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Listening to your favorite podcast host can often feel like they’re talking one-on-one to just you in an intimate setting. After all the weekly shows, you may think you know all there is to know about them. But there’s always a deeper, and sometimes darker, backstory about your favorite funny and informative podcasters, and the journey of how they got to where they are.
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Though they’ve technically been around since the mid-2000s, podcasts have exploded in popularity in the past few years, growing from a new and misunderstood medium to seemingly everybody having one nowadays. Comedians like Ricky Gervais and Marc Maron were early pioneers in comedy podcasting, figuring out how to best use the new way of broadcasting to reach a wide audience, while shows and series like Serial expanded what a podcast could be, drawing the appeal of old-timey radio shows but for the modern era. Actual radio shows, like This American Life from NPR, quickly realized the direction of where the future of radio would be heading, and is currently the most listened to podcast in its entire history.
The Covid pandemic expanded podcasting even further, with entertainers (and first-timers) launching their own shows while stuck at home. It’s a form of media that allows anyone to get going and make their mark in a competitive field. If you’re thinking about starting up your own podcast, all you really need is a mic, headphones, and something to talk about. Watching your weekly listener count grow each week can be the best motivation of all.
These books are an overall inspiration to learn what obstacles and setbacks hosts have conquered to climb to the top of the podcast world. Every story is different, and chronicles how an event or idea can lead to a following of millions of weekly listeners, and launch the careers of podcasters to places they never thought possible.
