Apple shares its favorite podcasts, marking 20 years since the medium came to iTunes
To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of podcasts on iTunes, Apple has shared its favorite 20 shows spanning the last two decades.
The list is divided into four time periods: 2005-2010, 2011-2015, 2016-2020 and 2021-2025. For each period, Apple highlighted featured shows like “The Daily,” “This American Life,” “Acquired,” “Huberman Lab,” and others.
It’s a collection of shows cherry-picked by editors with the Apple Podcasts team rather than an official chart, so it’s not ranked and doesn’t reflect their popularity. Instead, Apple’s choices “exemplify how far podcasting has come and where it can go in the next two decades.”
Apple celebrates 20 years of podcasts on iTunes
“They are shows with hosts that feel like friends, and shows that make us press play immediately on the latest episode to hear what happens next,” explains Apple. “These shows have measurably improved our lives and helped define this medium we know and love.” You can browse the full list on the Apple website.
The term podcast itself is a portmanteau of the words “iPod” and “broadcast,” but it wasn’t coined by Apple. The first use of the term can be traced back to early February 2004, when BBC journalist Ben Hammersley first mentioned podcasting in an article for The Guardian newspaper.
Apple didn’t invent podcasting, but it sure mainstreamed the medium by bringing podcasts to its iTunes jukebox app back in 2005. “Since the medium came to iTunes in 2005, our team has dedicated countless hours to helping people discover new shows,” the company noted today.
iTunes took podcasting mainstream 20 years ago
iTunes 4.9, released on June 28, 2005, was the first version to enable support for podcasts, which you could discover and download from the music store built into iTunes, listen to in iTunes and sync with iPod to take with you wherever you went.
“Apple is taking podcasting mainstream by building it right into iTunes,” Steve Jobs was quoted as saying in a press release announcing iTunes 4.9. “Podcasting is the next generation of radio, and users can now subscribe to over 3,000 free podcasts and have each new episode automatically delivered over the Internet to their computer and iPod.”
It was the heyday of the iPod, the iconic music player that put Apple back on the map and popularized the Apple brand more widely around the world.
Podcasting later spread to other services and became a cultural phenomenon. Although Apple released a dedicated Podcasts app in 2012, the company didn’t take podcasting seriously enough to prevent Spotify’s rise as a major player in podcasting. Today, everyone and their brother have a podcast and various Podcast Bros rule services like Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
Do you still listen to audio-only podcasts or have you switched to video podcasts? If so, what are your favorite shows and where do you watch them? YouTube? Apple Podcasts? Some other place? Let us know in the comments down below!
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