
25 episodes

Really Specific Stories Martin Feld
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- Technology
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5.0 • 5 Ratings
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Join Martin Feld (podcast studies researcher and co-host of Hemispheric Views) as he delves into narratives of tech-podcast fandom and the role of open RSS, featuring producers and their listeners.
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Jarrod Blundy
Jarrod explains how he discovered the world of podcasting during a long road trip with a friend, going on to enjoy shows about outdoor reaction, news and the Apple fan community. He also elaborates on his experience of starting his own website, HeyDingus, along with listening to various Apple-centric podcasts—making particular reference to 20 Macs for 2020, a show by writer and podcaster Jason Snell, which blended tech podcasting with a narrative journalism format.
Podcast case study: 20 Macs for 2020 (listener)
Find Jarrod at HeyDingus.
Read a transcript of the episode as a styled PDF or in plain text.
Links and Show Notes
The Operating System for Me 00:00:00
Apple Inc.
iTunes
Apple Events video podcast
Stevenote
Original Apple podcast icon
Michigan
Michigan Ice Fest: The History of the Oldest Ice Climbing Festival in the US
Ice climbing
The Dirtbag Diaries
Information about Fitz Cahall and others who work on the podcast
Talk radio
iPod nano
Apple’s website in 2006 (courtesy of the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine)
Microsoft Windows
Mac (computer) and macOS
Scouting
MacRumors
Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP)
Casey Liss
John Siracusa
Marco Arment
9to5Mac
Six Colors
512 Pixels
Ars Technica
Entertainment and Production 08:30
Relay FM
Clockwise
Connected
Cortex
Mac Power Users
Reconcilable Differences
Thoroughly Considered
Upgrade
AppStories
Apple News Today
The Good News Podcast
Core Intuition
Dithering
Hemispheric Views
The Rebound
Ruminate
The Talk Show with John Gruber
Vergecast
Your Daily Lex
Overcast
Pocket Casts
Castro
RSS
RSS reader (or news aggregator)
Squarespace
HTML
CSS
Blog
Blot
Twitter (rebranding to X at the time of this podcast episode’s publication)
A Place that I Own 20:56
HeyDingus
Virtual assistant
Siri
Google Assistant
Shortcuts (app)
Micro.blog
Manton Reece (creator of the service)
20 Macs for 2020 24:02
20 Macs for 2020 is a podcast that was delivered in three media (or formats), including an audio-only podcast at Relay FM, a video playlist at 512 Pixels on YouTube and written essays at Six Colors. The podcast creator and host, Jason Snell, can be found at Six Colors or on Mastodon.
’20 Macs for 2020’ (Jarrod’s blog post about the show from January 2021)
iMac
Macintosh 128K (or the original Macintosh)
Power Macintosh
Stratechery
Accessibility 31:10
Accessibility and more specifically, computer accessibility and Web accessibility
Wordle
Emoji
Federico Viticci
Browse the MacStories Shortcuts Archive.
iOS 17
A Hidden Side of Myself 33:53
View the 7 Things category in Jarrod’s blog archive.
Notes (Apple)
JavaScript
Jarrod’s store on Cotton Bureau (This item was not placed in these show notes with any sponsorship arrangement—only to reflect its mention.)
Noun Project
Pixelmator
Ted Lasso
I Haven’t Burned Out 41:57
How to download your X archive
Importing tweets to Micro.blog
RoutineHub
Things (app)
iBook
Jony Ive
Jony Ive, Apple designer who started his career at tangerine, to set up his own studio
Credits
Recorded and edited by Martin Feld, using Audio Hijack and Ferrite Recording Studio
Original podcast theme music by Alex Canion
Contact
Website: rsspod.net
Email: martin@loungeruminator.net
Mastodon: social.lol/@martinfeld
Micro.blog: micro.blog/martinfeld
A Special Note
Jarrod is a paying subscriber of Martin’s One Prime Plus membership program for the shared podcast, Hemispheric Views; this did not influence any of the questions that were asked and did not place any expectations on Jarrod as a participant of this academic podcasting project. -
John Gruber
John shares his personal narrative as the writer of Daring Fireball and host of The Talk Show with John Gruber, which is now both a podcast and a live show with Apple executives, held during the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. In the conversation, John explains what first captivated him about computers at an early age, expands on his passion for reading and writing and outlines how he has carved out a life of independent production and commentary, based on his technological interests. Last, he describes what he’s most proud of.
Podcast case study: The Talk Show with John Gruber (producer)
Find John at Daring Fireball.
Read a transcript of the episode as a styled PDF or in plain text.
Links and Show Notes
The Director’s Commentary 00:00:00
The Talk Show by John Gruber and Dan Benjamin was hosted on a different site, which can now be found in the Internet Archive.
Dan Benjamin
Hivelogic now redirects to the site above.
Internet radio
Daring Fireball
iPod
USB
FireWire
FM radio
Apple Inc.
iPhone
Mac (computer)
Substack
Blue Microphones
Amazon (company)
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
MP3
Audio data compression
YouTube
Blog (a truncation of ‘weblog’)
Ad tech = online advertising technology
Domain name
A Voracious Reader 00:10:12
Computer science
Apple IIGS
Drexel University
Stephen King
Isaac Asimov
Internet
I’ve Carved Out this Life 00:17:04
Atari 2600
Pong
Word processor (electronic device)
Typewriter
Liquid-crystal display (LCD)
World Wide Web
Dave Winer
scripting.com
Jorn Barger
Robot Wisdom was Jorn’s early blog, which can now be found in the Internet Archive.
Robot Wisdom and How Jorn Barger Invented Blogging
Usenet
TidBITS
HyperCard
Mailing list
Jason Kottke
kottke.org
Macworld
Browse an extensive library of MacUser PDF magazines at vintageapple.org.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Pulitzer Prize
The New York Times
The Washington Post
Center City, Philadelphia
The Talk Show with John Gruber
Freely Honest 00:38:04
Zoom (software)
Skype
COVID-19 pandemic
iOS
Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)
Daring Fireball on YouTube, featuring videos of John’s annual The Talk Show Live events with Apple executives
Mimi Sheraton
Remembering Mimi Sheraton, Innovative New York Times Food Critic (John’s mentioned article on Daring Fireball)
Android (operating system)
Walled garden (technology)
A Loose, Unofficial Community 00:52:29
RSS
Twitter (rebranding to X at the time of this podcast episode’s publication)
@gruber
@daringfireball
Content management system (CMS)
Reddit
John’s three mentioned Twitter/X alternatives and his accounts on each one
Mastodon (social network)
@gruber@mastodon.social
Bluesky Social
@gruber.foo
Threads (social network)
@gruber
TikTok
Facebook
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
A Vision for the Whole Internet 01:00:52
Spotify
Joe Rogan
Bill Simmons
The Ringer
Ghost (blogging platform)
Marco Arment
Overcast
Castro
Application programming interface (API)
News aggregator
NetNewsWire
Reeder
XML
Paywall
Dithering
Ben Thompson
Stratechery
Bob Dylan
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (the song with the lyrics that John quoted)
Banner ad
YouTuber
Patreon
Google
Pretty Proud of That 01:18:00
John’s full searchable archive at Daring Fireball
Markdown
A few articles about Apple’s Brushed Metal user interface
Aqua (user interface) on Wikipedia, with mentions of Brushed Metal throughout the article
Brushed Metal and the HIG on Daring Fireball
The iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme on Daring Fireball
The Brushed Metal Diaries: An Introduction, a Trojan Horse and a History of Abuse on 512 Pixels
Credits
Recorded and edited by Martin Feld, using Audio Hijack and Ferrite Recording Studio
Original podcast theme music by Alex Canion
Contact
Website: rsspod.net
Email: martin@loungeruminator.net
Mastodon: social.lol/@martinfeld
M -
Baldur Bjarnason
Baldur reflects on his family’s history in radio broadcasting, his path to interactive media and writing books and how he moved away from listening to tech podcasts.
Content warning: some coarse language
Podcast case study: Accidental Tech Podcast (listener)
Find Baldur at baldurbjarnason.com.
Read a transcript of the episode as a styled PDF or in plain text.
Links and Show Notes
Fourth Generation 00:00:00
RSS
Perl
Interactive media
RÚV is the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.
World War II
British invasion of Iceland
Allied occupation of Iceland
Attack of Pearl Harbor
Telegraphy
Axis powers
Hotel Borg
Vox populi (or vox pop)
Web development
Interactive Media Environments 00:08:13
Software widget
Graphical widget
COVID-19 pandemic
HyperCard
Macintosh SE
Solitaire
Tetris
What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG)
Comparative literature
Computer science (or ‘comp sci’)
University of the West of England (UWE)
Bower Ashton campus map
BBC Radio
Dot-com bubble (including reference to the dot-com crash)
Adobe Flash
Sandbox (software development)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
ebook
Amazon Kindle
iPhone
iPad
Defamiliarisation 00:15:43
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Cryptocurrency (or ‘crypto’)
Popular culture (or ‘pop culture’)
The Real World of Technology by Ursula Franklin
Recordings of public lectures in the Internet Archive
Processor (computing)
Musical genre mash-up!
Pop-punk
Post-punk
Neosurrealism
Accidental Tech Podcast
Jason Snell
Defamiliarisation
Viktor Shklovsky
Bertolt Brecht
YouTube
Line Goes Up – The Problem with NFTs
Defunctland
Disney’s FastPass: A Complicated History
App Store (iOS/iPadOS)
Tom Abba
*This is not the future of the book
Out of the Software Crisis by Baldur Bjarnason
Open source
Pick and Choose 00:31:03
Round table
Narrative journalism
20 Macs for 2020 was released in multiple formats:
a podcast on Relay FM;
a series of written blog posts at Six Colors; and
a YouTube playlist hosted at 512 Pixels
Facebook
Twitter (rebranding to X)
Revenue sharing
Threads (social network)
Bluesky Social
Mastodon (social network)
Algorithm
Patreon
Whisper (software)
Descript
Substack
Email list
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
du jour = ‘of the day’, e.g. ’soup *du jour’ = soup of the day
My Computer Identity 00:44:05
Mac (computer)
Macintosh Performa
Microsoft Windows
macOS (previously referred to as Mac OS X and OS X)
Pro Tools
Apple Human Interface Guidelines
User interface design
Apple simplified System Settings for macOS Ventura, moved many items from AppleInsider
System Settings (previously named System Preferences)
Disk Utility
Linux
GNOME
Safari (web browser)
ARM architecture family
Amy Hoy
User experience (UX)
ChromeOS
Software bug
Netscape
Jamie Zawinski (a.k.a. jwz)
HAL 9000
Plumbing of the Web 01:01:05
HTML
XML
Markup language
Static websites
Flat file
Client-side
iBook G3 ‘Clamshell’ (or what Baldur’s dad refers to as the ‘toilet-seat iBook’)
NetNewsWire
OPML
Domain name
Stacking the Bricks (podcast)
Credits
Recorded and edited by Martin Feld, using Audio Hijack and Ferrite Recording Studio
Original podcast theme music by Alex Canion
Contact
Website: rsspod.net
Email: martin@loungeruminator.net
Mastodon: social.lol/@martinfeld
Micro.blog: micro.blog/martinfeld -
Marco Arment
Marco tells the story of how he became a Mac enthusiast, indie app developer and tech podcaster, covering his work on Tumblr, Instapaper, Overcast and Accidental Tech Podcast, among other projects. He also explains why he thinks it's so important to maintain the open Web and podcasting through RSS, in the face of more exclusive publishing platforms and audio hosts.
Podcast case study: Accidental Tech Podcast (producer)
Find Marco at marco.org.
Read a transcript of the episode as a styled PDF or in plain text.
Links and Show Notes
The Stronghold of Podcasting 00:00:00
This Week in Tech (TWiT)
This Week in Tech (podcast)
MacBreak Weekly
The Word Nerds (Archive)
Tumblr
You Look Nice Today
Ricky Gervais
The Ricky Gervais Show
Stack Overflow
The Stack Overflow Podcast
Joel Spolsky
Jeff Atwood
Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP)
CD-R
MP3
CD player
iPod
The iPod Video was the fifth generation of a product line that is now collectively referred to as the iPod Classic.
iPhone
This American Life
COVID-19 pandemic
Audiobook
Cable television
Leo Laporte
AM broadcasting
Talk radio
Self-taught 00:09:11
Videocassette recorder (VCR)
Microsoft Paint
BASIC
3-2-1 Contact Magazine was an American educational television show about science that aired on PBS from 1980 to 1988, with an adjoining children's magazine, and which can now be found in the Internet Archive.
Windows 3.1
Disk operating system (DOS)
MS-DOS
QBasic
Visual Basic (classic)
C (programming language)
Unix
Solution stack
Sun Microsystems
Scalable Processor Architecture (SPARC)
SPARCstation
Solaris
Segmentation fault
Mac (computer)
IBM PC compatible (now more of a historical term that relates to our current usage of the term ‘Windows PC’)
Vivísimo
Yippy (originally developed and released as ‘Clusty’)
Computer memory
Version control
Software bug
Tumblr 00:20:24
Craigslist
Tumblr
Software development
Indie (disambiguation)
West Coast of the United States
Amazon (company)
Bloomberg L.P.
Bloomberg Technology
Davidville
David Karp
PHP
Shard (database architecture)
Twitter
Content management system (CMS)
Microblogging (The first micro-blogs were known as ‘tumblelogs’.)
Myspace (formerly known as MySpace)
Facebook
LiveJournal
WordPress (content management system)
A Great Time to Be a Mac User 00:33:02
Apple, Inc.
Desktop computer
Windows Update
Digital Visual Interface (DVI)
Vim (text editor)
Terminal emulator
Linux
Server (computing)
Ruby on Rails
TextMate
MacBook (2006–2012)
PowerBook G4
A Better Audience 00:38:13
Web development
5by5
Weblogs, Inc.
Engadget
Gizmodo
Lifehacker
RSS
News aggregator (or in certain cases or implementations, RSS reader)
Digg
Reddit
Hacker News
Dan Benjamin
Instapaper
iPad
Build and Analyze was a weekly news and discussion show about technology by Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin, which can now be found in the Internet Archive.
YouTube
Overcast (app)
Merlin Mann
John Siracusa
Accidental Tech Podcast 00:49:43
Neutral
Casey Liss
Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP)
Membership program
Relay FM
John Roderick (musician)
Overcast 00:58:16
Overcast
Overcast (app) (further information)
Music (software) (The app to which Marco refers was originally known as the iPod app on iPhones.)
Downcast (app)
Android (operating system)
Pocket Casts
Apple Podcasts
Stitcher
App store
App Store (iOS/iPadOS)
TikTok
Instagram
Proxy server
How the Internet Is Supposed to Work 01:05:06
World Wide Web
Web standards
(redirecting from ‘open Web’)
Decentralisation
Comcast
Verizon Communications, Inc.
UUNET
Internet Protocol (IP)
Walmart
Monopsony
Google
Amazon Kindle
Spotify
Trade magazine
Eddy Cue
Credits
Recorded and edited by Martin Feld, using Audio Hijack and Ferrite Recording Studio
Original podcast theme music by Alex Canion
Contact
Website: rsspod.net
Email: martin@loungeruminator.net
Mastodon: social.lol/@martinfeld
Micro.blog: micro.blog/martinfeld
A Special Note
Martin is a paid subscriber -
Grace Teng
Grace is a developer and podcast fan, who shares her experience of following various independent shows over the years and in producing her own chatcast, titled Monkey Mind. During the conversation, she also covers her passion for video games and considers the key differences between aural and visual media, drawing on her own study of film and background in video production.
Content warning: discussion of clinical depression
Podcast case study: Connected at Relay FM (listener)
Find Grace at graceteng.me.
Read the transcript of the episode as a styled PDF or in plain text.
Links and Show Notes
How the Habit Started 00:00:00
Major depressive disorder (or clinical depression)
The Pen Addict (blog)
Relay FM
The Pen Addict (podcast)
Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP)
99% Invisible
Planet Money
Myke Hurley
John Siracusa
Merlin Mann
43 Folders
Cortex
Mac Power Users
Ungeniused
Playing for Fun
Celeste (video game)
Analog(ue)
Connected
The Dynamic 00:09:18
Mac (computer)
Casey Liss
Parasocial interaction
Google
Amazon (company)
Blog
iPhone
Early adopter
Monkey Mind 00:18:49
Monkey Mind
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet
COVID-19 pandemic
What Sound Can Do 00:26:17
Software engineering
Start-up company
Multimedia
Apple File System (APFS)
NPR
This American Life
Montage (filmmaking)
Juxtaposition
YouTube
Not a Purist 00:36:46
Chatcast = a podcast with a conversational format, rather than a narrative one
RSS
Adam Savage
Adam Savage’s Tested
Speedrunning
Dear PB
Games Done Quick
Think Fast! Sly Another Day (video example)
Credits
Recorded and edited by Martin Feld, using Audio Hijack and Ferrite Recording Studio
Original podcast theme music by Alex Canion
Contact
Website: rsspod.net
Email: martin@loungeruminator.net
Mastodon: social.lol/@martinfeld
Micro.blog: micro.blog/martinfeld -
Shelly Brisbin
Shelly is a writer, editor and podcaster who tirelessly advocates for greater accessibility in digital technology. Joining Really Specific Stories, she shares her journalistic and storytelling experience, explains her audio projects, such as Parallel with Relay FM, and illustrates how far we’ve come (and still have to go) in making hardware, software and media accessible.
Podcast case study: Parallel at Relay FM (producer)
Find Shelly at brisbin.net.
Read the transcript of this episode as a styled PDF or in plain text.
Links and Show Notes
Mindful of Ethics 00:00:00
RSS
Macworld/iWorld
Watch the Macworld 2005 keynote in the Internet Archive.
Adobe Pagemaker
Mac (computer)
Desktop publishing
Laser printing
Linotype machine
Macintosh Plus
Page layout (with further information about galleys)
Rubylith
Light table
See a scan of the top portion of Supercomputing News (Vol. 1 No. 3) from 1988, which was kindly provided by Shelly because the publication preceded the Web. This was her first editing job!
Hydra (operating system)
Cray-1
MacUser
Apple Inc.
Microsoft Windows
Go My Own Way 00:07:44
Trade journalism
Tech Podcast Network
History of podcasting (with references to couplecasting)
Accessibility and more specifically, computer accessibility and Web accessibility
Diversity (politics)
Accessibility in the Mainstream 00:16:36
Disability
Assistive technology
Google
Microsoft
Software bug
Pro Tools
iRiver
MP3
iPhone
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Transcription software
Content management system (CMS)
iOS Access for All: Your Comprehensive Guide to Accessibility for iPhone and iPad by Shelly Brisbin
Jason Snell
Use Switch Control on Mac
Use Switch Control to navigate your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
iOS Switch Control Demo (YouTube video excerpt of Todd Stabelfeldt's keynote from Apple's WWDC 2017)
Parallel and Relay FM 00:35:31
Parallel
Relay FM
Stephen Hackett
Myke Hurley
iOS
macOS
Android (operating system)
Twitter
Slack (software)
Discord
Feedback and Engagement 00:45:24
Mastodon (social network)
Mention (blogging)
Wallflower (people)
Aural Inclusivity, Niches and Narratives 00:49:49
Fortune 500
36 Seconds that Changed Everything: How the iPhone Learned to Talk
Narrative journalism
Radio documentary
Credits
Recorded and edited by Martin Feld, using Audio Hijack and Ferrite Recording Studio
Original podcast theme music by Alex Canion
Contact
Website: rsspod.net
Email: martin@loungeruminator.net
Mastodon: social.lol/@martinfeld
Micro.blog: micro.blog/martinfeld
Customer Reviews
If you love what podcasts are…
If you love the idea of podcasts, and would like to hear about why people create podcasts, what podcasts mean to people who create and listen to podcasts, and much more about podcasts, then give this show a listen. Top quality production values, some of the best show notes (I think Hemispheric Views might be just a bit better - you get emoji’s in those notes!), and a very thoughtful host. I look forward to future episodes.