SF02011 New Beginnings

It feels like a few chapters in life are coming to a close.

We’ve wrapped up the first 200 episodes of the podcast. Here are some interesting facts about longevity, according to our good friends over at AI:

Podcast Lifespan Statistics:

1–3 Episodes: Roughly 70% do not make it past the first three.
20 Episodes: Of the 10% that get that far, over 90% quit before episode 20.
100 Episodes: 5.8% to 6.25% score a century.
200 Episodes: Only 2.53% make it to 200 (and just 1.44% reach 300).

And running the Bicentennial Poll seemed like a line in the metaphorical sand.

Then, last week, as many of you will already know, we lost our podcast dog, Toby. Many episodes over the years have been punctuated by his forceful opinions, generally involving food or walks. He wasn’t at his best for the last year – indeed there weren’t many parts of him that were still working. So, it came as a relief when we returned from a gig to discover he had peacefully passed in his sleep.

As it happens the gig was This Is Lorelei and on stage they performed the song ‘Where’s Your Love Now?’. My wife Tammy self-confessedly doesn’t pay much attention to lyrics, but as she was listening to the song she distinctly picked out two lines, “I thought I would die in my sleep’ and ‘I’m happier now’. And when we worked it out afterwards it was just about at that moment Toby would have shuffled off his canine coil.

So, I’ve included that song at the end. She says it will always be Toby’s song. (Although it doesn’t actually have anything at all to do with a dog’s demise.)

More broadly I’ve called this episode, ‘New Beginnings’, as I did feel it’s now time to start looking forward. It’s too early to line up a successor for Toby, but hopefully we’ll be amongst that elite 1.44% of pods making it to 300 episodes, the universe willing.