On 3 January 2005, Shel Holtz and I published the first episode of what would become the For Immediate Release podcast.
That fact matters – and it’s worth being precise about it.
Over the years, we’ve sometimes referred to 5 January as our anniversary date, including in a short episode we recorded this week to mark 21 years. In revisiting the archive, it’s clear that the first episode went live on 3 January 2005. So, please consider this a gentle correction to the record – and a reminder that even communicators can misremember their own history.
What hasn’t changed is the substance of the milestone.
Twenty-one years ago, podcasting was barely a thing. Apple Podcasts didn’t exist. The iPhone hadn't yet appeared. Recording remotely was awkward, unreliable, and far from elegant. Shel was in California, I was in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and the only reason this worked at all was Skype – long before Microsoft entered the picture. Editing took hours. Distribution was clunky. Discovery was harder still.
At the time, FIR (as the podcast quickly became called) was partly an experiment and partly a commercial curiosity – a way to learn a new medium early, in the same spirit that led many of us to start blogging in the early 2000s.
Over time, FIR became less about tools and tactics and more about sense-making – about talking through how technology, media, and organisational behaviour were changing, and what that meant for communicators. Podcasting has evolved alongside us, from a niche hobbyist medium to a fully embedded part of mainstream media today.
We’ve marked milestones before. At ten years, I wrote about FIR's first decade as foundational, reflecting on what it had taught us and how far the medium had come. At twenty years, we took a longer look back at the journey, the shifts, and the continuity that surprised us both. I won’t repeat those reflections here – they’re still relevant, though, and I’ve linked to them below.
What feels different at 21 is something simpler.
We’re still doing this because we enjoy it. Because the conversations still interest us. Because a niche audience continues to find value in them. And, perhaps most importantly, because FIR gives Shel and me a reason to keep talking – regularly, thoughtfully, and without scripts.
We’ve started our 22nd year with a short, informal episode – not a retrospective, just an acknowledgement. A thank you to the people who’ve listened, challenged us, agreed with us, disagreed with us, and stayed curious alongside us.
Long may that continue.
🎧 Take a listen to the episode right here:
You can also watch the video version on the podcast website.
Earlier milestone posts:
- 20 Years of FIR: A Podcasting Journey (5 January 2025)
- FIR Podcast and a Foundational Decade (3 January 2015)
- The Hobson and Holtz Report - Podcast #1: January 3, 2005 (3 January 2005)
