Co-host Alex Almony and his crew used to work full time and could only record shows during their time off.
“It was this side hobby thing,” explained Almony.
Their hobby quickly changed when the pandemic impacted their jobs in May.
“It’s still stressful,” he said. “I don’t have any other form of income.’’
While the Almony family stayed afloat, Almony found an escape.
“I had a lot of time on my hands and I didn’t have a job, neither did my co-host. We were able to dedicate time to refining the idea of what we wanted to do,” he explained.
Part-time podcasters elsewhere are doing the same thing: going full time.
Mike Ehmcke says he was scared of losing his job during the pandemic.
“After April, they told us, ‘Everyone will be furloughed, and we don’t know when you are coming back,’” Ehmcke recalled.
The stage technician had been podcasting on and off at the time.
The company Audible reports since the pandemic started, customers are listening to podcasts and short readings for mental health breaks during the workday.
A recent study from Edison Research and Triton Digital, which is owned by our parent company E.W. Scripps, indicates that podcasting listening increased between 2019 and 2020 by 155 million listeners.