Podcasting and Netcasts

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, Martha and Grant. This is Nathan calling from Portland, Oregon.

Hi, Nathan.

I’ve been listening via podcast, and the question I have for you today is about the word podcasting.

As podcasts have become more and more popular, and I actually have friends now that listen to podcasts, I hear them using the word podcasting, but when they say it, it’s evident that they’re talking about listening to podcasts.

But as I understand the word and the way I use it, podcasting is when you are producing a show and creating a podcast.

So I’ve noticed a bit of a change there, and I was wondering what your thoughts were on that.

What I’m hearing here conforms to what I’ve experienced as well, where there’s a transitive usage where you podcast a show or you podcast an episode means that you downloaded it so you can listen to it.

And the intransitive usage I podcasted today meant that you recorded an episode or recorded a show.

Does that sound right?

Yeah, I guess that does.

Yeah.

And, you know, early on, I remember when podcasting was brand new, when David Weiner was doing his stuff, and Adam Curry was involved, and all these people working on the behind-the-scenes technical specifications for this stuff.

The same conversation came up.

And at the time, the main device that everyone was excited about was the iPod, thus the podcasting name.

And Apple used to get really upset about people using Pod in a variety of different contexts.

Well, they since abandoned this.

And with the mess that iTunes is, the term is kind of launched.

You do podcasting on Android, you do podcasting on Windows, you do podcasting on everything else.

But we were using for a while podcatching, C-A-T-C-H-I-N-G, podcatching as the name for what you do when you download the episodes to listen to later.

Do you know that one?

Yeah.

Yes, I have heard the word podcatching.

But the problem with it is it sounds too much like casting, right?

There’s not enough differentiation there to keep them separate.

Yeah, it is very similar.

And I know the big podcast host, Leo Laporte over at the Twit Network, tried to get people to use netcast to get rid of that pod term.

Yeah, in 2006, because he didn’t like Apple’s kind of strong advocacy for their brand.

He didn’t like the way that they were going after the little guys with these legal letters saying you can’t use that term, when it was pretty clear that pod was already set loose as a way to form new words.

Isn’t this interesting?

I feel like we’re talking about ancient history.

But it was 10 years ago.

The early 2000s or something.

Yeah, it was like nine or ten years ago.

And I think maybe that’s why I’m a little bit sensitive to hearing it used as the passive form is because even back, I think, 2006, I started my own podcast.

And so when I hear someone say, oh, I was podcasting today, I get excited.

I’m like, oh, well, what kind of mic do you use?

What’s your show about?

And then I hear, oh, no, I was just listening to NPR.

Okay.

You were wanting to talk shop.

And this is the way that the verb to podcast is going.

And the listeners, fortunately, outnumber the broadcasters at this point.

And so I think the broadcasters, the people recording the podcast, should just kind of sigh a little bit and move on and just accept that this new meaning of the verb is the way it’s going to catch on.

It’s a podcast to show the transitive form is going to be the one that will prevail.

It’s pretty clear.

Well, I appreciate you pointing out the difference in the transitive and the intransitive.

Yeah, it’s a hard one to see every time.

And it’s not 100% consistent, but that’s mostly the difference between the two.

Nathan, thanks so much for giving us a call today about this, all right?

Well, thanks for your input.

Take care now.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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