In this first season of Beside the Rabbit Hole, I’m already going meta with the podcast and considering what a podcast actually is. That’s right – it’s a podcast about podcasts.

Podcasts are everywhere these days! There’s countless podcasts representing countless subjects and providing something to serve countless interests. And with this ubiquity of podcasting, there is also an unspoken assumption that we all know what podcasts are and how we consume them—that is, we all know that podcasts are things we listen to, right?

But it doesn’t necessarily have to be like this! Audio podcasts just happen to be the most popular form of the medium, but there are other possible formats as well. In fact, in the mid- to late-2000s there was the possibility that the "future of podcasting" would arrive in the form of video podcasts. Apple promoted video podcast capabilities on their newly video capable iPods, the new iPhone, and as the natural extension of their recently revamped iTunes Music Store – now just the iTunes Store.

But video podcasts never really took off. Though we have an astounding amount of video content available in today’s internet, podcasting remains wholly separate. Why is that? What were video podcasts? What could they have become? And why did they ultimately fail?

Over the next few episodes—most audio, but some video, and maybe even some in other experimental formats—I’ll dig into those questions, and more. I’ll look through promotional materials from the time to see how video podcasts were described. And then I’ll try and recreate the experience of mid-2000s video podcasts with what I’m calling a "technological reenactment."

If any of that sounds interesting to you, I hope that you’ll consider joining on my journey. Or if you know a friend or family member who might into this, please feel free to share this with them.

Voxel Revolution by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7017-voxel-revolution

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license