The main confusion in defining a podcast stems from the tendency to conflate the media file with its content. Many people assume a podcast is a specific genre or format — for example, a casual conversation, an interview, a narrative, or an investigative series.

But this assumption quickly falls apart. If we define a podcast as a free-form conversation, what do we call solo podcasts — monologues recorded by a single person? And what about podcasts that feature no human voice at all, such as audio recordings of elevator sounds or birdsong in a forest?

Every time we try to shift the definition toward genre or format, we end up creating countless exceptions. Eventually, the definition becomes meaningless — it no longer defines anything clearly.

So why is it that people so often associate the word “podcast” with a conversation, or with the presence of a human voice, and so on? There are plenty of such labels. I’ve discovered something interesting: whatever kind of podcast someone first encountered — they tend to believe that is what a podcast is supposed to be. And often, they end up creating podcasts in the same format or genre. And this is absolutely normal.

If someone’s first exposure to podcasts was The Joe Rogan Experience, then that becomes their definition of what a podcast is — and whatever the host does becomes, for them, what podcasting means. Or if it was This American Life — then that’s what they think podcast is. It’s not a rule — it’s just an observation of mine.

Once, just for fun, I created a podcast that contains only a single episode, one second long — Бір. Another example: Elevator — a podcast where I post elevator sounds. And these are podcasts. Just as much as Serial or Podcasting 2.0 are. They have an RSS feed with an <enclosure> element, they can be subscribed to, they’re published on the same platforms as all other podcasts, and so on. And the fact that there’s no human voice in them… well, that’s just the kind of podcast it is.

I call this the absurd level of freedom. At first, it may seem ridiculous — but then you realize what kind of creative freedom you’ve gained.

When I say that “something is a podcast”, I mean one thing only: it's available via RSS — or distributed to platforms through an RSS feed. No RSS? Then it’s just file on the internet. Even with RSS, it’s still the same file — but now it becomes something more: part of a decentralized flow, powered by automation and driven by the principles of freedom and independence on both ends.