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I'm James Cridland from Pod News Dot Net,

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your free daily update for podcasting

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and on demand. And this is

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a history of podcasting. Why

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is it called that? Who coined the word?

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And where did podcasting come from?

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A podcast is normally defined as

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a piece of on demand audio, like

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a radio show, but on demand. But

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the proper technical definition for

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a podcast is an audio file

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referenced by an enclosure tag in

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an RSS feed. The

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first audio referenced by an

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enclosure tag in an RSS feed

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was published on January the 20th, 2001.

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Inauguration Day in the US as

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George W Bush became President

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of the United States.

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I am honored and humbled to stand here where so

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many of America's leaders have

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come before me and

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so many will follow.

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As America's new president gave his

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first address. So a software

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developer called Dave Winer uploaded

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a piece of audio and referenced it

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by an enclosure tag in an RSS feed.

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It was this song for us Blues

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by the Grateful Dead. Red and white.

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Suede shoes. I'm

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a girl, says Sparks by a

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blog post idea of MTV deejay

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Adam Curry on how to use permanent

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Internet connections. This was

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the first podcast, even if

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nothing was available yet to download it.

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But it wasn't yet called a

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podcast. Skip

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forward to July the ninth, 2003,

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and a small room at the Berkman Center for

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Internet and Society at Harvard

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in Boston, Massachusetts. Christopher

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Leiden had been an interviewer at

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Boston's WB u R until a few

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years earlier, but he'd heard about

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the idea of syndicating audio

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from a blog. He sat down

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to interview the man who'd made it possible.

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Dave Winer.

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Dave Winer I feel like a new immigrant in

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this blog world where you're a kind

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of founding father. Walk

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me around it. And I'm not talking about the technology.

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I want to know what kind of democratic

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experiment this blog idea

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really amounts to.

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Well, gosh, it changes

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all the time. I mean, when we first started

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doing this, it was just a bunch of people

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sort of of writing

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Hello World and being

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amazed that it was possible

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to do that.

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The first podcast now called Open

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Source and still available

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today. The first program

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to automatically grab an audio show

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like this, originally called RSS

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to iPod was launched by

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Adam Curry on October the 12th, 2003.

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But these audio shows did not

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have a name yet. Ben

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Hammersley, a British author and journalist,

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had been researching RSS and audio

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for some time, writing content

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syndication with RSS for O'Reilly

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Media. Published in March 23

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and investigating the idea of enclosures

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in RSS feeds. Here

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he is on Rob and Dana Greenlees,

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syndicated Web talk radio show

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on December the 20th, 2003,

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including a chat about RSS.

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Why is RSS so important?

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RSS for people who don't know what it is, is a

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collection of different data formats, but they

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all do the same thing. They enable you to

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weather an RSS reader

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application to subscribe

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to website and the weblog.

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Particularly a good example of this.

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At the British newspaper The Guardian.

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Hammersley turned his attention to the growing

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use of RSS for audio and

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radio content and wrote on February

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the 12th, 2004, what

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to call it Audio blogging,

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podcasting, Guerrilla media.

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It was for an article in The Guardian. I was writing

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about this new phenomenon of automatically

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downloading audio programmes,

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and I was very late on a

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deadline and I had to write an extra sentence

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just to fill up the space. And so I wrote something

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like, But what do we call it? And then

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I ended up adding on two

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or three made up words, and one of those

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made up words was podcasting, and

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it sort of caught on from there. And now,

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ten years later, I stand up on stage somewhere

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and I could be in Australia or the Middle East

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or wherever, and people go, and he invented

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the word podcast and the and the audience

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goes, Oh, I

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just really hope I do something else before I

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die.

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A clip from a BBC documentary ten

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years Later, produced by Trevor Dann for

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BBC Radio four and at short

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mention in a newspaper, was the first

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time the word podcasting had been seen

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in print, alongside two

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other potential words for the medium.

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In the same piece, Hamersley interviewed

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Christopher Lighton, who with Dave

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Winer, had been producing audio

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referenced by an enclosure tag in an RSS

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feed. Hammersley told Pod

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News in an email. It's a dumb thing

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I made up in about 5 seconds while trying

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to print that article out to make it fit the page

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very close to deadline. But

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it was the first time podcasting

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had been seen in print in

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a national British newspaper with a circulation

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of 383,001

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that later that year was claimed to be

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reaching 2.5 million

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US readers alone. But

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the word didn't appear to instantly catch on,

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however. After Hamersley initial

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article, the word podcasting or

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any derivative of it was not mentioned

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anywhere else in the media or in blogs

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for five months. The next

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time it was mentioned at all was on September

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the 16th, 2004,

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when Danny Jay Gregoire wrote

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on the iPod dev mailing list.

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I can see there being the desire of users

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in some instances to be able to

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easily subscribe and get older posts

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episodes of our shows. What are

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we calling these things anyway? How

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about PO'd or so for short that

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no longer appear on the RSS

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feed? Right now, if for example,

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someone wanted to listen to all the daily

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source codes back to so number one,

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they would have to manually go through the archives

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and download episodes not automagically

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received, somewhat defeating the purpose

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of an iPod or not too much

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of a problem now, but.

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Adding.

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I guess one could argue that this is simply

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an RSS server side issue and

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that the podcaster yes, I

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like making up new words should

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be responsible enough to offer a page

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of separate feeds of old codes by month,

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year, season, etc..

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Greg Gregoire is credited by Dave Winer.

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Here he is speaking in Guy Kawasaki's

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podcast, Remarkable People.

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Adam was in had the

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initial idea for why

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this made sense at that particular point

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in time. This was the first meeting

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that we had, and this goes back to

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2000. He saw me do

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it and he started doing it. And then,

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I don't know, by September of 2004,

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there were 20 or 30 people doing

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and we needed a name. And

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so we had email list and I

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asked people, what should we call this? And a

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guy named Danny Gregoire said, Just call it podcasting.

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And Adam and I were doing a podcast

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called Trade Secrets, and on that

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we discussed it. So let's just go with

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podcasting. That's it.

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That's how podcasting got named.

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Yeah, that's right. What

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did you think? We hired some kind of a market

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research firm and they did the McKinsey

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shit and you. Come on. But that wasn't

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how it worked.

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And Greg WA is credited by

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Adam Curry in Joe Rogan's

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podcast in March 2020.

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And this just kept building and building and other

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people started doing these and we called

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them soliloquies and. Little bundles

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of joy and all kinds of really dumb names.

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And the Danny Gregoire guy

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who was just listening, he said, Oh, this is

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a podcast. And the name

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stuck. Now, Ben

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Hammersley from The Guardian

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years earlier, had

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actually used the term podcast

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somewhere in an article, which

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there was no podcasting at the time, but he envisioned

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that and then called the podcast.

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So. So he's the guy. So he's the

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guy named it. He used

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the term. But I would say Danny Gregoire really

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named what we were doing at the time.

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Now, while Curry's recollection of the timeline

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isn't accurate, it was 15 years after

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the fact, after all. It certainly appears

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that Gregoire, backed by Curry and

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Weiner, kickstarted the terms

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popularity on September

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the 18th, 2004. Dave

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Slusher is said to have been the first

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to have used the word podcast. In

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a podcast, Evil Genius

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Chronicles and credited an

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unnamed Gregoire and cautioned,

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There's some swears in this.

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Somebody has registered podcasting dot

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net and I saw a podcast

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or our podcast heard on that, and

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I saw podcaster as a user agent,

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you know, hitting my RSS feed. And I went and

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looked at it and right now it's just a Comingsoon page,

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but I'm going to pay attention to that. Now I

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see who's who's got that and what they're doing. But

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that term, I think they've coined the term. So

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iPod platform just doesn't, you know, spring

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from the Tom tongue. But what I'm doing

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right here and what Adam's doing and what Dave Weiner

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is doing and what it conversations are doing,

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that's podcasting, I think that

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is the term I am using

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that from here on out, you know, So I am a

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podcaster and they are podcasters

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and I am podcasting right now and

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you listen to my podcast. Fucking

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Hey, I'd like to know who this is because

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you are one brilliant bastard. God

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damn, that's a good term.

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The term was quickly taken up. Adam

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Curry mentioned podcasting on his blog

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for the first time on September the 21st,

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2004. Dave Winer

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blogs. What is podcasting On September

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the 24th, 2004 by

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Dark Souls, who blogged about podcasting

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on September the 28th, and Dan

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Gillmor Also on September the 28th,

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a number of podcast related websites

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began to go live in early October, including

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podcast alley dot com, live

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on October the seventh and the original

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podcast. A dot net seems to forward

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through to podcast dot net, which

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was already live on October the ninth. And

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as an example that the term was already well

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embedded. Todd Cochrane posted the

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first Geek News Central podcast

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on October the ninth, 2004.

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And on that same day, Rob Greenlee

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posted a comment announcing the new name on

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the Web talk radio show website Evo

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Terra followed on October the 13th,

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the first time the word podcast appeared in print

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alongside podcasting was on October

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the 14th in the Los Angeles

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Times. As for Hammersley,

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on November the 14th, 2004,

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he released Radio Pod, a

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piece of software that recorded radio

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streams, converted the audio into

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MP3 and produced an

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RSS feed for a podcast.

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So who invented the name Podcasting?

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Ben Hammersley was the first

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to use the term in print in a widely

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read publication. Then

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Danny Jay Gregoire was the person to

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make the term popular in the community.

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And it's very possible that without Greg

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Wise use of the term in September 2004

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and its enthusiastic use by Adam Curry

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and Dave Winer would be calling

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audio reference by an enclosure tag in

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an RSS feed something quite

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different. If you'd like

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to know more about podcasting, its history or

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its present, you want to subscribe to

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Pod News? It's a free daily newsletter.

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You can get it at pod news dot net or

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ask your smart speaker to play the latest

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news from pod use. Podcasting News.

11:52

I'm James Cridland. Keep listening.