Column: Podcast listening, and podcasting, is for everyone

I have seen at least three different dawns of the “golden age” of podcasting declared. If there’s anything certain about this free, time-shifted, mostly audio medium, it’s that podcasts are here to stay.

This year brought a milestone, with the Pew Research Center reporting that just over half of all Americans have listened to a podcast at least once. People who have never heard of them are increasingly rare.

But if you’re among those who haven’t sampled the latest frontier in “citizen media,” let me give you a primer. You might even want to start a podcast yourself.

Unlike movies, TV shows and YouTube videos, podcasts don’t demand your full attention. Like radio, you can listen while you drive to work or do the dishes.

Audio is also arguably the most intimate of mediums. Voices, sounds and music penetrate your skull via the side doors, tapping into your mind’s eye and imagination to complete the picture.

Unlike radio, however, podcasts are delivered on demand, downloaded or streamed when you want to listen — neatly packaged stories and conversations that you can sample or binge on your schedule.

And unlike radio, there’s zero gate-keeping. While professional audio is great, there are 10,000 podcasts for every radio station. Shows range from well-structured panel discussions to solo rants. However unusual your interest, there’s a podcast dedicated to it.

Before the first “golden age” of podcasting, you needed a computer with a modem, an MP3 player and an obscure application to grab audio files from the internet and move them over a wire to your device.

Then Apple added podcasts to iTunes in 2005. Putting podcasts on your iPod was easy. Although it would take a while, podcasts can now be found, managed and played on every connected device imaginable, from phones to cars to smart home assistants like Amazon’s Alexa.

Now that podcasts are easy to access, what should you listen to? There are so many shows, it can be dizzying to pick one.

Fortunately, since the second “golden age” of podcasting — marked by the debut of the investigative journalism podcast “Serial” in 2014 — a wave of big names and brands have jumped into the podcast pool.

While I’ll always have a soft spot for the independent podcaster telling stories from her padded closet, newcomers to the medium do benefit from a plethora of familiar voices — many of them current or former public-radio hosts — to start with.

If you listen to NPR, podcasting can basically give you a 24/7 stream of only the stuff you like. Media networks all have podcasts, from ESPN to iHeartRadio.

On the independent side, there are shows that have been around for over a dec­ade and are really good at what they do. Podcast directories feature top-10 lists, ratings and reviews, giving you lots of good choices for any topic.

And yes, there are great local podcasts, too. From profiles of innovative island teachers to interviews with Hawaii business leaders, from political punditry to local comedy. And a new show seems to launch every month.

Indeed, after you’ve subscribed and listened to a few shows, you might get the itch to start your own. If you have a story to tell, or smart and funny friends, it doesn’t take much to put yourself out there.

The $230 million acquisition of podcast company Gimlet by Spotify earlier this year marked the third “golden age” of podcasting. Big money, venture capital and “exclusive shows” came into the picture.

Unfortunately, that means some new podcasters are only in it for the money, and there isn’t much to go around. On the other hand, it also fostered new tools and services that make starting a show easier than ever.

Before buying an expensive microphone or building a studio in your garage, you can now dabble in podcasting for free with apps like Anchor.fm, Spreaker and Podbean. If you get more serious, there are pro-level services like Blubrry (founded in Hawaii) or Libsyn.

Ready to make a serious go at it? There are tons of cool gear out there, and you can now rent small recording booths at several local co-working spaces.

If you decide to put your voice out there, let me know. I’ll listen.

Ryan Ozawa is communications director for local tech company Hawaii Information Service and runs the Hawaii Association of Podcasters. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter at @hawaii.