The first time I ever heard about pod casting was probably somewhere between elementary and middle school.  By that time I had become a full-on music junkie.  I was scouring the internet for new music and at first kept up with iTunes charts to see what was coming out and becoming popular.  Through my strolls on the iTunes store I stumbled upon a whole trove of podcasts.  There was a podcast for everything, and anyone could make one.  This easy to use medium of expressing one’s self had become this huge online community.  I first got introduced to various news, comedian, and blogger podcasts.  Never really becoming captivated by the whole thing I kind of let it fall to the side as music stayed my main focus throughout time.  I would still obviously see podcasts pop up on the internet, strolling through NPR or seeing some podcast for some obscure blog or person I had no idea about.  Addressing podcasts in this class made me remember how relevant this medium is to some people.  It has stayed relevant ever since its inception into media.  Clearly there is a market for podcasts.  To me it almost seems like a modern version of talk radio.  Just easier to digest and divided out into episodes for listeners to scroll through and go back to when they please.  The structure of it is quite interesting.  It can be any range of time length, it can include as many people as you can record, it can be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.  There are no strict guidelines to a podcast.  It is pretty freeform when it comes to making one.  Creating one for our reflection on Youtube and vlog series was an interesting process.  I have spent a decent amount of time recording raps in the sound booths at school, but I had never used them for an educational purpose.  Going there and setting up the equipment for people to record conversations seemed strange at first.  Eventually once we got into the flow of things, it got easier.  It was something I could see myself doing in the future as a sound engineer for a radio station, but those are just small dreams.  The real bulk of the work came when it got down to editing it.  I can see how editors in media industries can be stressful.  It takes a lot of time and fine tuning to edit a piece of audio until it sounds good.  Adding music, editing out mistakes, playing with the equalizer to make the audio edits flow smoother, adding effects here and there all take a lot of time.  I don’t really see myself doing a podcast any time soon, nor do I see myself listening to podcasts in the future.  But I am glad I revisited this medium for a bit and got to dive back into podcast culture and see what it is all about now.  Maybe in the far future I will get back into podcasting as a way of spending my time, but until then music is all I need to sustain myself.