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Welcome to the 10 Things to Tell You podcast. I'm Laura Tremaine. I always have at least 10 things to tell you. And you have 10 things to tell. This is a show where we believe that sharing yourself will make you less lonely.

At the very beginning of the year, I woke up one morning to not one, but two different messages from friends asking about starting a brand new podcast in 2025.

These were two separate people, two totally different ideas, and they wanted to know my

opinion on starting a podcast, my advice, really. And my first immediate and knee-jerk reaction

was yes, yes, please start anything that will get you sharing, that will get you creating

something, that will push you out of your comfort zone. Yes to all of those things.

And also, I have a lot of other thoughts around this question. And it's funny because in the

weeks since, this has come up several times. Maybe because I'm also looking back at my 15 years of working on

the internet, I did an episode last week on that very topic. And so since I've been talking about

that a little bit, other people have approached asking different, you know, pieces of advice for starting something right now. And I do have

a lot of thoughts. It's funny to me now that my knee-jerk response to those friends' initial

messages a month ago was to say yes so enthusiastically. Yes, please start a show,

do your thing. Because not too long ago, my knee jerk would have been the opposite of that.

It would have been like, please, no, no more podcasts. People, please stop making podcasts. We are full

over here in the microphone space. That is kind of what it felt like several years ago when

there was an explosion of shows. We've been through a couple of different ups and downs in the podcast industry where

there's been an enormous amount of crowding. And that's still true. There's still a lot of shows

out there. And when someone with already some fame or notoriety announces that they are starting a new show,

like a new celebrity podcast, all independent podcasters grown because that means it will

...