Hear this episode at theallusionist.org/podcast-podcast
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, am dropping an extra special something into your feed.
I recorded it in front of a live audience at Podcon in Seattle earlier this year. Podcon was this huge get-together of podcast listeners and podcasters, so I did this piece about a word that united us but attracts a lot of complaint as well. Here we go.
I’m here to talk about a word that a lot of people hate: podcast.
How do you feel about the word ‘podcast’?
Make noise if you dislike it. [Mild audience noise.] Make noise if you don’t care, but will ditch it in a second as soon as another option comes along. [Strong audience noise.]
A lot of people do not like the word ‘podcast’, for several reasons, and often their reason is ‘podcast’ is from a brand name, iPod, not even a device that most people use any more.
***Just going to cut in here to note that the ipod’s name was inspired by the film 2001: A Space Odyssey and the line "Open the pod bay doors, Hal!"
Later, Apple researched whether ‘ipod’ was trademarked and found that it had already been in use, for a line of internet kiosks in New Jersey, that had started in 1998, but discontinued by 2001. Prior to that, the trademark had been used in 1991 by a Michigan-based furniture company. Who knows whether they were also inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey or pods of dolphins or pea pods.
Since I’ve already interrupted myself, I’ll also say that if you think the word ‘podcast’ is pushing it by referring to iPod, you’re going to seethe when I tell you about the ‘cast’ part of it - that’s from ‘broadcast’, which originally meant to sow seeds on the ground. So in the interests of fairness I hope you have also been writing peevish letters to broadcasters complaining about their lack of agricultural relevance. Anyway, back to the thing. ***
Brand names are actually pretty common as regular words. Here are a few that were brands that became the generic term for something: zipper, jetski, escalator, tabloid, hula hoop, dumpster, yoyo, scotch tape, zip code. Rollerblades, realtor, tupperware, jacuzzi. Bubble wrap. Laundromat. Granola!
So what if ‘podcast’ is from a brand?
Then, some people are snobs about the word ‘podcast’. “Why don’t we just call podcasting ‘radio’?”
Here’s why: I started making podcasts because I couldn’t get a job in radio! Radio is not getting the credit for this.
“I don’t like podcast, it’s a made-up word.” SO ARE ALL THE WORDS.
The person credited with coining the word ‘podcast’ is a British journalist named Ben Hammersley. A few years ago I interviewed him about it, and he said, “I’m sorry.”
What happened was, in February 2004 Ben Hammersley was writing an article for the Guardian, and the deadline was looming, and in desperation he came up with some terms for this emerging medium of speech audio online. There it is, the first known written instance of the word ‘podcast’:
***I quote: “With the benefit of hindsight, it all seems quite obvious. MP3 players, like Apple's iPod, in many pockets, audio production software cheap or free, and weblogging an established part of the internet; all the ingredients are there for a new boom in amateur radio.
But what to call it? Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia?”***
Look at the other options! Would you really prefer either of those, Audioblogcon?
It’s clear from all these words that Ben was looking to make a portmanteau word, a word made of pre-existing words. Portmanteauing is a very common way of creating new words, because it works: people recognise the components of the existing words, which helps them feel familiar with the new word.
We’re already used to a lot of portmanteaux, they’re all over the place, even if you don’t notice them: email, fanzine, smog - smoke and fog - jazzercise, cronut. Velcro - velcro is a portmanteau, did you know that? Of velvet and crochet.
A few years ago I covered portmanteaus on the show when I did an episode about brunch. That’s a portmanteau that I think a lot of people hate, but a lot of other people are too used to it to hate. You don’t hate the word ‘dumbfound’, do you, because it was portmanteaued nearly 400 years ago. So maybe ‘podcast’ is still new enough to grate to some people, but in a while it will just be a word in people’s vocabularies, and people won’t hate it. And maybe in 400 years so, we won’t hate portmanteaus like ‘sharents’ - parents who share - or, you might want to call them, ‘parents’. And I must warn you now, I have been collecting HUNDREDS of these. Wholphin! Solucious! Bookazines - all the price of a book, all the ad content of a magazine.
*** All these are real portmanteaus, I have photographic proof, I have not made up any of these myself. ***
Porkadise, acnedote, fashercise - before they got this sign made, did no one say, “You know what? NO! This is not a good idea!” Here’s a real place that I went: the Pooseum. It’s a museum of animal poo in Australia. Flatzza - flatbread pizza? Ponut - pizza donut. Pantashoes.
*** Pantashoes are pants that are also shoes, or shoes that are also pants, and Balenciaga was selling them for £2050. Pantashoes. ***
This is my longwinded way of saying, I think people don’t like the word ‘podcast’ because it’s a portmanteau.
But. I personally don’t mind the word ‘podcast’. It’s fairly efficient, seven letters, and it means this, specifically. Unlike the other terms people use to avoid using podcast. Digital download - that can be a PDF. Audio can be an opera, a car horn, the sound of a fox screaming. Radio - did radio bring us all here?
Here’s what the word podcast means to me.
Podcast lets me hear the voices and thoughts of people I never would have otherwise been able to hear.
Podcast keeps me distracted when I’m wedged into people’s armpits on a crowded train - that’s a common London thing, it’s not a special club I go to.
Podcast made people interested in speech audio again in a way they haven’t been since, what, television was invented?
Podcast let me start something without getting someone else’s permission. Podcast let me experiment in a creative form and learn more than I’ve ever learned from doing anything. Which was a real waste of the 17 years I spent in formal education.
Podcast let me speak to hundreds of thousands of people without leaving my room.
Podcast also has taken me around the world.
Thanks to podcast, I’ve met some of my favourite people.
Thanks to podcast, you’re here now and so am I.
You may not think podcast is a great word, or even a good word, but it is our word. It’s our word.
That was me speaking at Podcon, and to elaborate a bit on what I said: it’s a very special and wonderful thing for me to get to be at an event like Podcon, or the Allusionist live shows, because it’s so rare for listeners and podcasters to get to be in the same room together. Usually I’m here, recording in bed or a cupboard or something, and you’re wherever you are doing whatever you’re doing - commuting, cleaning the house, drawing, exercising, sleeping - and we’re in each other’s lives in a very unusual way. I don’t think it happens in many other circumstances other than podcasts, pretty rare in forms of media or entertainment.
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is...
theriac, noun: antidote to venomous bites etc.
Try using it in an email today.
Thanks to Martin Austwick for the music, thanks to the people of Podcon for having me, and thanks to you for listening, now and every time, and for letting me into your brain. I promise to treat it respectfully and not make a mess - I’m a good houseguest.
