Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media is the first comprehensive interdisciplinary collection of academic research exploring the definition, status, practices and implications of podcasting through a Media and Cultural Studies lens. By bringing together research from experienced and early career academics alongside audio and creative practitioners, the chapters in this volume span a range of approaches in a timely reaction to podcastings zeitgeist moment.

In conceptualizing the podcast, the contributors examine its liminal status between the mechanics of old and new media and between differing production contexts, in addition to podcastings reliance on mainstream industrial structures whilst retaining an alternative, even outsider, sensibility. In the present tumult of online media discourse, the contributors frame podcasting as indicative of a new aural culture emerging from an identifiable set of industrial, technological and cultural circumstances. The analyses in this collection offer a range of interpretations which begin to open avenues for further research into a distinct Podcast Studies.

Dario Llinares is Principal Lecturer in Contemporary Screen Media at the University of Brighton, UK. His current research focuses on the status and practice of cinema-going in the digital age. He is co-founder and co-host of theCinematologists podcast.

Neil Fox is Senior Lecturer and Course Coordinator in Film at Falmouth University, UK. His debut feature filmWilderness played at over fifteen international festivals, winning eleven awards, including Best Screenplay. He is co-founder and co-host of theCinematologists podcast.

Richard Berry is Senior Lecturer in Radio at the University of Sunderland, UK. His 2006 essay on podcasting, Will iPod Kill the Radio Star?, has become part of the foundation upon which subsequent studies of podcasting have been built.

1. Introduction: Podcast Studies or a New Sonic Society? (Dario Llinares, Neil Fox and Richard Berry).- 2. Just Because You Play a Guitar and Are from Nashville Doesnt Mean You Are a Country Singer: The Emergence of Medium Identities in Podcasting (Richard Berry).- 3. Podcast Movement: Aspirational Labour and the Formalization of Podcasting as a Culture Industry (John L. Sullivan).- 4. Podcast Networks: Syndicating Production Culture (Lieven Heeremans).- 5. I Know What a Podcast Is: Post-Serial Fiction and Podcast Media Identity (Danielle Hancock and Leslie McMurtry).- 6. Invisible Evidence: Serial and the New Unknowability of Documentary (Rebecca Ora).- 7. Podcasting as Liminal Praxis: Aural Mediation, Sound Writing and Identity (Dario Llinares).- 8. Wild Listening: Ecology of a Science Podcast (Danielle Barrios-ONeill).- 9. The Podcast as an Intimate Bridging Medium (Lukasz Swiatek).- 10. Inner Ears and Distant Worlds: Podcast Dramaturgy and the Theatre of the Mind (Farokh Soltani-Shirazi).- 11. A Feminist Materialization of Amplified Voice: Queering Identity and Affect in The Heart (Stacey Copeland).- 12. Comedian Hosts and the Demotic Turn (Kathleen Collins).- 13. Using a Humour Podcast to Break Down Stigma around Illness (Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt and Johanna Willstedt Buchholtz).- 14. Welcome to the World of Wandercast: Podcast as Playful Participatory Performance and Environmental Exploration (Robbie Wilson).- 15. An Interview with Richard Herring (Neil Fox).