Discovering podcasts in 2006

I was listening to my weekly Security Now podcast that was referencing an old security issue from 2009. It’s been fixed, but apparently it’s happening again. This made me realize just how long I’ve been listening to some podcasts. Security Now, for example, has over a thousand episodes now, and I started listening when they were only around episode 40, which was during their first year. That’s twenty years, which is absolutely wild.

I first got into podcasts back when I had an iPod Nano and a twice-weekly paper route. I’d stuff newspapers and flyers into their bags and then spend forty-five minutes to an hour delivering to about a hundred houses in my neighborhood. I did that from middle school until after high school. I have fond memories of feeling numb in the cold Canadian winters, delivering papers late at night, sometimes as late as 11 p.m. in negative twenty degrees with massive snowbanks and a heavy bag of papers.

One of my favorite podcast memories was listening to the Xbox Podcast with Major Nelson and his co-hosts while on my route. The fun thing about that show was that after the main episode ended, they’d leave a minute or two of silence, then surprise you with an after-show where they’d just chat about random stuff for a few extra minutes. Their intro music was great, too. The funny part is, even though it was an Xbox podcast, I wasn’t really an Xbox gamer, I was a PC gamer, but I still loved hearing about the gaming news and technology advancements around the Xbox.

Back to Security Now - I used to listen to their weekly episodes religiously. They explained topics like how internet and security protocols work, breaking down different systems and how they’ve evolved over time. That show gave me a lot of foundational knowledge I’ve used in my software development job and has given me a deep understanding of how these systems work.

Another early podcast that captured the magic of the early internet being such a vibrant and entrepreneurial place for me was Diggnation with Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht. That show was so cool and funny. Every week they’d talk about the top stories from Digg.com, drink beers, and just say whatever came to mind for those Silicon Valley guys. It really showcased the raw, chaotic coolness of the early internet.

I’ll have to go back and figure out when I first started listening to podcasts, but I’m glad I don’t have to plug my iPod into my computer and sync it with iTunes to get the latest episodes.