Broadcast Pioneering: How Josh And Trix Became Podcast Stars
I stumbled across something today while trolling through my beloved Internet Archive, the very first Radio Redhead Podcast! As coincidence would have it, the date was 19 years ago tomorrow March 13th, 2005. I’ve been thinking about that podcast a lot recently but I struggle to understand how that was 19 years ago. The internet was a different place back then, full of more promises than deliveries, but it was fun and everything crackled with a new energy. Gnomedex was in full swing and podcasting was just flickering into life in 2002 I remember very vividly trying to convince Leo Laporte that Tech TV had no future without streaming with RealPlayer and he summarily dismissed me over the digital rights issue. By 2006 This Week in Tech was a reality… and then… The iPhone. It was a heady time to be alive. I miss those days, there wasn’t any social media but everything overflowed with community.
Radio Redhead was a project in search of an idea; what it became was 30 episodes of my wife and I talking throughout our courtship. I had been obsessed with Napster. I listened almost exclusively to ‘net radio’ and downloaded loads of stand-alone ‘show’ MP3s from various websites, as you did. The development of RSS pulled all those threads together. I HAD to make a podcast! Coincidentally at that time, I was becoming involved in a crazy long-distance relationship with a smart redhead who liked nothing better than long talks on the phone. Two whip-smart gingers talking on the phone. Everyday. It was inevitable that I would start recording those conversations.
The audio is terrible in this first episode. There were a lot of technical challenges just to record audio in those days, let alone phone calls. The conversation is stilted and awkward. My nervous laugh is nervous. The entire intro is stolen from Art Bell and Coast to Coast AM. (I’m sure I would have said it was an homage.) I believe Ticia was recorded Skype to phone with HotRecorder, she sounded no less the Star. Nineteen years later it is still worth a listen. What can I say? We have chemistry. The show never made any money. We never sold a t-shirt. We never even got a sponsor inquiry but somewhere there are 30 episodes of a podcast that documents a much better time in history and the first true collaboration I had with the wonderful woman who became my wife.
Take a listen and let me know what you think.
