This week Jonathan and I end our sixteen month podcast known as the Libertarian Dime. After sixty-eight episodes done in sixty-nine weeks, generating around a hundred hours of content, we lay it to rest. We met a lot of great people, some of which became friends, I learned how to interview even when unprepared, and I honed my production skills.

We worked hard. Since April 30th of 2008, I haven’t missed a week. Jonathan only missed one because of a last minute emergency. We worked around birthdays, holidays, and trips. No one can accuse us of half assing it, that’s for sure. I thought the best way for the podcast to generate listenership was to have new product every week until we were established, so that’s what we did.

And there lies the rub. The listenership. We never really caught on like I hoped, drawing a smallish but loyal audience. While I mastered the technical aspects of the podcast, I never did figure out how to get us to the next level. The free market has spoken though, and it’s time Jonathan and I listened. We have nothing to be ashamed of, though, as our total downloads can be expressed in the tens of thousands, but in order to have real impact, we would need to be bigger. That might be possible except for the other reason we’re ending the show.

Burnout on politics. In an ironic twist, doing a Libertarian podcast means spending large parts of your life each week worrying about government, the very entity I want out of my life. This past Thursday it all came to a head inside my brain, and I started the push to end the Dime, only to find out a couple days later Jonathan was already going that same direction. It’s not easy to do a political podcast every week, especially one focused on a minority philosophy. So before we come to hate the very podcast we created, we accept the burnout, and move on.

I’m going to be taking a break for a while from podcasting, while I work on other ideas. Jonathan and I already a list of ideas for projects we’d like to work on, and some of those will commence once we’re rested. I’ll try blogging more on non-political topics. There are a myriad of things I’d like to work on, and after showing that I can dedicate myself to an endeavor until it’s logical end, I feel better about working on these new things.

In closing, the Dime will always have a fond place in my memories. I never in my life did anything outside of work that generated so much content, connected me to so many people, and was consumed by so many people. I’d like to thank all of our guests for their support (except you BJ Lawson), because I really did learn a lot from them. I’d like to thank Jonathan for signing up for such a nutty idea of mine to do a podcast. And lastly, I’d like to thank my wife Kelly for all her support starting from day one.

And as I say, or rather, used to say, on my podcast: With that, I’m calling it a night.