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Internet History Podcast

by Brian McCullough

A History of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad

Publisher-supplied feed metadata · PodParley refreshed Oct 5, 2025 · Source feed

Episodes

  1. 203. Shirish Nadkarni On Microsoft, Hotmail, MSN and Blackberry Internet Email

    Serial entrepreneur Shirish Nadkarni came to the U.S. as a teenager with $25 in his pocket. After graduating from Harvard Business School, he worked at Microsoft where he engineered the $400 million acquisition of Hotmail and launched MSN.com, the world’s leading web portal. Striking out on his…

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  2. 202. The del.icio.us Story With Joshua Schachter

    Joshua Schachter, founder of del.icio.us, is someone I’ve wanted to talk to from the very first day of this podcast. As we’ll discuss, del.icio.us was such a standard bearer of the web 2.0 era. Of user generated content. Of sharing long before Facebook or Twitter or any of that. If my email chain...

  3. 201. The History of Audible With Angelika Fuellemann

    Angelika Fuellemann is a designer who worked early on with BookSense.com, then got hired by Audible early on, so this is the early story of Audible. It’s funny… audio, streaming music, podcasts, audiobooks, it seems so obvious now, but it really is funny to look back and think about how off the...

  4. 200. Professional Blogging Pioneer Josh Marshall

    Josh Marshall is one of the key people who brought blogging into the realm of serious, award winning and respectable journalism. The story of his blog/publication, Talking Points Memo, or TPM is the story of blogging becoming legit and serious, but also the story of modern media over the last 20...

  5. 199. Is Tech Making Us- Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid?

    Is technology really rotting our brains, destroying our society... or is that what everyone has always worried about with every technological advance, going back to tv, or telephones, or even writing letters? The new book, Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology, from the...

  6. 198. Inventor of the Hashtag, Chris Messina

    Well, as we say in this episode, he’ll always be known as the inventor of the hashtag, but Chris Messina has been central to so many things in tech over the last 20 years or so. Helped Mozilla launch Firefox. Founded BarCamp where so much Web 2.0 goodness happened and was launched. Cofounded the...

  7. 197. The Internet Bookshop Story With the Tech Business History Podcast

    I’ve said before I wish I could cover technology history beyond just North America, more… Well, Charles Miller has started a great podcast in Britain called Tech Business History. Charles used to report on the tech business as a BBC documentary producer. In the first series of his podcast, he’s...

  8. 196. Google, Twitter and More With Karen Wickre

    Everyone knows Karen Wickre, because she’s one of those classic connectors. Once we finally got in touch, I wasn’t surprised to learn we knew about half a dozen of the same people though we had never remotely crossed paths. But Karen knows everyone because she’s popped up Zelig-like in a bunch of...

  9. 195. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott

    Kevin Scott is the current Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft. We talk about his entire career, how being an academic seemed to be his path before he transformed the ads system at Google. Then he revolutionized the entire advertising industry at AdMob; is credited by some people by saving...

  10. 194. The History of the ISP Industry With Sonic's Dane Jasper

    Today we continue my efforts to preserve the history of the ISP industry. Today it feels like the Internet is simply all around us all the time, but there are amazing entrepreneurial stories about how that crucial infrastructure was laid. Today we talk to Sonic founder Dane Jasper, who can not…

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  11. 193. The Home Page Film With Doug Block

    20 years ago, the acclaimed documentarian Doug Block released a landmark film, Home Page. Doug’s documentary accidentally chronicled the birth of blogging, featuring several people we’ve talked to on this very show, including Justin Hall. But the documentary also captured a moment in time, the…

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  12. 192. Hulu's Founding and Digital Design With Dan Maccarone

    Dan Maccarone is a digital design veteran, websites, products, strategy. He's got some amazing stories about the dotcom bubble, about the aftermath, and the rise of Web 2.0. He shares some unique design lessons but also, the story of the birth of Hulu, which I don't think has really been covered...

  13. 191. Bringing The WSJ Online With Rich Jaroslovsky Part 2

    Part two of the WSJ's online adventures intersect with several other stories we've covered on here over the years. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

  14. 190. Bringing The WSJ Online With Rich Jaroslovsky

    We’ve had a couple of people come on here to discuss how the New York Times got online, but the spiritual yin to their yang is the Wall Street Journal and we haven’t done enough to explore their path to embracing the internet. It’s worth doing that because they embraced a different model from...

  15. 189. A Legal History of the Web Era With Richard Chapo

    It’s bothered me for a while that over the 5 years or so of this podcast, we haven’t focused very much on some corners of the history. For example… the legal side? Copyright law? Intellectual property law? How much have we talked about disruption and piracy and filesharing and all that stuff? So…

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  16. 188. TheGlobe.com Story With Stephan Paternot Part III

    Part three of our epic conversation with Stephan Paternot. Here's what happens when you've been through the wringer. When you've been to the top of the rollercoaster and also down to the bottom. Here's how you take stock of your life, how you reinvent yourself, re-find you entrepreneurial…

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  17. 187. TheGlobe.com Story with Stephan Paternot Part II

    Ok, part 2 of the Stephan Paternot mega-episode right now. This is where we get into the meat of it, the good stuff, the whole crazy roller coaster ride of being the hottest startup of the dotcom era. And I was going to make this the last episode, but as I was editing this, I realized that after…

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  18. 186. TheGlobe.com Story with Stephan Paternot

    I said in the book, I think TheGlobe.com was the quintessential dot-com company. We spoke to one of the cofounders previously, Todd Krizelman. Todd was great, but he was time constrained and he didn’t quite get as personal about the story as I would have hoped. Well, I finally got to talk to the...

  19. 185. Ripple's David Schwartz

    David Schwartz is the Chief Technology Officer at Ripple, the company behind the cryptocurrency XRP. What is it like to start, build and build out a crypto startup? Is it different than the web and internet startups that we’ve covered on this show for years? What is Ripple? How is it unique in…

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  20. 184. GV's Ken Norton

    Ken Norton is a partner at GV, Alphabets venture capital arm, but before that, he was a product manager at Google, where he led the development of products like Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Mobile Maps. But he was also early at JotSpot which became Google sites, was a product manager…

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  21. 183. Selling the First Facebook Ads, With Matt Britton

    Matt Britton not only sold the first ads to and for Facebook, way back in 2004, he gives us a really insightful and, frankly, unbiased look at what Facebook was like as a company in its very earliest days. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at...

  22. Emergency Podcast Announcement

    Emergency Podcast Announcement Link to Amazon See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

  23. 182. Google's Matt Cutts @mattcutts

    I figure most of you should know who Matt Cutts is, but if you don't, let's just leave it at this: he's about to give you the best, most behind-the-scenes oral history of early Google we've gotten so far on this podcast. He was the head of Google's web spam team for nearly 15 years. He's also the...

  24. 181. (Ch. 7.5) The Story of craigslist

    SUMMARY: The history of Craig Newmark, craigslist and other odds and ends that didn’t make the book! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

  25. 180. Part 2 With John McCrea

    Simple enough: Part 2 with John McCrea. More on SGI, more on doing battle with Microsoft in the 90s. And... interesting stuff on VR and the future... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

  26. 179. On Silicon Graphics with John McCrea (Pt. 1)

    John McCrea is a Zelig-like personality who pops up in so many of the narratives we've already covered: Apple. Netscape. Doing battle with Microsoft. This is part one, mostly about Silicon Graphics, a company I had been thinking about doing an episode on for a while now, to really rejuvenate that...

  27. 178. On Google's 20th Birthday - The History of Google

    On Google's 20th Birthday (September 4th) a re-cutting and re-airing of my comprehensive history of Google, from it's inception through its IPO. Happy Birthday, Google! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

  28. 177. NandO.net with Fraser Van Asch

    Nando.net was not only a very early experiment in bringing journalism to the web, it was also one of those local ISP's that flowered in the era of the early 1990s. Fraser Von Asch was not only one of the key players at The News & Observer (thus, "NandO") who brought the project to life, he is...

  29. 176. The Epic Fail of Digg V.4 With Will Larson

    This story has gone down in Silicon Valley lore as the ultimate cautionary tale. Digg was the earliest high flying startup in early social media. But then, other startups like Facebook and Twitter started to steal the limelight. So Digg tried to keep up by launching the infamous Digg version 4....

  30. 175. How the Internet Came to Pakistan With Imran Haider

    Today, we're going to continue our occasional project of getting oral histories and personal anecdotes about how, exactly, the Internet and the web came to various places around the world. On this episode we're going to look at how the Internet came to—and is still in the process of coming...

  31. 174. Bringing the NYTimes and MSNBC Online With Lisa Napoli

    Lisa Napoli got a job straight out of college at CNN in its earliest days, which is a crazy startup story in it’s own right. But then she worked for a time at Delphi, which was an early online service and competitor to AOL and Prodigy that I don’t think we’ve covered much here before. And then…

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  32. 173. Netscape's Rosanne Siino

    Rosanne Siino has been on my list to talk to from day one of this podcast. As you know, I started by reaching out to Netscape folks and Rosanne was the head of communications for that very first dotcom company. She saw it all, she can give us her take on both the engineering side and the…

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  33. HUGE Podcast Announcement

    HUGE Podcast Announcement! Details on how to pre-order the podcast book! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

  34. 172. How Politics Came to the Web With Karl Mattson

    Today we're going to go back to take a look at early journalism on the web. Karl Mattson helped launched one of the first political news websites, ElectionLine. He helped cover the 1996 election when covering an election on the web was a completely new thing. He then moved to AOL, helped run…

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  35. 171. Claude Shannon, Father of Information Theory

    Claude Shannon was a mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory." In the pantheon of cool people who made the modern information era possible, he’s right up there. Today, we’re going to talk about Shannon’s life with Jimmy Sony and Rob…

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  36. 170. The Godfather of Streaming Music, Robert Reid

    Summary: Robert Reid, the founder of Rhapsody, can be considered the Godfather (founding father?) of the streaming music reality we now live in. But guess what? That's only half of this episode! Because it turns out, Robert is the author of a book that was probably one of the biggest reasons I...

  37. 169. Kottke.org's Jason Kottke, @jkottke

    Jason Kottke, of kottke.org fame, was one of the early bloggers, one of the first bloggers to go pro, and one of the few solo bloggers still going. If you know Kottke.org, then you love it. How could you not? If you’ve never heard of it, you can thank me later. This episode examines what it means...

  38. 168. The History of Java With Todd Sundsted

    People have been yelling at me for years that I’ve not covered more technical aspects of the web’s history, especially things like Java. Specifically Java. The argument can be made that Java helped the web evolve into what it’s become. So, that’s why I was thrilled to sit down with Todd Sundsted,...

  39. 167. NYTimes Tech Columnist, Farhad Manjoo @fmanjoo

    Today, a man who needs no introduction: New York Times Technology Columnist Farhad Manjoo. This episode was recorded about two months or so ago, so we talk about the book leave Farhad is on that he only recently made public, but of course, we get into his whole career and his unique vantage point...

  40. 166. Amazon, Hulu and Oculus with Eugene Wei

    No joke, this is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. Eugene Wei was an early employee at Hulu, so we get some details on that company for the first time, and he also worked at Flipboard and Oculus, so we get some important context especially on the future of VR and the like. But the most...

  41. 165. Claire L. Evans, Author of Broad Band- The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet

    Claire Evans is the author of the new book: Broad Band The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. This is the best tech history book I’ve read in a while and you know I read them all. Of special note, considering our 90s-heavy focus on this podcast, the book includes the stories of...

  42. 164. How the Web Came to Germany, With Thomas Ganter

    Podcast listener Thomas Ganter gives us a first person, anecdotal account of how the web came to Germany in the 1990s. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at...

  43. 163. The History of Online Video with JibJab's Gregg Spiridellis

    Gregg Spiridellis has been making things go viral on the web since before the term VIRAL was even a thing. His company, JibJab has been producing web videos since the dialup dotcom era, producing hits you might remember such as Elf Yourself, Nasty Santa and This Land Is Your Land. JibJab has...

  44. 162. Venrock's David Pakman on Apple's Music Group, N2K, eMusic and Dollar Shave Club

    David Pakman is a well respected venture capitalist at Venrock, but also a lifelong musician and music fan. Earlier in his career he played a significant role in bringing music to the web. David tells us about cofounding Apple’s Music Group, his role in facilitating the first digital sales of…

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  45. 161. Jeff Bussgang on Open Market and early eCommerce

    It gets my goat that these days, the history of ecommerce begins and ends with Amazon. There were so many companies and big ideas that got us where we are today, and one of the most important companies was Open Market. Jeff Bussgang is here to tell us the (today) often overlooked story of the...

  46. 160. Growing Up With The Web With Desiree Garcia @thedezzie

    An exploration of what it was like to come of age in the early web era. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

  47. 159. The Forgotten Story of PLATO, with Brian Dear

    Plato was an online and interactive learning computer system developed in the 1960s at the University of Illinois. But in the early 1970s, Plato got truly networked, and the users took over. Plato had already pioneered such things as touch screen computing, but the kids introduced and pioneered...

  48. 158. Bob Stein of Voyager and The Criterion Collection

    Bob Stein was the founder of Voyager, publisher of the first consumer CDROM titles, and, far and away the leader of the CDROM industry in the late 1980s and early 90s. Bob was also one of the founders of the Criterion Collection, as well as the publisher of the first electronic books. Hosted on...

  49. 157. Rob Malda (@cmdrtaco) on SlashDot and Social Media

    You might know him as Rob Malda, or you might know him as CmdrTaco, but he was the founder of the great geek social website Slashdot. Slashdot recently turned 20 years old, Rob commemorated this in a great Medium post, and so I reached out to him to tell us the story of one of the first great...

  50. 156. Dave Winer on The Open Web, Blogging, Podcasting and More

    Dave Winer has been called the godfather of a lot of things. The godfather of blogging. The Godfather of Podcasting. One of the key people involved in the development of RSS. But as you’ll hear in this great and wide-ranging chat, Dave Winer is just a software developer who has never stopped...

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ABOUT THIS SHOW

A History of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad

HOSTED BY

Brian McCullough

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does Internet History Podcast have?

Internet History Podcast currently has 206 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.

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A History of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad

How often does Internet History Podcast release new episodes?

Internet History Podcast publishes regularly with 206 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.

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You can listen to Internet History Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.

Who hosts Internet History Podcast?

Internet History Podcast is created and hosted by Brian McCullough.
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