Age of Audio: The Inside Story of Podcasting

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz, the stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds.

**Dallas Taylor** (0:10)
I'm Dallas Taylor.

**Sean Michael Colon** (0:12)
Well, Dallas, I've told this story before, but this is the first time I'm telling it to the person who is in the story.

**Dallas Taylor** (0:21)
I would love to hear it. This is my friend, Sean.

**Sean Michael Colon** (0:26)
Hi, I'm Sean Michael Colon. I'm a director and a audio engineer and a filmmaker.

**Dallas Taylor** (0:33)
Sean recently made a documentary about podcasting called Age of Audio. How did Age of Audio come to be? Like, how did you get the idea?

**Sean Michael Colon** (0:41)
I was working on one of the potential follow-up documentaries to my first documentary, and it was about this band called The Wilhelm Scream. Anyone who's a longtime fan of Twenty Thousand Hertz knows that there's an episode on the sound of Wilhelm Scream.

**Dallas Taylor** (0:57)
The Charge at Feather River was the film that gave Wilhelm its name, but it was the second film it was used in. What was the first?

**Sean Michael Colon** (1:05)
Because I wanted to include where the history of that sound came from, I reached out to this podcast host named Dallas Taylor to see if he would do an interview with me about this particular sound as an expert, if you will. Just prior to meeting up with, well, you, I ended up hanging out with Ira Glass at a punk rock show in Brooklyn.

**Ira Glass** (1:30)
From WBEZ Chicago with This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Our program today in three acts.

**Sean Michael Colon** (1:36)
And after our interview, we got to talk and I told you the story about how I hung out with Ira Glass at a punk rock show. And also that Roman Mars had done a pull quote on my previous documentary.

**Dallas Taylor** (1:49)
This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

**Sean Michael Colon** (1:53)
And you said something along the lines of, you know Roman Mars and now you seem to know Ira Glass. Why don't you do a podcast documentary?

**Dallas Taylor** (2:05)
Hopefully, I did not ruin your life in that, but it's a very good documentary.

**Sean Michael Colon** (2:08)
Yeah, you did, but it's okay.
You set me up on a path and from the time you mentioned it to the time we were filming, I think it was about three, four months. But I appreciate our friendship, Dallas, and I appreciate you. And also scorn you for giving me that idea.

**Dallas Taylor** (2:34)
Age of Audio is the best presentation of the strange and surprising history of podcasting that I've ever seen. It's full of insights from podcast icons and unsung heroes. And it's narrated by a great podcaster named Ronald Young Jr., who hosts a show called Wait For It. After I saw the film, I asked Sean if we could adapt it into a shorter audio only version for our show. And thankfully, he agreed. So without further ado, this is Age of Audio for audio.

**Marc Maron** (3:17)
Long before television, film, radio, the printed word, we've been communicating with each other in sound. It's elemental to who we are.

**Dax Shepard** (3:31)
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert.

**Adam Curry** (3:33)
I'm Dan Rather, and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

**Dax Shepard** (3:35)
Welcome to Home No Brian Needs a Friend, joined as always by Sonar.

**Barack Obama** (3:38)
What is up, everybody?

**SPEAKER_9** (3:40)
And welcome to the All NBA Show Powerhouse.

**Adam Curry** (3:42)
What's in it?

**Ben Hammersley** (3:43)
The doctor can take that up if you'd like.

**Ronald Young Jr.** (3:47)
All over the world, millions of people are talking in the microphones about anything and everything. They all believe they have something to say worth listening to.
And they're right, because half a billion people are listening. The world is listening to podcasts.

**Dallas Taylor** (4:43)
When you think of a podcast, you might think of two people sitting around a table, talking into microphones. Or you might think of the crafted emotional narratives of shows like This American Life. Of course, podcasts are both of those things and more.
And since you're hearing this, you're one of the world's 584 million regular podcast listeners. You might even know someone who's made a podcast.

**Ronald Young Jr.** (5:07)
And this is a story about those people. Some you know, and others you haven't met yet. They're all on a journey to make it in podcasting today. But what does it mean to make it in podcasting today? Is it even possible? What is this industry? To try to make sense of it, we have to go back to the beginning.