According to the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media fact sheet from July 2018, the percentage of podcast listeners in America has substantially increased over the past decade, with 44 percent of Americans 12 and older reporting they listen to at least one podcast, up from 9 percent in 2008.

Projections indicate the number of listeners will rapidly increase.

What’s a podcast? The simplest definition of a podcast is it’s an audio recording like a radio show, except that it’s downloaded from the internet. Like radio shows, podcasts can be about just about anything.

Increasingly, podcasts are recognized as a great marketing tool for entrepreneurs and small business owners to connect with their clientele. There are resources available to help you learn more about this trend: Read the eBook, “Profitable Podcasting: Grow Your Business, Expand Your Platform, and Build a Nation of True Believers from the library’s Discover tab, or watch the film “The Value of Podcasts,” available from the library’s streaming film database, Films on Demand.

If you haven’t listened to a podcast before, or if you’re looking for a new one to try, we’d like to suggest the Overdue Podcast, produced by the Madison College Libraries and Student Achievement Centers. While it’s true that a goal in doing so is to market our services, we hope listeners will find it entertaining.    

The Overdue Podcast episodes feature a number of segments, usually centered around a main theme, and usually with a guest from the Madison College community. Some of the themes we’ve covered include climate fiction, fantasy sports, feminism, television nostalgia, travel, etc. With the themes we discuss, we always recommend books, articles, web sites, and other library resources for further learning.

The guests we have had include Madison College instructors like Matthew Lazzara, Marty Richards, and Jonathan Pollack, as well as several student guests.

One of the goals of the Overdue Podcast is to focus more on student stories, and to get those stories from all campuses in the Madison College District.

If you have a story idea, or would just like to comment about the podcast, please use this form, or even better stop in and see us at any of the Madison College Libraries or Student Achievement Centers.   

Another goal of our podcast is to spur student interest in creating their own podcasts, and there are links and book suggestions on our page with information to help do that.

We also have tools and software in our Creator Studio,  located in Room B3211 at the Truax Campus if you want to try it.