Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:49 — 8.3MB) | Embed
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell. The first email was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, a computer engineer, to himself using a program called SNDMSG, which allowed users to send messages between computers connected to the ARPANET, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
What about you? Do you remember what you first email address was or when you established it? Do you still have it? For me, I believe it was a Juno email address that I set up when I was in college. And no, I do not have access to that email.
Well, here we are again in a month with five Mondays, which means it’s Monday Mailbag day! For this installment of the Monday Mailbag I have one contribution I’d like to share with you. It’s from Andrew. Here it is:
It’s Andrew here and my last Monday Mailbag was episode 613. Very quick recap. I explained in that episode that Colin, my brother, was diagnosed with MS and he started running. And through that, he encouraged me to start running. What I didn’t say in that episode is that on New Year’s Eve of 2022, just a few hours before midnight, I was at Colin’s house and we made a spur of a moment decision to start a podcast documenting our running journey.
Now, the goal of this podcast was simply just to have fun. Till this day, we have always said that if me and Colin were the only two listeners of this podcast, it would be a fantastic success because we just wanted to record our journeys. And really, we didn’t know where it would lead and if it would even last the full year. Well, this is now the third year of the podcast, the third season, as we call it. This month we’ve hit 50 episodes, which maybe isn’t a big number to some people, but it’s massive for us.
What did I learn about starting a podcast?
I learned that, believe it or not, other people will listen no matter how bad or how good you think your podcast is. Other people will listen. And more importantly, other people will connect with you. We now have a friend in Ohio who we have really, really connected with. And hopefully in the next year, we hope to meet up and go for a run with. And that’s really just come through this podcast. We have another friend here in Northern Ireland, who’s a semi-professional runner and he gives us tips on how to run better.
And it’s not a normal podcast. If I say the name, you’ll know it’s not a normal podcast, because the name of our podcast is Idiots Go Running. Yes, that’s right, Idiots Go Running. And it kind of says what it does on the tin. My brother is a very good runner. I’m not. I don’t really train for runs. I just turn up at events and try my best. And we have a lot of fun. It’s actually, excuse the pun, more of a running comedy podcast than it is about running. But we have connected with so many people, those two guys in particular.
And you know what? We get messages just out of the blue saying things that we have been an encouragement. Quite a few messages that people have said just how much our podcast makes them smile and makes them laugh. Every time we get a message like that, it just brings such a smile to our face. And the other thing that I learned, it’s encouraged us to keep pushing the boundaries of what we can do, especially my brother.
Last year, we ran a hundred miles. At the start of this month, we took a trip to Greece to run the original marathon route. Now I’ve never ran a marathon in my life. And to be honest, before this podcast, I never wanted to run one. And now that I’ve run one, I don’t know if I even want to run another one ever again, but we ran the original marathon route, and we’ve even fallen in with a guy called Dean Karnazes. He’s a Greek American runner who’s quite well known in the ultra running world. And we met him in Athens. He took us out for dinner. He was a complete gent of a guy.
And the last thing is, we spend more time together as brothers. We have a lot of laughs and you know what? We’ve both got wives, we’ve both got kids, and because of the podcast, it’s brought a bit of a sense of adventure to our lives. Not that adventure wasn’t there before, but just going out and doing things we never thought possible. It’s just brought a bit of adventure and now every year we try to do one thing which is running related and a bit special, a bit challenging.
And looking back now at three years, we have already memories of a lifetime and this all happened because two guys decided to start a podcast. And if there’s someone out there listening and they’re thinking of starting a podcast, I would really, really encourage you to start a podcast. And even, even if you’re the only one that you think is gonna listen it back, do it. I am more than sure you will not be the only listener. And if you do, you could well make friends all over the world, you could get a better community going, and you might just even do or end up in places where you never thought possible.
Thanks, Andrew! It was great getting an update from you and hearing about your podcast. I will be sure to check it out!
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode. Next week is a new month and, in fact, it’s Easter month. So I’ll be taking a look at some historical details about the resurrection of Jesus in a way that I hope will be interesting to believers and non-believers alike. I hope you join me again next week for that episode.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
I want you to be a part of the next Monday Mailbag on June 30th! Monday Mailbag is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can send in questions or responses to my SILY episodes, and I’ll respond to them via Monday Mailbag episodes.You can participate in Monday Mailbags by visiting the Golden Spiral Media listener feedback page.