Podcasts have an extremely high rate of becoming lost media, i.e. they cease to be available by any means, including purchase, paid subscription, or piracy. This is especially true for small, hobby podcasts, but it’s also true for podcasts associated with professional podcast studios like Earwolf or radio broadcasters like the CBC.
If anyone out there has been hoarding podcasts, you may have a number of podcasts that can’t be found anywhere. A few examples off the top of my head:
- The Indoor Kids
- Raised By TV
- Many CBC podcasts, such as Tapestry, The Next Chapter, Ideas, and others
Lost podcasts are typically safe to upload to archive.org. The rights holders often are defunct companies or don’t care at all about their old shows being shared (they aren’t trying to monetize them, after all).
I have been preemptively saving some podcasts to archive.org, but I keep running into podcasts that are already gone. Some of these are personally meaningful to me and I would love to see them be recovered.