Evo Terra's Podcast Hall of Fame Speech (For Good!)

One of the ways we make podcasting better is by holding the people who work in podcasting accountable for doing better. I'm using my induction into the Podcast Hall of Fame to shine more light on that.

Hello, and welcome to the first episode of season five of Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.

So, in case you missed the memo, I was inducted into the Podcast Hall of Fame last weekend. No kidding. And yes, it was quite an honor to join the ranks of the other 30-some-odd podcasters who've already been inducted, a good portion of which are good friends of mine. Here's to longevity in this space.

Now, I had planned on just thanking a few people and then gushing about what the award meant to me, but then I learned they wanted me to actually talk, something I'm fairly good at. The length they gave me was roughly the length of an episode of Podcast Pontifications, which sure helped.

Now I know that some of you watched the ceremony as it was streamed, or have seen the video posted on Libsyn's YouTube channel. But for those that didn't, hear it is, the full - checks notes - ten minutes and thirty-seven seconds of what I had to say on stage. And as a listener of Podcast Pontifications, I think you'll dig it.

So here it is. And I'll see you next week.

So when I speak at podcast conferences, I have rules that I follow. And one of those rules is the night before I do not go to the loud party and drink too much. Clearly, I did not follow that rule today. So you get to hear this voice, which is a little different.

Um, but this is quite an honor. Thank you very much uh, for inducting me, Bryan, well-written speech - that I wrote. [Laughter] Um, I'm going to have a lot more things coming up in just a moment, but, you know, the problem is when you give a guy who podcasts about podcasting and pontificates about that for seven to nine minutes every day, and then you say, "You've got seven minutes to talk on stage," he's going to fill every single one of those minutes. So I apologize in advance.

I get asked to talk about podcasting rather frequently. And two questions are almost always asked time and time again. What was different about podcasting when you had to rub two sticks together to make an RSS feed work? Uh, and what does the future hold for podcasting? I don't have a pat answer for either of those things. It really depends, as many things do, on, on the perspective of who I'm talking to.

From the perspective of the scrappy, staunchly independent podcaster, which Dave Slusher embodies, you know, not much has changed. I mean, yeah, there are a lot of new tools and services today that help ease a lot of the burdens that Dave and me and everybody else that was doing this in 2004 went through, but none of them are required to make a podcast.

And for podcasters like that, the foreseeable future looks a lot like what it looked like in the past. They can keep doing the same thing. They can keep on keeping on basically unaware of the massive upheaval which is sweeping through the podcasting industry.

From the perspective of podcast listeners, almost everything has changed, and most of it for the better, I think. I mean, it's gotten a lot easier to listen, really. And while you, and we, let's be honest about this one, may continue to insist that podcasting has a discoverability problem, listeners are spoiled for choice. And by all accounts don't seem to have any problem finding something to listen to. And both of those things, an ever-expanding library of quality content and better ways to find the quality content that matters to them, I think that also will continue unabated.

But a perspective we don't talk about too much is one that I think the bulk of the attendees of Podcast Movement Evolutions 2020 share. And those are the people who work in the business of podcasting. I mean, I started podcasting before there was a business of podcasting. Though, that rapidly changed as purveyors of picks and shovels always seem to spontaneously appear as soon as any new creative endeavor is launched.

And if you look around the room, you can see that that's happened in podcasting as well. Look, look at the booths that are out there. You know, today, however, the easiest and fastest way to make money in podcasting is get a job in podcasting.

And that's no secret to the people at this conference. I mean, they're living it every single day. So am I, weirdly enough.

But the last perspective I want to talk about before I get to my thank you's is from those who are not in podcasting, not creators, not listeners, not service providers, the people who still aren't in what we're doing, not in the podosphere. What do we look like to those on the outside looking in?

You know, every one of us was encouraged, if you saw the presentation that Tom Webster from Edison Research gave that showed that, at least in the states, that diversity of podcast listeners is now nearly matching and in some cases exceeding the diversity of the overall country. And that's amazing. But that's just listeners. We still have lots of work to do on the other two parts, the creators and those of us who work in the business of podcasting.

Now, I'm not up here to preach at you, but I do try to lead by example. Like, I no longer apply to speak at podcast conferences simply because I tend to get chosen, which could mean an organizer has to make the difficult decision of choosing between me or someone from an underrepresented group to be on the stage.

So when I am asked to speak, I will speak at a conference that I'm asked to speak at it, I do my homework. I check in to make sure that I'm not joining another party of old white dudes. [Applause] And I make them change, you know, or I simply don't attend.

And when I do interact with my peers in the podcasting industry who I've been with for a long time, my fellow old white dudes, I don't shy away from calling them out on their bullshit. Or their bad behavior. And I do that because I've been there.

A friend of mine once told me at a podcast conference, oddly enough, she said to me, "You get away with so much because you're Evo." And I thought it was really funny at the time. But it's not. And she was right. So I'm trying to do better. And I'm encouraging everybody in the industry to do better as well.

All right. So now it's time for me to step back from the, make this no longer a pulpit, to make it just a podium. And I want to thank some few people that are here.

I can honestly say, and she's been mentioned previously, that were not from my lovely wife, Sheila Dee, my podcasting path would have started much, much, much later. I'd still be podcasting probably, but I wouldn't have started way back in the day.

Because she introduced me to her co-teacher's husband, a guy named Mike Mennengae, back in 2002. No, yes, 2002, he asked me to host, to co-host an internet radio show he was doing. We were basically those two dorks in the basement Dave was talking about, talking about D&D.

We first published a podcast of our radio show that we had, "radio show" in very, very serious air quotes, that first happened, as mentioned previously, on October 14th, 2004. And yeah, I still know the exact date. So Sheila, you've been not only incredibly supportive of my infatuation with podcasting, but also my investments. Thank you.

Yeah, she's also hosted her own show, she's taught podcasting to her students, and she keeps my shit in check when we podcast together. So thank you, lover.

My family here is here as well, which is weird, but that's the case. So hi mom, my baby sister, Kayla, both who are often puzzled by what it is that I do, but not at all surprised by my unconventional career path.

I want to thank my son, NJ. NJ was thirteen, or turned thirteen, five days after I put that first podcast out. He's now thirty. I know, it's kinda blowing my mind a little bit. And he's also done a little bit of podcasting on his own. Even worked in the business of podcasting - cause I was paying him to do shit I didn't want to do. Thank you, son. [Audience laughter]

I need to say a big thanks to Tee Morris who asked me to co-author Podcasting for Dummies with him back in 2005. Also to two more authors, Mark Jeffrey and Scott Sigler, who, along with Tee, all three had the same idea of releasing their books as serialized audio books, which led me to coin the term "podiobooks." Get it? Podcasting and audio books? Very clever, I know.

Um, and also to Chris Miller who coded up the first podiobooks.com website in a weekend when I said on the show I was doing that I wanted someone to do it. He contacted me two days later and said, "I've done it. Here it is." And we became partners.

And then to Tim White and to Brant Steen who took over when Chris was stepping back.

And I need to thank Libsyn for generously offering to host those media files, and, specifically, a big thank you to Rob Walsh who has kept those 700 titles still freely available today. So thank you.

I want to thank Gary Leland who convinced Jared Easly and Dan Franks to let me be that keynote speaker, uh, at Podcast Movement 2014, even though I know I panicked both of you terribly when I got up on stage and said podcasting wasn't that much of a disruptive movement. Sorry, fellas. Thanks for not writing me off, though. Appreciate that.

A big thanks to Lance Anderson who I know was pushing very hard to get me in the Podcast Hall of Fame. Thank you very much, Lance, you remain a friend after all these years.

I want to thank Greg Jorgensen. Uh, Greg got me back into podcasting after I had tried to quit for, I think, the third time. And he offered me to, offered for me to resurrect and co-host The Bangkok Podcast when I lived in Thailand for a few years.

I want to thank Ric Gazarian and Susan Schwartz, two of my very first podcast - my, my two very first podcasting clients, and to every single client since that time who's trusted me to either develop their show, improve their show, or implement a solid strategy that incorporated podcasting.

I want to thank Allie Press, my production assistant for nearly four years who keeps things running smoothly at Simpler Media. I'm very - [Clapping] - thank you, yeah, she's great. She does it all.

I'm grateful to the companies and organizations who have invited me to sit on their advisory boards like Captivate.fm, Maps.fm, Scribl, the BIPOC Creators Community, and more.

I'm deeply appreciative of the multitude of people who I've collaborated with over the years, including Sam Walker, Bryan Barletta, James Cridland, and a few others I can't mention because, well, we're not quite ready to let those cats out of the bag just yet.

And then thanks to you, everybody in this room, everybody at this Podcast Movement who make up such a rich and vibrant, thriving podcasting community and industry, which is weird to say now -  a podcast industry, here we are.

Thank you very much for coming along this journey with me.

Cheers!

[Clapping and cheering]

Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He's on a mission to make podcasting better. The links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes section of your podcast listening app. A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a corrected transcript created by Allie Press. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media. Find out more at Simpler.Media.