We're mass communicating: podcasting as outreach

The New York Times (July 18th, 2015) called podcasting "that rarest thing in the technology industry"; a subset of media showing sustained growth. That same article quotes an Edison Research report that found that roughly 1/5 Americans have listened to a podcast in the last month. The most popular podcasts receive a million downloads per episode, and over all podcasts, the median number of downloads per episode is ~150 (Libsyn statistics). The popularity and easy accessibility of podcasts make them an ideal vehicle for outreach.There are several excellent podcasts covering planetary science, including Planetary Radio, produced by the Planetary Society, StarTalk Radio, several official NASA podcasts, and individual efforts such as Al Grauer's "Travelers in the Night" and Jane Jones' "What's up".Spacepod is a weekly podcast on space exploration that launched in August 2015. Episodes feature an expert guest discussing an interesting aspect of their job for a general audience. Episodes have an intimate, conversational feel, letting the audience "hang out" with space scientists and engineers. Spacepod has shown strong growth since launch, and was featured in iTunes' "New and Noteworthy" section. Episodes can be found at www.listentospacepod.com, and the show tweets @listen2spacepod.