A year ago, I decided on a whim to turn my weekly blog into a podcast. I’m a bit late on the blogging game, and I always knew the podcast likely wouldn’t be one of the most popular out there, but despite all that I knew one thing for sure: it would be fun to make. I quickly found the audio editing enjoyable, and after the first couple weeks decided to keep things up, to add new elements into the recordings, and see where this would take me.

Now, one year in I’ve recorded 415 minutes of the podcast, according to Spotify, or 6 hours, 55 minutes. That’s enough to listen to for the last couple days of driving during my Longest Commute this August, or enough to get you west across Kansas on I-70 from Kansas City with an extra 50 minutes of podcasts to spare for those first flat miles in Colorado. It’s a big milestone for a project that survives depending on how much fun I’m having with it. Each week I know I could end this show, even end the Wednesday Blog all together, if I’m tired of it.

I think the reason why I keep this going is because I enjoy getting to write about something other than history every week. It could be as mundane a topic as highway signs or as personal a story as how I ended up working in Binghamton, NY. For the longest while I found it funny that the top rated episode by listener numbers was “Episode Untitled, or Humanity and What We Can Do About It,” which has had 34 plays to date. Currently, “Episode Untitled” ranks ninth in the standings, just above this summer’s excited reflections on the launch of Artemis I and below my episode on “Suspending Disbelief”, and the necessity for imagination to keep our lives fresh and exciting.

I was surprised to see “The Longest Commute” perform so poorly overall. While the first episode is ranked at seventh, “Part 3” sits at 28th and “Part 2” at 34th, well below my estimates. This trio of episodes, which I used to end the first season of the podcast, were inspired by the pair of blog posts I wrote in June 2021 about my trip with my Dad across Colorado and Utah, both of which performed extraordinarily well both with my usual readers and with members of the public who found them through WordPress and Twitter. So, the fact that “The Longest Commute, Part 2” ended up only getting 18 listeners is disappointing, but something I’ve learned from.

My two lowest played episodes, two that I really hoped would get more listeners are “Vote!“, the first Wednesday Blog Tuesday Special released a month ago on Election Day, and “How Space Exploration Can Unite Us,” which I released following the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) last December. Even my February 2022 episode “Patience” only got 10 plays, and sits at 51st in the rankings. I’ve learned to be patient with these listener numbers, whether it be with the disappointment with the longer episodes that I put a lot of work into, like “The Longest Commute” or the shorter ones like June 2022’s episode “Kitty,” which at 67 plays is currently ranked at the top of the most played episodes of the show. And, of the episodes with musical interludes and bonus songs, you’ve seemed to like “S’Wonderful” the most at 46 plays with my two baseball episodes “Bad Practices in Baseball Broadcasting” (21 plays) and “Baseball is Back” (20 plays) ranked 27th and 29th respectively.

I’ve begun to incorporate guest voices into the podcast, from the voice of dead presidents, the talented actor Michael Ashcraft, to my good friend Alex Brisson who joined me to talk about the 2011 silent movie The Artist this Spring. This is something I want to do more, in the long run I have an idea for an expanded Wednesday Blog format where this weekly editorial would remain at the center of the show, but there’d also be a weekly musical interlude and a conversation included for a 30 minute episode. We’ll see how or when that’ll happen.

I want to thank you, my audience, for listening in over this last year. While most of you (74%) have been here in the United States, there has been a steady and growing listenership elsewhere around the globe. I’ve had a fair number of listeners in Ireland (9%) and the United Kingdom (4%), with the odd listener here and there in France, India, Tanzania, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. Most of you seem to be finding the podcast through the Wednesday Blog website, though I’ve got a fair number of listeners tuning in elsewhere. Anchor tells me there are 23 people in my audience, two less than the average size of my classes here at Binghamton University.

I’ve been surprised and excited to hear passing mentions of The Wednesday Blog from friends who haven’t come up in any of the analytical data, people who’ve read or listened to this. There’s a small group of friends, and my parents, who I send this to each week, and who have given me good feedback each time, but then there’s those of you who I don’t know but deeply appreciate who listen to this podcast and read this blog. I hope I can keep this going for you guys for a while yet.

So, from me to you, thank you!