CNET UK podcast 500: Happy 10th birthday to us!
Celebrate our 500th episode (and 10th anniversary) with this special bumper-sized edition, featuring faces from the past including "Top Gear" host Rory Reid.
Cast your mind back to 2006. Facebook was barely open to the public. YouTube hadn't yet been bought by Google. Android didn't exist and the iPhone was just a twinkle in Steve Jobs' little round glasses.
It was into this dark time that a bold crew of tech luminaries raised a beacon of brilliance to light up the darkness, a beacon that has illuminated the technology landscape for an entire decade: the CNET UK podcast.
Yes, it was 10 years ago that the CNET UK team first huddled into a pokey, badly soundproofed cupboard to discuss the gadgets of the day. The exact launch date of what was then called the Crave podcast is lost to the mists of time, so we figured the milestone episode 500 would serve as a dual celebration.
To celebrate, we've caught up with some familiar faces -- or rather, familiar voices. Listen out for the dulcet tones of former CNET UK podcasters Flora Graham, Nate Lanxon and Ian Morris revealing some of their favourite memories of the podcast's decade-long run. And what a tumultuous 10 years it's been: the decade of smartphones and social media, the internet and apps, swiping right and cyberwarfare, drones and self-driving cars, government surveillance and emojis.
We've also flagged down Rory Reid, who took a break from his latest gig hosting a little TV show about cars for a drag race down memory lane. Rory, presenter of "Top Gear" and "Extra Gear", was one of the first voices ever heard on the CNET UK podcast all those years ago. We thought those first episodes were lost to history, but luckily a reel-to-reel tape of the first show was discovered in a hay loft in Yorkshire. We've dusted off the straw, passed it through our high-tech audio processing equipment and thrown in a clip to show how far we've come.
Pretty far, as it turns out. Over the years we've been through one name change, three offices, a cornucopia of gadgets good and bad, the odd outside broadcast, a slew of celebrity guests of varying degrees of fame, a run of video podcasts, innumerable terrible predictions, countless monumental hangovers and even the occasional flash of genius. Honestly, no one's as surprised as we are it's lasted this long.
In among the celebrations there is a note of sadness, however, as one of the team decided this would be an appropriate moment to announce their departure from the hallowed halls of CNET. But it's OK -- in the 10 years we've been on the air, a multitude of voices have come and gone, and spouted varying degrees of nonsense in the various CNET podcast cupboards. We salute them all (the voices, not the cupboards) as we march on into the future, excited about the voices we are yet to hear.
More importantly, we salute you, CNET readers viewers and listeners, for downloading, listening, supporting us, and letting us know when we're talking utter cobblers. We couldn't have done it without you.
We hope you've enjoyed these past 500 episodes as much as we have. Here's to the next 500!
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Have you heard the I-listened-all-the-way-to-the-end codeword? If you caught it and want to get in touch with the show, you can do so by emailing cnetukpodcast [at] cbsi.com. We're always hungry for your feedback, so pop your thoughts in the comments below or drop us a line at the address above. Oh, and if you've enjoyed this and any of the preceding 499 episodes, why not leave us a glowing review on iTunes?
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