Image: Arina P Habich/Shutterstock
Two of the world’s most popular podcasts will descend on Dublin in September as a major festival gets out of the traps for the first time.
We’re currently in the digital age but, within that, there are many minor eras of note. For example, there was the Nokia age, the iTunes age, the smartphone age and, for the past few years, the podcast age.
In the US alone, there are an estimated 65m regular podcast listeners, with a reasonable majority (64pc) of these listening on a phone or tablet on the move.
Millions more in Europe and beyond have their commuter-friendly podcasts of choice, with everything – from sport and politics, to fashion and crime – in abundance.
This September, the first ever Dublin Podcast Festival will see some of the leading figures in the industry descend on the Irish capital.
For example, S-Town – from the creators of the wildly successful Serial and This American Life – and My Dad Wrote A Porno will be two of the stand-out inclusions.
S-Town is hosted by Brian Reed, with its March 2017 release seeing the podcast quickly downloaded tens of millions of times. Reed will be in Dublin to talk about creating the podcast.
Meanwhile, My Dad Wrote A Porno is a long-running podcast from Jamie Morton, who found out that his father had, indeed, written an erotic novel.
The weekly British podcast features Morton reading a new chapter of a series of erotic fiction novels, titled Belinda Blinked, written by his Northern Irish father under the pen name Rocky Flintstone.
Morton, along with sidekicks James Cooper and Alice Levine, will also be in Dublin to discuss their work.
Last year, Siliconrepublic.com looked into how podcasts are created, and what it takes to make them successful.
Everything from artistic approaches to the frequency of delivery were included, which matches up to how most content is successfully distributed online nowadays.
This is all a far cry from as recently as 2005 when the word ‘podcast’ was named the Oxford English Dictionaries Word of the Year.
“What makes podcasts so enjoyable is not only their ease of access but also the vast quantities of podcasts available to download for free,” said the organisers of the Dublin Podcast Festival.
“Whether you want to learn about wine, hear some comedy or get lost in a fictional story, there is a podcast for you.”
An Irishman Abroad will make an appearance at the festival, through its host Jarlath Regan, while The Alison Spittle Show, The Guardian Podcast Masterclass and musician Scroobius Pip will be among the others on show.
