14 years later, the humble podcast has become a pop culture juggernaut.
Everyone has a favourite podcast.
Hell, everyone practically has their own podcast – including this writer, hey, do you like music? – as the ‘listening to a radio show that’s not on the radio at your own leisure’ craze takes over society.
Despite a recent-ish spike in popularity, podcasts have been around for 14 years.
This Sunday – 30 September – marks International Podcast Day, so it’s time to celebrate.
Now in its second year, the Dublin Podcast Festival will be well underway by Sunday, and this year’s line-up of live shows is pretty eclectic across the board.
You’ve got Rubber Bandits main man and social commentator Blind Boy taking over Vicar Street for two nights, Irish language enthusiasm project Motherfoclóir taking to the stage and also a live turn from award-winning music show NO ENCORE, which is worth a listen.
So, how big are podcasts, then? Glad you asked, reader.
Twitter has done some research and found that there have been over 24 million tweets about podcasts in 2018 alone, which represents a 40% increase on last year.
But the big story is, of course, a list of the 20 most popular podcasts in the world right now.
The criteria for said list is ‘global mentions’, so you know it’s legit.
And that list looks like this:
1. The Adventure Zone
2. The Joe Rogan Experience
3. Planet Money
4. My Brother, My Brother and Me
5. Fresh Air
6. This American Life
7. Nerdcast
8. The Daily
9. Freakonomics
10. Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me!
11. Serial
12. Radiolab
13. Up First
14. TED Radio Hour
15. S-Town
16. Up and Vanished
17. In the Dark
18. Dibradoras
19. In Our Time
20. Naruhodo
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
