in the eighties, but didn't really start making a 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:23.760 debut until the nineties. Anyway, the mainstream world was scratching 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.720 its head over something called the Internet in those early nineties. 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:31.560 Before then, the only people who really had access to 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:35.480 the Internet were academics, government officials, and scientists who had 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:38.200 been using it for quite some time. But the rest 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:41.240 of us really didn't have any exposure to it. It 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:44.560 was not something that your average person had any access to. 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:47.640 Your average Joe hadn't really had any contact with it 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:50.800 at all. Computer hobbyists had been cutting their teeth on 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:54.800 bulletin board systems or bbs s. Now, these were message 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:59.880 boards and file repositories that typically sat on someone's spare computer. 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:04.200 So with your very basic bolletin board system, the way 0:09:04.200 --> 0:09:06.400 it would work is you would have a phone number 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.920 and that phone number would go to the modem connected 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:15.000 to this other computer, the computer that houses the BBS. 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.600 You would use your computer to dial into that number 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:21.760 that would connect you to this other BBS, and you 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:24.160 would then be able to browse the files that have 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:28.560 been uploaded to that particular directory for the BBS, play games, 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:33.120 leave messages, that kind of thing, because you're dialing in. 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:36.560 Typically a lot of those smaller BBS has had maybe 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:40.600 one phone line, sometimes up to three, where that's how 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.480 many people could connect at any one time. So there 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:47.240 are various ways to discourage people from spending too much 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:51.160 time on the BBS and thus keeping it busy for 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:54.920 everybody else. For example, UH, some of them would charge 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:57.400 for a certain amount of time, like after a certain 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:01.079 number of minutes had passed, you would have to pay 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:05.679 two keep access to the BBS. UH. Some would just 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:08.400 have a time limit and after at the when you 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:10.080 hit your time limit, it would just kick you off 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:13.200 and you would have to wait another day to be 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:17.280 able to log back into your BBS. Eventually you had 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:19.839 some bbs is on what was called Fido net. This 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:23.520 was a network that allowed bbs is to exchange information 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.040 with each other. So it's almost like post offices. Think 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:29.280 about going to a post office and you would drop 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:31.800 a letter off, and that letter would then be sent 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:34.920 to another post office, someone else's BBS and they could 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:40.000 receive it. That was kind of the world before the 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.720 Internet had really taken off, and the Internet really is 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:46.560 a different beast altogether. Instead of dialing into a single 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:50.360 machine and browsing what was on that machine, you could 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:56.080 suddenly connect to a network of networked machines. In something 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:59.240 very important happened in the United States, the Federal Communications 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:03.120 Commission the c C made an important decision that encouraged 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:07.240 explosive growth on the Internet. That that decision was they're 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:12.760 gonna lift some restrictions. Up until there was a restriction 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:16.480 on commercial uses for the Internet. You you weren't allowed 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:19.760 to use it for commercial purposes. It was meant for research, 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:22.800 it was meant for government use, and that was it. 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.240 But in ninety one, the f C c said we're 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:28.480 lifting those restrictions, and it became the wild West for 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.800 a while, where lots of companies said, I'm not sure 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:34.559 how we can use this to our advantage, but I'm 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:36.880 sure it's huge and we have to use it to 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.640 our advantage. So there are a lot of different parties 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.040 rushing into the space because now it was possible to 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:46.840 make a commercial use of it, but no one had 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:49.719 really figured out how to actually do that yet. There 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:52.880 was a lot of competition to try and figure out 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:56.160 how can we dominate this space, and no one really 0:11:56.200 --> 0:12:02.200 had the answer yet. So how to this affect Internet use? Well, 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:06.280 before the FCC lifted restrictions, there were around one thousand 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:11.200 Internet hosts connected to this network of networks. By there 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:14.760 were more than a million Internet hosts. But for our story, 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:17.080 the important bit is that people and companies could launch 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:22.720 commercial interests in the Internet, including radio stations. Now, Carl 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:25.520 Malamud gets the credit for being the first person to 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:29.400 launch an Internet radio site, and this was called Internet 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:35.000 Talk Radio. Malamud launched this show in and he launched 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.520 it with a program called Geek of the Week. You 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:41.079 can actually find recordings of some of those old episodes 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:44.120 online and they typically feature various important people in the 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:47.960 computer and text spheres, and Malamoud would just interview them 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:51.600 about whatever subject they wanted to talk about. And those 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:54.400 were the programs that went out live on the Internet. 0:12:55.520 --> 0:13:01.400 On June, the band Severe Tire Damage became the first 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:05.760 musical act to perform a concert on Internet radio. Their 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:09.559 show went out over mbone. That's the letter M as 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:12.640 in merry and bone, B O and E. That stands 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:16.520 for Multicast backbone or it's actually a protocol that sat 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:19.800 on top of the multicast backbone, which made it feasible 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:24.000 to send data to multiple viewers around the world simultaneously. 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.800 So I thought it would be helpful to understand how 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:32.960 this works. Generally speaking, I p multicasting involves setting up 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:36.000 a great big convoy, and more specifically, it has to 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:40.760 do with packets. So the Internet sends information in packets. 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:44.640 Anytime there's data passing between computers on the Internet, you're 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:47.680 generally talking about packets that are going back and forth. 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:51.080 And a packet is a unit of data and it 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:54.240 includes a few types of information within that packet. So 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:57.560 the first type of that information is the data that's 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:01.439 necessary to deliver it to the right destination. So you've 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:05.480 got these sort of headers and footers inside of a packet, 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:07.200 you know, at the very top and the very bottom 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:11.440 of the packet. That helps tell the Internet system at 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:15.200 large where that packet needs to go. It's essentially like 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:18.760 the address you would find on an envelope in the 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:23.480 post office. So the packets have that part of the information. 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:26.560 They also have the payload, the actual data that they're 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:29.920 carrying to the destination. Let's say it's a web page. 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:32.880 It would be a little part of that web page, 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.640 would be a small portion of the web page. And 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:40.400 then you have a third part, which is uh the 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:43.320 way that that packet fits in with other packets to 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:47.640 complete whatever that payload is. So again, in the case 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:49.200 of a web page, let's say you're going to house 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:53.479 stuffworks dot com, and just for the sake of this example, 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:56.880 we're just gonna use a nice round, simple number of 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:00.960 one hundred packets. It takes one d packets to to 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.960 load up the homepage of how stuff works dot com. 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:08.400 Those headers and footers will tell the packets where they 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:10.920 need to go, which would be your browser, because you're 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:13.400 the one who typed in www dot how stuff works 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:17.960 dot com, and they also tell your browser how they 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:21.200 all fit together so that it can construct the website 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:23.200 and you can see it on your side on the 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:27.840 client side of this exchange. UH packets tend to be 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:30.720 relatively small, so you typically need a lot of them 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:35.880 to deliver any information of significant size. This brings us 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:38.840 to that third type, that that bit of information that says, hey, 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:41.360 I'm the puzzle piece that goes in the top right corner. 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.280 That's not exactly how it works, but it's a decent 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:48.480 enough analogy to kind of understand what's going on. Now, 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:50.680 why would you send data in packets. Why wouldn't you 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:55.120 just send the entire piece all at once. It's meant 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:58.640 to be a way to ensure the delivery of information, 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:01.320 and by divi riding it up into packets, you can 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:04.720 actually make a better case for that information, making it 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:07.040 to where you wanted to go. If you're sending it 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:09.160 all out as one big file, one thing that can 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.000 happen is it can slow everything down because, depending on 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:13.920 the size of the file, it might start to tax 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:19.200 certain parts of the system, and if it fails, you're 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:21.040 you've got to send it all over again. It just 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:24.600 becomes a big nightmare. So the founders of the Internet, 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:27.080 who as we all know, put the Internet on top 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:29.440 of Big ben because that's where it gets the best reception, 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:33.120 figured that by breaking information up into packets and sending 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:35.080 them along the network, you had a better chance of 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:38.120 actually receiving the information you wanted. And the reason for 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:42.840 that is twofold. It's redundancy and packet switching. So redundancy 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:45.520 means that a server is sending out multiple copies of 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:47.720 the same packet to make sure that one of them 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:50.400 gets to their destination. So this is kind of like 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:54.520 if you had critical message and you've got you make 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:57.800 three copies of it and you send a copy each 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:01.840 with a different messenger and they all rush out. Well, 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:04.800 that means that you're more likely to get your message 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:07.120 to where it needs to go, because even if one 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.399 of them fails along the way, you have three others going. 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:13.000 Remember us at three copies, so you have one original 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:17.399 that's four total, so one of them is likely to 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:20.720 get there. So that way you can send those riders 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:22.560 off to gone door to let them know that Rowand 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:27.560 is coming out to help them or something. Packet switching 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:29.639 is the method of sending the packets themselves, and this 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:33.199 involves each packet taking its own path. Typically it's whichever 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:36.160 path is the most efficient for that packet at that 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:39.360 time for it to get to its destination. And packets 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:41.399 that all belong to the same document or file can 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:43.960 travel very different pathways. So if you go and you're 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:46.960 trying to pull up house supports dot com, the packets 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:49.720 that represent that web page could be taking very different 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:52.920 paths in order to get to your computer. Remember, the 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:57.080 network is this network of networks. It can be bouncing 0:17:57.080 --> 0:17:59.520 from all sorts of different machines before it finally gets 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:03.200 to you. The destination computer then assembles all those packets 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:05.760 back into the document or file or whatever it may be. 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:08.119 And this is really cool because it means that the 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:12.000 Internet is really robust. If nodes on the Internet go 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:15.400 offline for whatever reason, if if certain computers between you 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:18.800 and the computer you're trying to get information from go down, 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:22.880 well the packets can route around that. They don't come 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:24.720 up to like a sinkhole in the middle of the 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:27.199 road and say, well, we wanted to get there, but 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.920 we can't. No, they can take a different pathway and 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:35.159 you just have to make sure that you are you know, 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:38.320 having that redundancy there, which, by the way, you don't 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:40.560 have to do. T c P I P does it 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:44.639 for you. But as long as that's in place, with 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:46.639 the redundancy, you don't even have to worry. If some 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:49.359 of those packets somehow lose their way for whatever reason, 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:53.240 whatever it may be, you'll likely end up getting the 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:55.680 information you asked for, may not be as fast as 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.080 you wanted, depending upon the problems, but you'll get it. 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:02.000 So back to inbone, it's a little different from the 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:05.520 approach I just mentioned. The basic packet switching strategy works 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:08.639 great for static files and pages. So if I have 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:12.320 a photograph and I want to send that information across 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:16.119 to some other computer, it works great for that. Photographs 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:19.480 don't change. It's gonna be the same photograph no matter what, 0:19:19.720 --> 0:19:23.000 so it's very easy to send that. And I'm not 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:25.560 talking about photo editing software here, obviously, I'm just talking 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:29.200 about sending an image. But if you want to send 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:34.600 something like a video where you have stuff constantly changing 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:39.160 both the image and the audio, or even more so 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.520 live video which is persistently changing and you're not sure 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:46.520 when it's gonna end, another approach was pretty important so 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:51.879 broadcast represents this ongoing creation of information, and how do 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:55.760 you disseminate that across the network? Inbone would keep all 0:19:55.800 --> 0:20:00.480 the packets together like packed together like a like a convoy, 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:04.680 as I said earlier, until the last possible moment before 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:07.280 they would split up and move through different routers and 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:09.960 go through the rest of its journey. So it's more 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:13.119 like a fire hose approach in the first half until 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:15.560 you get to a point where you absolutely have to 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:17.439 split things up because they will not get to their 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:21.119 destination otherwise. This allows for a more efficient transmission of 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:23.840 live content, and it helped make sure that those packets 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:26.240 would arrive at their destinations at more or less the 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:29.560 same time. Because you want it to be like a broadcast, 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:31.440 You want the people who are watching it to all 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:33.879 have the same experience that are around the same time. 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:36.760 Otherwise you could end up in a situation where one 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:39.639 person is watching the concert on a slight delay and 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:42.000 someone else might be more than a minute or two behind. 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:44.840 And this does still happen. By the way, I can't 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:46.480 tell you how many times I've watched the w w 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:49.280 E network and have been in a Facebook chat about 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:50.960 what was going on with a pay per view only 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:54.560 to have someone's boil something for me because I was 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:57.639 lagging a bit behind the rest of the live feed 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:00.320 for everybody else. But that's the price we pay for 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:05.840 this amazing technology. Xerox Park was the group that created 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:10.159 the inbone extension and the Internet Engineering Task Force adopted 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:12.840 it in nineteen nine two, so it was all well 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:16.639 in place for the Internet radio days of nineteen and 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:20.520 Severe Tire Damage performed at Xerox Park. You remember, Xerox 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:23.800 Park is also the research and development area where we 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:27.600 got things like the graphic user interface and the computer mouse, 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:30.040 as well as a ton of other stuff. A lot 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:35.840 of interesting research and development came out of Xerox. So 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:40.240 their audience Severe Tire Damage for this initial concert in 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:45.159 pretty much consisted of a dude in Australia, which is 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.280 really true. There was a researcher in Australia who was 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:50.960 helping along with this project and he was the intended 0:21:51.000 --> 0:21:55.760 audience for the Severe Tire Damage concert of n In 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:59.320 nineteen nine four, a slightly more famous band called The 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:03.159 Rollings Stones performed their first live concert on the Internet, 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:07.119 and cheekily Severe Tire Damage performed a set just before 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:09.800 the Rolling Stones were scheduled to go on and then 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:12.240 they put their set out over the Internet, this time 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:17.040 broadcast to the Internet at large, so severe tire Damage said, 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:20.840 we were happy to open for the Rolling Stones, even 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:23.280 though we're not in the same city as the Rolling Stones, 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:25.679 and that was kind of making a point saying you 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:29.360 could now have this sort of experience where people from 0:22:29.440 --> 0:22:33.680 different parts of the world could address an audience in 0:22:34.000 --> 0:22:37.159 a sequence and they didn't have to be in the 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:39.919 same place at the same time. The Rolling Stones, for 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:41.919 their part, were pretty good natured about it. I think 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:45.080 at first they called him weird furry guys from from 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:48.720 uh Palo Alto, California, But they also said to The 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:50.720 New York Times that it was a good reminder of 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:54.240 the democratic nature of the Internet. There was a college 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:57.520 radio station called w x y C still Is that 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:00.880 became the first terrestrial radio station to start broadcasting on 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:04.439 the Internet. They began their simulcast in the fall of 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:08.480 now They first started off with their off air signals 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:12.240 using a Cornell University utility called see You See Me. 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:16.440 On November seven, the radio station became the first to 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:20.520 simulcast it's broadcast live over the air and on the Internet. 0:23:20.760 --> 0:23:25.359 A few months later, w R. E. K reck Over 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:29.159 at Georgia Tech went live with its simulcast technology. And 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:31.600 it's kind of interesting because they had actually hooked up 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:34.280 their Internet client on November seven, which was the same 0:23:34.359 --> 0:23:37.080 day w x y C went live. But it would 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:39.640 take a few more months before Georgia Tech broadcast hit 0:23:39.680 --> 0:23:43.959 the Internet, and since then tons of different university and 0:23:44.000 --> 0:23:47.560 then commercial radio stations as well as public radio have 0:23:47.760 --> 0:23:50.959 joined on and used the Internet for broadcast. Now we're 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:52.760 gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, 0:23:52.800 --> 0:23:56.720 we're going to talk about how this technology of streaming 0:23:56.840 --> 0:24:00.920 radio gradually gave people the idea of creating sort of 0:24:00.960 --> 0:24:06.360 an episodic content that would be digestible in a downloadable 0:24:06.400 --> 0:24:10.840 format and thus eventually evolve into podcast But first, let's 0:24:10.840 --> 0:24:20.760 take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, So 0:24:20.920 --> 0:24:24.800 streaming radio was now available online and to listen to 0:24:24.880 --> 0:24:28.679 any streaming radio station you needed to use an audio player. 0:24:29.080 --> 0:24:31.840 Real Audio and other companies were making software that would 0:24:31.880 --> 0:24:34.080 allow you to listen to audio over the Internet. But 0:24:34.160 --> 0:24:38.800 what about podcasts? Well, jumping back to that's when a 0:24:38.880 --> 0:24:43.640 Canadian science news program called Quirks and Quirks Hit the Internet. 0:24:44.000 --> 0:24:47.400 The radio show had been airing on terrestrial radio since nineteen. 0:24:48.440 --> 0:24:52.080 Each show lasts about an hour and consists of segments 0:24:52.119 --> 0:24:56.560 about science, news and interesting facts. The Internet versions were 0:24:56.600 --> 0:25:01.280 recorded episodes stored in MP three format of available for download, 0:25:01.640 --> 0:25:06.520 and this would become really important later on. Similarly, in 0:25:08.080 --> 0:25:11.480 CNN launched its Internet newsroom, and the company began to 0:25:11.480 --> 0:25:15.720 make shows available for download and included an updated compilation file. 0:25:16.280 --> 0:25:21.600 This too would become really important later on. Meanwhile, a 0:25:21.600 --> 0:25:24.880 guy named Jim Logan had founded a company called Personal Audio. 0:25:25.400 --> 0:25:29.080 According to Alan Martin of a l phr dot com, 0:25:29.160 --> 0:25:32.560 so we're gonna call it Alpha. Personal Audio's original goal 0:25:32.640 --> 0:25:35.080 was to create a digital audio playing device, but that 0:25:35.119 --> 0:25:37.679 didn't work out. However, in the process of trying to 0:25:37.720 --> 0:25:40.479 make this happen, the company had filed for and been 0:25:40.520 --> 0:25:45.480 awarded several patents dealing with digital audio distribution on the Internet. 0:25:45.920 --> 0:25:50.160 And this would be around the mid nineties six and later. 0:25:50.440 --> 0:25:53.919 And this also becomes incredibly important. That's a lot of 0:25:53.960 --> 0:25:56.680 foreshadowing right there. Some of you are way ahead of 0:25:56.720 --> 0:25:59.400 me on this, I'm sure of it. But let's get 0:25:59.400 --> 0:26:02.159 back to the nineties. Over the next few years, the 0:26:02.240 --> 0:26:05.679 MP three file format began to gain popularity, and in 0:26:05.800 --> 0:26:09.840 nine Napster became perhaps the best known of the peer 0:26:09.840 --> 0:26:13.359 to peer networks that made sharing MP three's across computers 0:26:13.400 --> 0:26:16.960 incredibly easy. And while I would never say that Napster 0:26:17.200 --> 0:26:21.800 caused piracy, it definitely made it a lot easier to do. 0:26:22.680 --> 0:26:25.360 You could rip tracks off of a disk with one 0:26:25.359 --> 0:26:27.680 of a dozen different programs. So you buy a CD 0:26:27.960 --> 0:26:29.800 or you get a CD, you put it in your computer, 0:26:29.920 --> 0:26:32.480 you pull the music off of it, convert those files 0:26:32.480 --> 0:26:35.040 into MP three format, store them on a drive on 0:26:35.080 --> 0:26:39.600 your computer, download the Napster interface, and then you could 0:26:39.600 --> 0:26:44.280 authorize Napster to use that particular drive to share all 0:26:44.320 --> 0:26:48.720 those files, and the music industry got really scared. So 0:26:49.359 --> 0:26:51.520 in short, the way peer to peer works is that 0:26:52.359 --> 0:26:55.800 you have some software that allows your computer to direct 0:26:56.320 --> 0:26:59.119 directly connect in to a network of other computers running 0:26:59.160 --> 0:27:02.280 that same software. And this network is constantly changing, with 0:27:02.320 --> 0:27:05.280 some computers being connected and some computers going offline. It 0:27:05.320 --> 0:27:08.200 all depends on who's using their computer for what. And 0:27:08.359 --> 0:27:10.800 you can search that network to see if there are 0:27:10.840 --> 0:27:13.480 any copies of a particular type of file you want, 0:27:14.080 --> 0:27:17.960 and when you download you can actually download from multiple 0:27:18.119 --> 0:27:21.880 sources at the same time. So if there's one source 0:27:21.960 --> 0:27:25.840 that is particularly slow because of whatever reason, maybe there's 0:27:25.880 --> 0:27:30.040 some problems like there's congestion and the internet between you 0:27:30.240 --> 0:27:34.639 and that particular server, then you can start getting packets 0:27:34.680 --> 0:27:38.760 from other servers that also have that same file. And 0:27:38.800 --> 0:27:43.080 it's all decentralized and it was a very quick way 0:27:43.280 --> 0:27:46.960 to spread files across and there's nothing illegal about that, 0:27:47.160 --> 0:27:49.440 right you can you can spread any sort of file 0:27:49.560 --> 0:27:52.600 you like, and if you have the legal authorization to 0:27:52.760 --> 0:27:56.719 distribute that file, then peer to peer networks are completely valid. 0:27:57.040 --> 0:27:59.200 The problem was a lot of people were using them 0:27:59.400 --> 0:28:04.080 to spread had MP three's that did not technically belong 0:28:04.160 --> 0:28:07.359 to them. Maybe they had bought an album and then 0:28:07.400 --> 0:28:11.239 they uploaded or they rather made available all of the 0:28:11.240 --> 0:28:13.679 tracks off that album and so people could get it 0:28:13.720 --> 0:28:17.720 for free. Well that's not great. It's kind of violating 0:28:17.720 --> 0:28:21.719 copyright law, and it it helped precipitate an era in 0:28:21.760 --> 0:28:26.040 which we saw crazy amounts of work in digital rights management, 0:28:26.440 --> 0:28:29.480 and it was not a bright and shining moment in 0:28:29.560 --> 0:28:33.879 Internet history. That being said, there are so many valid 0:28:33.920 --> 0:28:36.320 reasons to use peer to peer. It's a real shame 0:28:36.840 --> 0:28:41.560 that Napster and other peer to peer platforms are forever 0:28:41.640 --> 0:28:45.200 associated with this concept of piracy, just because that was 0:28:45.480 --> 0:28:48.720 a pretty big use for a lot of these networks 0:28:48.840 --> 0:28:52.960 and it got a lot of press. Around this same time, 0:28:54.240 --> 0:28:57.480 we also started seeing MP three players popping up. Now, 0:28:57.480 --> 0:29:00.800 the earliest players were pieces of software runing on your computer, 0:29:01.400 --> 0:29:04.240 not exactly convenient for on the go listening. I did 0:29:04.240 --> 0:29:06.920 a couple of episodes about the history of MP three players, 0:29:06.920 --> 0:29:10.040 including the rise of the iPod. So again I'm not 0:29:10.080 --> 0:29:12.960 going to go into it too much, but Apple's iPod 0:29:13.320 --> 0:29:16.920 really helped push MP three's even further into the mainstream, 0:29:17.040 --> 0:29:19.800 and the iPod became the device most associated with this 0:29:20.160 --> 0:29:26.440 relatively new form of consuming audio simultaneously. So much is 0:29:26.480 --> 0:29:30.680 happening that's important to podcasting. We got the birth of 0:29:30.720 --> 0:29:35.280 the RSS feed. Now RSS stands for well, it depends 0:29:35.320 --> 0:29:39.520 upon whom you ask. It could stand for rich site summary, 0:29:39.840 --> 0:29:42.920 or maybe it stands for really simple syndication. It just 0:29:43.080 --> 0:29:46.160 depends upon the authority you're asking at the time. But 0:29:46.280 --> 0:29:49.120 whatever it stands for, what it does is pretty cool. 0:29:49.440 --> 0:29:53.000 It is a format for delivering updated content to people. 0:29:53.160 --> 0:29:56.280 So in the old days, you go on the web, 0:29:56.640 --> 0:29:59.280 and web pages were pretty darn static. If you went 0:29:59.320 --> 0:30:01.280 to a web page one day and you looked at it, 0:30:01.400 --> 0:30:03.760 chances are the next day it was gonna look exactly 0:30:03.800 --> 0:30:07.360 the same way. There were not that many dynamically changing 0:30:07.400 --> 0:30:10.360 web pages. It just wasn't very easy to do and 0:30:10.360 --> 0:30:12.840 there wasn't much call for it. But over time we 0:30:12.880 --> 0:30:15.800 started building in more functionality on the web. We started 0:30:15.800 --> 0:30:20.000 creating more dynamic elements, and that created a new problem. 0:30:20.120 --> 0:30:23.719 How could you, as a user know if your favorite 0:30:23.720 --> 0:30:27.240 websites have been updated. You could go and check them 0:30:27.240 --> 0:30:31.400 every single day and look for differences, or you could 0:30:31.480 --> 0:30:35.040 use rs S and RSS was this set of rules 0:30:35.080 --> 0:30:37.840 that people running these websites could use. They could incorporate 0:30:37.880 --> 0:30:40.880 it into their website. You could then subscribe to that 0:30:40.960 --> 0:30:44.240 website and anytime there was a change, that change would 0:30:44.280 --> 0:30:47.840 get reflected in your RSS aggregator. You would open up 0:30:47.840 --> 0:30:50.760 your aggregator and would give you kind of like headlines 0:30:51.040 --> 0:30:54.760 of the latest changes that had happened in the pages 0:30:54.800 --> 0:30:58.840 that you are subscribed to. So once you were able 0:30:58.880 --> 0:31:03.440 to do that, it really transformed the browsing experience. You 0:31:03.560 --> 0:31:06.680 no longer had to do all this legwork yourself and 0:31:06.720 --> 0:31:10.320 just have your laundry list of websites that you visit 0:31:10.840 --> 0:31:13.120 every single day. You could actually take a quick look 0:31:13.120 --> 0:31:15.560 at your RSS aggregator and see if there's any reason 0:31:15.640 --> 0:31:19.240 to go to that website. Well, that RSS model would 0:31:19.280 --> 0:31:23.080 later become helpful to podcasts. It could alert podcatching services 0:31:23.080 --> 0:31:25.520 and users to new episodes as they joined the list, 0:31:25.880 --> 0:31:28.560 removing the need to visit the home page of the program. 0:31:28.800 --> 0:31:31.360 And there was a way of enclosing audio files that 0:31:31.400 --> 0:31:34.240 would be developed a little bit later, and that really 0:31:34.360 --> 0:31:38.360 sealed the deal. All of this was happening around to 0:31:38.400 --> 0:31:41.880 the early two thousand's. In December two thousands, a software 0:31:41.920 --> 0:31:45.200 developer named Dave Winer found himself in an unlikely partnership 0:31:45.240 --> 0:31:49.000 with Adam Curry that former MTV VJ I mentioned earlier, 0:31:49.200 --> 0:31:51.320 and they were trying to adapt the RSS feed so 0:31:51.360 --> 0:31:54.680 that it could include audio. So Weiner was the guy 0:31:54.680 --> 0:31:58.080 who created that modification for RSS, and he demonstrated it 0:31:58.160 --> 0:32:01.560 in early by using it to enclose a song by 0:32:01.560 --> 0:32:04.240 The Grateful Dead, and he put it in a blog 0:32:04.360 --> 0:32:06.720 he was writing, so people who were following his blog 0:32:06.800 --> 0:32:10.800 were subscribed to it could immediately get access to that song. 0:32:11.320 --> 0:32:14.920 And while This provided the skeletal structure upon which podcasts 0:32:14.960 --> 0:32:18.200 would be built. Very few people were actually using it 0:32:18.440 --> 0:32:21.800 back then. In September two thousand three, Winer adapted his 0:32:21.840 --> 0:32:25.320 approach on behalf of a colleague named Christopher Leiden over 0:32:25.360 --> 0:32:28.600 at the Harvard Brookman Center, and Leighton really wanted to 0:32:28.600 --> 0:32:32.000 create an interview show with audio tracks saved in the 0:32:32.080 --> 0:32:35.160 MP three format. He was thinking of as like an 0:32:35.160 --> 0:32:40.000 audio blog, so he's regularly interviewing people and uploading those files, 0:32:40.000 --> 0:32:41.520 and he wanted there to be a way for people 0:32:41.560 --> 0:32:45.719 to subscribe to it. He was interviewing bloggers, futurists, and 0:32:45.760 --> 0:32:49.800 political figures, and this would eventually become a show called 0:32:49.960 --> 0:32:53.200 Radio Open Source and is, by most accounts, the first 0:32:53.240 --> 0:32:57.920 actual podcast, though at the time it wasn't called a podcast. 0:32:58.320 --> 0:33:00.400 So if you hear the Adam Curry had the very 0:33:00.400 --> 0:33:03.080 first podcast and it launched in two thousand four, just 0:33:03.200 --> 0:33:09.520 know that two thousand three saw Christopher Lyden's show Radio 0:33:09.600 --> 0:33:14.280 Open Source, and by all measures, that really was a podcast, 0:33:14.320 --> 0:33:17.000 it just didn't have the name yet. Later in two 0:33:17.040 --> 0:33:20.600 thousand three, and influential jet named Kevin Marks whipped up 0:33:20.640 --> 0:33:24.360 some interesting technological wizardry in connection with the two thousand 0:33:24.400 --> 0:33:28.040 three Blogger Cohn event, he showed off a program that 0:33:28.080 --> 0:33:32.160 could take the audio files housed in an RSS enclosure 0:33:32.640 --> 0:33:36.960 and transfer them automatically over to Apple's iTunes, and then 0:33:37.000 --> 0:33:41.560 you can use the iTunes management software to synchronize to 0:33:41.680 --> 0:33:44.560 an iPod. Now, remember in these days, you had to 0:33:44.760 --> 0:33:50.040 physically connect an iPod to a computer and use iTunes 0:33:50.080 --> 0:33:54.800 to transfer music across the cable to your iPod. There's 0:33:54.800 --> 0:33:58.400 no wireless way of doing this yet. The iPod had 0:33:58.440 --> 0:34:01.320 no access to the iTunes store directly. You had to 0:34:01.400 --> 0:34:05.000 download things or rip things from your music collection directly 0:34:05.040 --> 0:34:08.840 to iTunes and then port those things from iTunes over 0:34:08.880 --> 0:34:12.759 to your iPod or other m P three player. I 0:34:12.840 --> 0:34:16.680 had a creative zen back then and I used it 0:34:16.719 --> 0:34:21.240 with iTunes and it was a headache, but it would 0:34:21.320 --> 0:34:25.160 kind of work. But this was huge, This approach to 0:34:25.320 --> 0:34:27.960 having this automatic conversion and something that I don't think 0:34:28.000 --> 0:34:31.879 Apple necessarily anticipated when it built in the synchronization capability 0:34:31.880 --> 0:34:35.400 and iTunes. The purpose for the feature was convenience. So 0:34:35.480 --> 0:34:38.480 let's say you've got a decent music collection and you 0:34:38.480 --> 0:34:42.399 put all your songs over on iTunes and you want 0:34:42.440 --> 0:34:45.600 them to transfer those songs to your brain brand spanking 0:34:45.680 --> 0:34:49.040 new iPod. That's not so difficult to do the first time, 0:34:49.040 --> 0:34:51.680 though it can take a while. You just connect your 0:34:51.680 --> 0:34:53.839 iPod to iTunes and say, all right, I want all 0:34:53.880 --> 0:34:56.920 these files to be moved over. But then later on, 0:34:57.400 --> 0:35:00.879 let's say you add more music to your library. So 0:35:01.719 --> 0:35:04.720 how do you add that to your iPod. You've already 0:35:04.760 --> 0:35:07.799 got a music library on your iPod, You've got new 0:35:07.880 --> 0:35:11.360 songs in your iTunes library on your computer. How do 0:35:11.440 --> 0:35:14.960 you get those two to match up again. Well, one 0:35:15.000 --> 0:35:18.799 thing you could do is individually move those files over, 0:35:18.840 --> 0:35:20.640 but that's gonna take a while. You could try and 0:35:20.719 --> 0:35:22.960 highlight them in a batch, but that's kind of irritating. 0:35:23.239 --> 0:35:27.600 So Apple built in this function where you could have 0:35:27.640 --> 0:35:30.800 synchronization turned on and if you plugged your iPod into 0:35:30.920 --> 0:35:34.960 your computer with your iTunes library, it would automatically pull 0:35:35.000 --> 0:35:39.440 any new tracks, anything that had been added after the 0:35:39.520 --> 0:35:43.480 last time your iPod had been synchronized and add them 0:35:43.480 --> 0:35:46.439 to your iPods library, so you didn't have to wait 0:35:47.040 --> 0:35:51.080 and do it all manually. That was the secret that 0:35:51.560 --> 0:35:53.759 was able to you know, they were able to use 0:35:53.840 --> 0:35:58.200 to make this automatic updating for podcasts or what would 0:35:58.200 --> 0:36:02.279 become podcasts. But again I don't think Apple was necessarily 0:36:02.320 --> 0:36:05.239 thinking that when they included that feature. Kevin Marks was 0:36:05.280 --> 0:36:07.560 able to take it and turn into something really useful 0:36:07.600 --> 0:36:11.319 for people who wanted to create this episodic audio content. Now, 0:36:11.320 --> 0:36:13.960 Adam Curry would make a piece of code available that 0:36:14.000 --> 0:36:17.760 would automate this RSS and closed audio to iTunes process 0:36:17.960 --> 0:36:20.960 to his blog visitors, and it's called I Potter, I believe, 0:36:21.040 --> 0:36:23.760 is what the script was named. And he also began 0:36:23.840 --> 0:36:26.640 to contact other bloggers who are interested in using audio 0:36:26.760 --> 0:36:29.280 to reach an audience in this same sort of way. 0:36:29.400 --> 0:36:32.239 On February eleven, two thousand four, The Guardian published an 0:36:32.280 --> 0:36:36.239 article titled Audible Revolution. It was written by Ben Hammersley, 0:36:36.719 --> 0:36:38.800 and he was writing about the use of the Internet 0:36:38.840 --> 0:36:41.600 as a means to distribute audio content. And in that 0:36:41.680 --> 0:36:48.240 piece Hammersley asks, quote but what to call it? Audio blogging? Podcasting? 0:36:48.600 --> 0:36:52.160 Guerrilla media end quote? And so this may very well 0:36:52.239 --> 0:36:56.200 be the origin of the term podcasting. Now it's possible 0:36:56.480 --> 0:36:59.640 that the word podcasting had been mentioned by someone before, 0:36:59.719 --> 0:37:03.239 but this is the earliest piece in writing that I 0:37:03.239 --> 0:37:07.200 can find that mentions that term, and it happened at 0:37:07.239 --> 0:37:10.520 that point entered into the general conversation about audio distribution 0:37:10.680 --> 0:37:15.520 through the Internet. On September two thousand four, Danny J. 0:37:15.719 --> 0:37:20.440 Gregoire used the term podcaster in a discussion about the 0:37:20.520 --> 0:37:25.680 technical issues surrounding publishing and distributing podcasts and this section 0:37:26.000 --> 0:37:29.680 in which he said, this would go like this. Here's 0:37:29.680 --> 0:37:32.799 a quote. I can see there being the desire of 0:37:32.960 --> 0:37:36.359 users in some instances to be able to easily subscribe 0:37:36.400 --> 0:37:40.480 and get older posts slash episode, slash shows. What are 0:37:40.480 --> 0:37:44.800 we calling these things? Anyway? How about pode or SEWED 0:37:45.080 --> 0:37:48.040 for short that no longer appear on the RSS feed 0:37:48.400 --> 0:37:50.799 right now? If, for example, someone wanted to listen to 0:37:50.840 --> 0:37:54.520 all the daily source codes back to sewed number one, 0:37:55.080 --> 0:37:57.799 they would have to manually go through the archives and 0:37:57.880 --> 0:38:02.400 download any sleds not auto magically received, somewhat defeating the 0:38:02.440 --> 0:38:04.719 purpose of an I potter. Not too much of a 0:38:04.800 --> 0:38:07.719 problem now, But I guess one could argue that this 0:38:07.760 --> 0:38:11.239 is simply an RSS slash server side issue, and that 0:38:11.360 --> 0:38:15.800 the podcaster, yes, I like making up new words, should 0:38:15.840 --> 0:38:18.760 be responsible enough to offer a page of separate feeds 0:38:18.760 --> 0:38:23.320 of old sods by month slash, year, slash, season, slash, etcetera. 0:38:23.560 --> 0:38:28.680 End quote, so he also used the word podcaster. Two 0:38:28.760 --> 0:38:32.960 days later, in the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, Dave Slusher 0:38:33.000 --> 0:38:37.080 had this to say, somebody has registered podcasting dot net 0:38:37.320 --> 0:38:40.520 and I saw a podcaster or podcaster dot net and 0:38:40.560 --> 0:38:43.880 I saw a podcaster hitting as a user against hitting 0:38:43.880 --> 0:38:46.279 my RSS feed, and I went and looked at it. 0:38:46.360 --> 0:38:49.719 And right now it's just a coming soon page. But 0:38:49.800 --> 0:38:51.880 I'm going to pay attention to that. I want to 0:38:51.880 --> 0:38:54.680 see who's got that and what they're going, what they're 0:38:54.719 --> 0:38:58.239 doing with that term. I think they've coined the term, 0:38:58.440 --> 0:39:01.680 so iPod platform just doesn't spring from the tongue. But 0:39:02.000 --> 0:39:04.560 what I'm doing right here, and what Adams doing, meaning 0:39:04.600 --> 0:39:07.600 Adam Curry, and what Dave Winer is doing, and what 0:39:07.719 --> 0:39:11.440 I T Conversations are doing, that's podcasting. I think that 0:39:11.600 --> 0:39:14.160 is the term. I'm using that from here on out. 0:39:14.280 --> 0:39:18.120 You know, So I am a podcaster and they are podcasters, 0:39:18.200 --> 0:39:21.480 and I am podcasting right now, and you listen to 0:39:21.640 --> 0:39:27.640 my podcast. The name stuck. That's an understatement and it's 0:39:27.640 --> 0:39:30.320 something that we all know because you wouldn't be listening 0:39:30.360 --> 0:39:33.800 to this if it didn't. In November two thousand four, 0:39:34.200 --> 0:39:37.840 Libson launched l I b S. White and this was 0:39:37.880 --> 0:39:41.319 the first podcast service provider and it still exists to 0:39:41.440 --> 0:39:44.800 this day. I've actually used it. It's pretty pretty useful, 0:39:44.880 --> 0:39:49.680 pretty easy to use. Not totally intuitive, but not difficult. 0:39:50.120 --> 0:39:52.799 And these services make it easier for podcasters to get 0:39:52.800 --> 0:39:56.120 their content up online. They handle all the RSS feeds 0:39:56.320 --> 0:39:58.400 and all the technical side of things. All you have 0:39:58.440 --> 0:40:00.560 to do is fill out if you feel and then 0:40:00.560 --> 0:40:03.160 you can start uploading your content to the service, where 0:40:03.200 --> 0:40:05.200 it will host your files and make them available for 0:40:05.280 --> 0:40:09.560 various podcatching services. Later on, in February two thousand five, 0:40:10.040 --> 0:40:13.840 Public Radio International launched The World, which was the first 0:40:14.080 --> 0:40:18.879 daily public radio news podcast. The next month, March two 0:40:18.880 --> 0:40:22.160 thousand five, the Public Radio show on the Media would 0:40:22.160 --> 0:40:25.080 become the first to also be distributed as a podcast 0:40:25.200 --> 0:40:29.000 in full. In April two thousand five, Leo Laporte, who 0:40:29.080 --> 0:40:32.000 had worked in traditional media for years as a technology 0:40:32.040 --> 0:40:36.319 news communicator, a reviewer, and an educator, formed This Week 0:40:36.480 --> 0:40:40.719 in Tech, a network also known as twit. This would 0:40:40.760 --> 0:40:43.600 become one of the first podcast networks in the world. 0:40:43.640 --> 0:40:46.800 In other words, it became the umbrella to multiple shows 0:40:47.160 --> 0:40:51.520 in podcast format. On June six, two thousand five, iTunes 0:40:51.560 --> 0:40:54.920 four point nine launched with a podcast directory added to 0:40:54.960 --> 0:40:57.720 the iTunes music store, and this made it much easier 0:40:57.719 --> 0:41:00.960 for iTunes users to find and download episodes, and it 0:41:01.000 --> 0:41:04.160 became really important to podcasters that they get their shows 0:41:04.200 --> 0:41:07.080 onto Apples directory because that was the place to be. 0:41:07.160 --> 0:41:10.040 That's where most people were getting their podcasts from in 0:41:10.080 --> 0:41:13.440 those days, so if you weren't showing up an Apple's directory, 0:41:13.640 --> 0:41:16.680 it felt like you were missing out on the people 0:41:16.680 --> 0:41:19.640 who would otherwise be able to subscribe to your show. 0:41:21.239 --> 0:41:24.880 This move also forced a different company to change its course, 0:41:25.040 --> 0:41:28.400 and that company was called Odeo O d e O. 0:41:29.160 --> 0:41:32.839 Odeo's purpose originally was to create a podcasting directory as 0:41:32.880 --> 0:41:36.000 well as a suite of tools for creating podcasts. It 0:41:36.120 --> 0:41:39.200 was poised to launch in the summer of two thousand five, 0:41:39.520 --> 0:41:42.200 but then Apple got into the game with podcasting and 0:41:42.200 --> 0:41:44.200 the people at Odeo saw the writing on the wall. 0:41:44.239 --> 0:41:46.600 There just was no way they were going to compete 0:41:46.600 --> 0:41:50.560 against Apple in that space, So rather than abandoned ship entirely, 0:41:50.600 --> 0:41:53.799 they decided to change what their company was going to do, 0:41:54.320 --> 0:41:58.000 and they also ditched the name. Instead, Odeo would become 0:41:58.000 --> 0:42:00.400 a company that would allow people to send out little 0:42:00.440 --> 0:42:04.000 messages to their friends using SMS messaging or a web client, 0:42:04.840 --> 0:42:09.080 and that's how Twitter was born. Yep, Twitter exists because 0:42:09.120 --> 0:42:14.040 of iTunes sort of. In August two thousand five, NPR 0:42:14.120 --> 0:42:17.640 officially got into the podcast game, making show segments available 0:42:17.680 --> 0:42:21.120 as podcast downloads. So while their rise in popularity a 0:42:21.120 --> 0:42:23.080 few years later makes it seem like they were late 0:42:23.120 --> 0:42:25.840 comers to podcasting, the fact is they were around in 0:42:25.880 --> 0:42:30.000 some of those earliest days. The New Oxford American Dictionary 0:42:30.040 --> 0:42:32.840 would name podcast as their word of the year on 0:42:32.920 --> 0:42:37.000 December third, two thousand five, and the following year, podcast 0:42:37.080 --> 0:42:40.759 would become a new word in the dictionary. We've got 0:42:40.760 --> 0:42:43.000 a lot more to talk about to wrap up, and 0:42:43.080 --> 0:42:46.879 actually to talk about some of the other influential podcasts 0:42:46.880 --> 0:42:49.000 that came out in those early years, But before we 0:42:49.040 --> 0:42:52.040 do that, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. 0:42:58.960 --> 0:43:02.640 So in two thousand six, Edison Research held a survey 0:43:02.640 --> 0:43:06.160 to find out how many people were aware of podcasting 0:43:06.239 --> 0:43:09.960 in general. So two thousand six is still early days 0:43:10.000 --> 0:43:13.759 for podcasting, and the survey bears it out. According to 0:43:13.800 --> 0:43:17.960 their report, twenty two of Americans who responded to this 0:43:18.080 --> 0:43:22.640 survey said they had heard about podcasting, but only half 0:43:22.640 --> 0:43:25.880 as many, only eleven percent had ever actually listened to 0:43:26.000 --> 0:43:29.600 a podcast. And this is why, in those early days 0:43:29.640 --> 0:43:32.120 of doing tech stuff just a couple of years later, 0:43:32.239 --> 0:43:35.120 I found it really challenging to explain to people what 0:43:35.160 --> 0:43:38.359 it was I was doing. I'd say things like, yeah, 0:43:38.440 --> 0:43:42.440 it's an audio show, kind of like a radio show. No, no, 0:43:42.520 --> 0:43:45.960 it's not. It's not on the radio. It's it's on 0:43:46.000 --> 0:43:49.960 the internet. No no, no, you don't. You don't stream it, 0:43:50.000 --> 0:43:53.120 you download it and then you then you listen to 0:43:53.160 --> 0:43:55.240 it on an iPod or like an MP three player. 0:43:55.840 --> 0:43:59.520 I've had that kind of conversation so many times. Well, 0:43:59.560 --> 0:44:03.160 in February two thousand and six, Wait Wait Don't Tell 0:44:03.200 --> 0:44:07.839 Me becomes nbr's first full program podcast, which means I've 0:44:07.880 --> 0:44:13.000 been a subscriber for more than a decade. Wow. Before that, 0:44:13.239 --> 0:44:17.920 NBR had been uploading segments of shows, but not entire episodes. 0:44:18.160 --> 0:44:19.680 So wait, Wait don't tell Me. It was kind of 0:44:19.719 --> 0:44:23.960 their experiment what would happen if they allowed an entire 0:44:24.080 --> 0:44:27.319 show that would go out on NPR to also be 0:44:27.400 --> 0:44:30.480 downloaded as a podcast. As it turns out, people would 0:44:30.480 --> 0:44:34.600 go bunkers for it. That really showed up when they 0:44:34.640 --> 0:44:39.480 started doing this American Life also that month, in February 0:44:39.480 --> 0:44:41.839 two thousand and six, the Ricky Gervais Show entered the 0:44:41.880 --> 0:44:44.920 Guinness Book of World Records as the most downloaded podcast 0:44:44.960 --> 0:44:48.320 in history. Though come on, be fair, two thousand and 0:44:48.400 --> 0:44:51.120 six is pretty early in the podcast game. I mean, 0:44:51.160 --> 0:44:54.040 I hadn't even started tech stuff yet, and it could 0:44:54.040 --> 0:44:57.279 have waited a bit, to be honest. That record would 0:44:57.280 --> 0:45:01.520 be broken later on. In these spring of two thousand seven, 0:45:01.800 --> 0:45:06.399 Jack and Stench start a subscription based podcast at five 0:45:06.480 --> 0:45:10.400 dollars per month per subscription. The Jack and Stinch Show 0:45:10.440 --> 0:45:14.360 grew out of a radio program called Jamie Jack and Stinch. 0:45:15.360 --> 0:45:18.600 Their radio company had canceled their show, so they were 0:45:18.600 --> 0:45:21.520 out of a job, and that's when the creators decided 0:45:21.520 --> 0:45:22.960 that they were gonna they were gonna try and make 0:45:23.000 --> 0:45:26.040 a listener supported series and see if they can make 0:45:26.080 --> 0:45:28.480 it work. And it turns out it did work. They're 0:45:28.520 --> 0:45:31.200 still podcasting today and it's still five dollars per month 0:45:31.360 --> 0:45:33.760 or cents per show, as they say on their website. 0:45:35.040 --> 0:45:38.239 Other subscription based shows would soon follow, and so you 0:45:38.280 --> 0:45:41.400 began to see a few different ways to monetize podcasts. 0:45:41.800 --> 0:45:45.520 There were these listeners supported shows through subscriptions or later 0:45:45.640 --> 0:45:50.120 on through platforms like Patreon. Then there are sponsors supported 0:45:50.160 --> 0:45:53.480 shows such as tech Stuff, where we monetized by having 0:45:53.560 --> 0:45:57.520 ads in our shows. There's also fully sponsored content, in 0:45:57.560 --> 0:45:59.680 which a company will pay for a full episode of 0:45:59.680 --> 0:46:02.239 a pro graham. So there are a few different ways 0:46:02.280 --> 0:46:04.600 to make money from podcasting, though I'd say the vast 0:46:04.640 --> 0:46:07.960 majority of podcasters out there aren't really making a big 0:46:08.000 --> 0:46:13.160 profit from it. On April two thousand eight, Josh Clark 0:46:13.480 --> 0:46:17.799 and Chris Palette became Internet superstars forever and ever when 0:46:17.840 --> 0:46:21.400 the very first episode of Stuff You Should Know published. 0:46:22.040 --> 0:46:25.000 That is our most popular podcast here at how Stuff 0:46:25.000 --> 0:46:27.560 Works dot com and Stuff you Should Know. The very 0:46:27.560 --> 0:46:31.640 first episode April two thousand eight, Chuck was not a 0:46:31.640 --> 0:46:34.920 co host yet, it was my former editor Chris Palette. 0:46:35.440 --> 0:46:38.799 The topic they covered was how grass aline works, and 0:46:38.880 --> 0:46:42.640 the show was just nine minutes long. Those early episodes 0:46:42.640 --> 0:46:45.480 saw Josh work with a couple of different potential co hosts, 0:46:45.840 --> 0:46:48.880 So there was Chris Palette and there was also Candice, 0:46:48.960 --> 0:46:50.520 who would later go on to be one of the 0:46:50.520 --> 0:46:54.360 original hosts of Stuff You Missed in History Class, which 0:46:54.440 --> 0:46:58.280 by the way, was originally called Factor fiction. Chuck Bryant 0:46:58.360 --> 0:47:01.719 would join Josh for the episod owed why does Toothpaste 0:47:01.800 --> 0:47:06.239 make Orange Juice Taste Bad? Which published on May two 0:47:06.280 --> 0:47:10.200 thousand eight, and the charisma between the two hosts was undeniable. 0:47:10.360 --> 0:47:14.360 Josh and Chuck would become the definitive voices of stuff 0:47:14.400 --> 0:47:17.480 you should Know, and they still are today, and they 0:47:17.520 --> 0:47:21.520 sit on either side of me. Chuck's on my right, 0:47:21.719 --> 0:47:25.480 Josh is on my left. Other house stuff works shows 0:47:25.560 --> 0:47:28.439 that launched around that same time, where Brain Stuff, which 0:47:28.440 --> 0:47:32.279 originally featured our founder Marshall Brain giving short explanations of 0:47:32.320 --> 0:47:35.839 interesting stuff, and then Stuff you Missed in History Class, which, 0:47:35.840 --> 0:47:39.919 as I said before, started life as Factor fiction. And 0:47:39.960 --> 0:47:43.040 there there was a little show called tech Stuff, tiny 0:47:43.080 --> 0:47:46.200 little show that you're listening to right now. The first 0:47:46.280 --> 0:47:49.560 official episode of tech Stuff because we recorded a few 0:47:49.719 --> 0:47:53.120 that never published, a bunch of test episodes so that 0:47:53.120 --> 0:47:56.360 we could get used to being on the microphone, and 0:47:56.480 --> 0:48:00.600 they were bad and we should feel bad. I don't 0:48:00.600 --> 0:48:03.920 think they exist anymore. I'm pretty sure there's no existing 0:48:04.000 --> 0:48:07.080 recording of those early episodes, or I would release them. 0:48:07.080 --> 0:48:09.160 Why not? I would be I would group them together 0:48:09.239 --> 0:48:11.200 and say you want to listen to what the show 0:48:11.280 --> 0:48:14.279 sounded like back in two thousand and eight, because this 0:48:14.360 --> 0:48:18.440 is it. So the first official episode went live on 0:48:18.560 --> 0:48:21.840 June tenth, two thousand eight, and that episode was called 0:48:22.000 --> 0:48:27.759 How the Google Apple Cloud Computer Will Work. The less 0:48:27.760 --> 0:48:33.160 said about that, the better podcasts continued to grow in popularity, 0:48:33.320 --> 0:48:36.839 and podcast networks also began to grow. And then we 0:48:36.880 --> 0:48:40.120 flashed back to that story I mentioned about Personal Audio 0:48:40.280 --> 0:48:43.800 Back in the nineteen nineties, the company Personal Audio LLC. 0:48:44.040 --> 0:48:47.640 Was what some people called a patent holding company, being 0:48:47.640 --> 0:48:50.160 the company was in the business of making money from 0:48:50.200 --> 0:48:53.560 the patents it held. It didn't make anything else. It 0:48:53.600 --> 0:48:56.640 didn't offer any services, it didn't offer any products. It 0:48:56.760 --> 0:48:59.000 had these patents. Now, there are a couple of different 0:48:59.000 --> 0:49:00.839 ways you can make money with patents, and they are 0:49:00.880 --> 0:49:06.120 completely viable. One of this is to license your patent 0:49:06.200 --> 0:49:09.839 and design two interested parties, and again there's nothing wrong 0:49:09.880 --> 0:49:12.040 with that. So let's say I come up with a 0:49:12.120 --> 0:49:15.600 really cool idea on how to do something, and I 0:49:15.680 --> 0:49:19.200 patent that idea and then let companies know, Hey, if 0:49:19.239 --> 0:49:21.480 you want to do this thing in this cool way 0:49:21.520 --> 0:49:23.600 that I thought of, just come on over to me 0:49:23.800 --> 0:49:26.760 and we'll make a deal. Will you'll pay a licensing fee, 0:49:26.920 --> 0:49:29.160 I'll allow you to use my method. Everything will be 0:49:29.160 --> 0:49:31.840 cool until the patent expires, in which case it becomes 0:49:31.840 --> 0:49:36.920 public property. Or you could go another route, which involves 0:49:37.200 --> 0:49:39.520 just sitting on your patents and looking around and then 0:49:39.560 --> 0:49:42.840 suing people who appear to be using your patented ideas. 0:49:43.360 --> 0:49:45.920 Then you can either win money through a lawsuit or, 0:49:46.000 --> 0:49:49.600 as is more common, reach a settlement agreement where a 0:49:49.640 --> 0:49:54.520 company will pay you for using that patented idea. Lawsuits 0:49:54.560 --> 0:49:56.640 are really expensive, and often you'll find parties willing to 0:49:56.640 --> 0:49:59.919 settle out of court just to avoid risking a full, 0:50:00.280 --> 0:50:03.680 full blown court battle where even if you win it's expensive, 0:50:03.880 --> 0:50:06.920 but if you don't win, it's even more expensive. Well, 0:50:06.960 --> 0:50:09.600 Personal Audio had sued Apple a couple of times in 0:50:09.640 --> 0:50:14.680 an East Texas court over patents involving playlists Why East Texas. 0:50:14.840 --> 0:50:18.080 Personal Audio claimed it had an office nast Texas, but 0:50:18.120 --> 0:50:22.320 a lot of different technology journalists said that that office 0:50:22.440 --> 0:50:25.080 was essentially empty and really was just connected to their 0:50:25.120 --> 0:50:28.520 patent lawyer's office. I don't know if that's true or not, 0:50:28.560 --> 0:50:32.280 but that's how it was reported, and that to East 0:50:32.280 --> 0:50:35.359 Texas was known as being a very favorable court when 0:50:35.360 --> 0:50:40.160 it came to patent litigation, it was very favorable towards 0:50:40.160 --> 0:50:46.600 patent holders. So in Personal Audio sued several parties, including 0:50:46.640 --> 0:50:50.280 Adam Carolla and How Stuff Works, among others, Although technically 0:50:50.320 --> 0:50:53.080 they were going after Discovery because How Stuff Works was 0:50:53.120 --> 0:50:56.360 owned by Discovery at that time. The claim was that 0:50:56.440 --> 0:50:59.400 Personal Audio held the patent approach that these other podcasts 0:50:59.400 --> 0:51:02.400 were using to distribute audio over the web, and then 0:51:02.440 --> 0:51:05.400 a long legal battle followed. Now I was in the 0:51:05.480 --> 0:51:09.000 dark throughout the entire process, for which I am thankful. 0:51:09.160 --> 0:51:11.799 I only learned about developments after they had hit the 0:51:11.880 --> 0:51:16.000 news cycle. The Electronic Frontier Foundation got involved. The e 0:51:16.239 --> 0:51:20.240 f F, and they're very much a a consumer based 0:51:20.360 --> 0:51:25.560 organization that tries to look out for protections against corporations 0:51:26.440 --> 0:51:31.520 encroaching upon the Internet. They view the Internet as a 0:51:31.560 --> 0:51:37.040 public utility that should be UH, should be accessible by all, 0:51:37.480 --> 0:51:40.239 and that no company should have this kind of of 0:51:40.600 --> 0:51:45.080 leverage over it. So the tech news sites did some 0:51:45.160 --> 0:51:49.120 digging and made some allegations about Personal Audio about UH, 0:51:49.360 --> 0:51:52.680 the fact that the company had not ever produced a podcast, 0:51:52.719 --> 0:51:55.520 nor ever planned to do so, and so a lot 0:51:55.520 --> 0:51:58.400 of people were throwing around the words patent troll about 0:51:58.440 --> 0:52:01.759 Personal Audio that it's not my place to say, but 0:52:01.880 --> 0:52:05.480 the courts did ultimately find in favor of the podcasters. 0:52:05.960 --> 0:52:08.359 This was after Personal Audio had already started to back 0:52:08.440 --> 0:52:12.200 off from the lawsuits, not because the company was saying 0:52:12.239 --> 0:52:14.879 they didn't have a case. They said, no, we've got 0:52:14.920 --> 0:52:17.759 a case. There's just no money in podcasting, so no 0:52:17.760 --> 0:52:21.080 one could pay us, which was kind of like a 0:52:21.160 --> 0:52:24.080 back end its slap against podcasters. I mean, I can't 0:52:24.120 --> 0:52:26.640 necessarily disagree with him. There's not a whole lot of 0:52:26.640 --> 0:52:29.960 money in podcasting for for the vast majority of podcasters 0:52:29.960 --> 0:52:31.839 out there. You gotta do it because you love it, 0:52:32.200 --> 0:52:35.359 and maybe you wind up finding a profitable approach to it. 0:52:35.360 --> 0:52:40.560 It does happen, but it's hard to do. Now. It 0:52:40.560 --> 0:52:44.239 turns out that all of that was moot because there 0:52:44.239 --> 0:52:48.520 have been further UH lawsuits. The e f F pursued 0:52:48.520 --> 0:52:52.000 a claim that the patents that Personal Audio was depending 0:52:52.080 --> 0:52:56.399 upon are invalid, and that has gone to court and 0:52:57.120 --> 0:53:00.680 that ended up being decided in the favor of e 0:53:00.880 --> 0:53:05.560 f F and against Personal Audio. So there's you know, 0:53:06.520 --> 0:53:08.719 some of those examples I was talking about earlier, like 0:53:09.120 --> 0:53:13.200 quirks and quirks and Malamud's Internet talk radio platform. We're 0:53:13.200 --> 0:53:17.680 exhibiting features that were described in the Personal Audio patent. Now, 0:53:17.719 --> 0:53:19.960 that patent that they were really relying upon in this 0:53:20.000 --> 0:53:23.440 particular case was filed in two thousand nine, but it 0:53:23.520 --> 0:53:27.160 was given a priority date of nine. And this does 0:53:27.239 --> 0:53:30.240 happen in patent law. If you have filed for certain 0:53:30.320 --> 0:53:34.480 patents and you have a later patent that you feel 0:53:35.640 --> 0:53:39.160 is derivative of a previous one, and you want that 0:53:39.480 --> 0:53:44.680 effective date to be early earlier than what you're filing 0:53:44.680 --> 0:53:47.120 it for, you can appeal for a priority date, and 0:53:47.160 --> 0:53:50.239 they did and they got it. It was in but 0:53:51.040 --> 0:53:54.520 the examples of Quirks and Quirks and Internet Talk Radio 0:53:54.920 --> 0:53:58.160 pre dated nine, and that led the court to rule 0:53:58.239 --> 0:54:01.680 that the patent was invalid as it was describing something 0:54:01.719 --> 0:54:04.840 that had already existed. So the case went to the 0:54:04.880 --> 0:54:07.760 Court of Appeals and the Court of Appeals upheld that ruling. 0:54:08.120 --> 0:54:10.319 So as of the recording of this podcast, there's been 0:54:10.320 --> 0:54:12.799 no word if Personal Audio will pursue this to the 0:54:12.800 --> 0:54:16.760 Supreme Court, because they could it could go that next step, 0:54:17.040 --> 0:54:21.040 But two courts so far have said, you know, there's 0:54:21.320 --> 0:54:25.840 evidence here that this stuff existed before you described it 0:54:25.880 --> 0:54:28.400 in your patent, and you can't patent an idea that 0:54:28.480 --> 0:54:34.080 already exists. Today, you can find podcasts about practically every 0:54:34.120 --> 0:54:37.480 topic you can imagine, from news to commentary to fiction 0:54:37.560 --> 0:54:40.480 and all things in between. I've listened to lots of 0:54:40.520 --> 0:54:43.160 different podcasts, and I contribute to a few of my 0:54:43.239 --> 0:54:45.719 own outside of How Stuff Works. But I'm curious to 0:54:45.719 --> 0:54:48.960 hear from you guys. What are some of your favorite podcasts? 0:54:48.960 --> 0:54:52.360 What's worth checking out. I'm always looking for something that's 0:54:52.400 --> 0:54:55.319 interesting or fascinating or just playing funny to add to 0:54:55.400 --> 0:54:58.239 my walks to and from the office. So let me know. 0:54:59.160 --> 0:55:02.160 Send me a message. Our email addresses tech Stuff at 0:55:02.280 --> 0:55:04.480 how stuff Works dot com, or you can drop me 0:55:04.520 --> 0:55:06.879 a line on Facebook or Twitter. Just let me know, Hey, 0:55:06.920 --> 0:55:10.000 here's a great podcast you should check out. My handle 0:55:10.040 --> 0:55:13.320 at both of those is tech Stuff hs W. Remember 0:55:13.600 --> 0:55:16.520 you can come to twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff 0:55:16.560 --> 0:55:19.920 on Wednesdays and Fridays and watch me live as I 0:55:19.960 --> 0:55:23.160 record these episodes. Just like a bunch of really smart 0:55:23.200 --> 0:55:25.799 people are doing right now, and they're talking about all 0:55:25.800 --> 0:55:28.000 sorts of tech related things that are pretty cool, and 0:55:28.040 --> 0:55:30.320 I can't wait to get back to chatting with them, 0:55:30.360 --> 0:55:31.880 so you know what, I think. I'm gonna do that 0:55:32.000 --> 0:55:35.280 right now, and I'll talk to you guys again really 0:55:35.320 --> 0:55:43.160 soon for more on this and thousands of other topics, 0:55:43.239 --> 0:55:54.440 because a house top works dot com