Small P Podcasting

Podcasting for your friends

My husband's four best friends are Mormon, and they all went on missions that came with strict rules about technology use. During these missions, they were only allowed to use technology for one hour each Sunday, to send emails to family and friends.

They weren't satisfied with this limited communication, so they found a God-approved workaround: they would record podcasts during the week and email them to each other on Sundays.

The podcasts covered various topics. Sometimes people would simply talk about what was on their minds. Other times, they would create silly games or recurring segments, similar to how a regular show might have standard features.

In that way they got to hear hours of content from their friends each week, and stay connected with what they were each feeling, thinking about, and experiencing. They all maintained very close friendships throughout those two years, and are still unusually close today, several years later.

I often see memes about how "everybody has a podcast now." The underlying message seems to be that having a podcast is overdone, or perhaps something only people with big egos pursue. But I believe in small p podcasting.¹

I think podcasting, like blogging, will become increasingly mainstream. It will be completely normal to have a podcast intended for a small audience or just for you and your friends. Having a podcast isn't implicitly claiming superiority or aspiring to fame. Instead, it's simply a new modern medium that we as a society have yet to fully utilize.

In the same way that writing was once restricted to the highly educated elite, speaking and creating audio is no longer relegated to radio jockeys. And we’re just beginning to see how audio will be used long-term.

P.S. I’m making podcasts with my friend Alina. You can listen to the first episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

P.P.S. I’m going to be experimenting with writing Substack posts from my phone, and publishing shorter off-the-cuff pieces more often.

1. The name is inspired by

Tom Critchlow

’s small b blogging