September 21, 2005
Press Release: Professors Hopkins and Goetsch open world’s first Podcast Asylum
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For Immediate Release
With funding from the World Health Organisation, leading mental health researchers Professors Lee Hopkins and Sallie Goetsch have opened the world’s first mental health facility for sufferers of various mental health issues relating to podcasting.
The asylum, located in the glorious and tranquil Adelaide Hills, Australia, offers peaceful, 24-hour attention from skilled and caring nursing staff and immensely qualified doctors. Set in 200 glorious acres of sculptured gardens and enchanting forests, The Podcast Institute offers caring, counselling and rehabilitative treatment for the following mental health issues:
‘Podcast Solipsism’ (also known as ‘Earbud Isolation’)
Sufferers of this ravaging disease can often be found with earbuds in place during shopping trips, errand running and even Parent Teacher exchanges. This condition affects the higher cognitive processes, so that, for example, listeners to podcasts may actually believe that the people they listen to on podcasts, such as Dawn and Drew, Adam Curry and Hobson and Holtz, are real people, not the superb actors reading the carefully crafted scripts that they really are.
Sufferers of this disease may alternatively believe that only the podcast is real and that everything outside of their earbuds is fantasy.
‘Podcast Unavailability’
Encountered when podcast junkies find their regular podcasts have downloaded incorrectly into their podcatcher. An example would be when episode #69 of the popular soap opera for business communicators, the Hobson & Holtz Report, failed to download correctly. MedNews reported that sales of valium and other psychotherapeutic drugs tripled as a result.
‘Podcastus Ignoramus’
A horribly debilitating disease that ravages the body and mind of the victim. Sufferers lose cognitive coherency and start to believe that podcasts are either not relevant to their lives, or else pretend they don’t even know what they are.
‘Post Traumatic Podcast Disorder’
Victims suffer intense and prolonged shock when they realise that podcasters are allowed to swear in front of and to their audience and can get away with it; this is a condition most often associated with parents realising that their children subscribe to the Dawn & Drew Show.
‘Podcast Withdrawal Syndrome’
Sufferers are paralysed by the psychological terror associated with the loss of function of one’s mp3 player. Clinical staff can rapidly treat the mild version by being armed with rechargeable AAA batteries.
‘Compulsive Podcast Bookmark Disorder’
As identified by our consulting Professor of Technical Podcasting, Professor Derek Leverington, CPBD results when a podcast listener compulsively creates far-too-frequent bookmarks on their mp3 player whilst listening to a podcast. This condition results from a podcast listener experiencing a profound sense of anxiety, even abject terror, over the possibility that they may lose their place in their podcast due to an inadvertent pressing of a button on their mp3 player. A positive diagnosis CPBD is arrived upon by observing a patient bookmark a podcast more frequently than once every 5 minutes.
‘Hyper Attention Podcast Disorder’
Sufferers of this mental health challenge can be identified by their lack of focus to tasks, caused by listening to podcasts instead of concentrating on, for example, driving, writing a report, or washing up. Predominantly associated with men rather than women, it appears that sufferers find difficulty in completing more than one task at once when listening to podcasts.
‘Podcast Humouritis’
A form of early senility, victims of this disease laugh out loud at inappropriate moments or locations, for example when on a crowded bus or in the reading room at the library.
Podcaster’s Insomnia
As personally discovered by our Canadian research fellow Dr. Papacosta, the victim suffers from the inability to fall asleep because they are re-recording their own podcast (or a client’s podcast) in their mind. Very often they also awaken at 3:00 a.m. with ideas for new podcasts. Currently there is no treatment for this debilitating disease.
And finally, ‘Podcast Anxiety’.
As already researched by my highly esteemed colleague Professor Leverington, and replicated by my erstwhile colleague Dr Hobson, this condition is caused by having too many podcasts backed up in one’s media player and a lack of time to listen to them. Treatment can include enforced break at the asylum, and depending on one’s gender and preferences, repeated sessions of massage therapy by either our dusky handmaidens Agnes, Denish, Delores and Monique, or our toned and burly Swedish masseuse named Sven.
Stumble it!
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18 Responses to “Press Release: Professors Hopkins and Goetsch open world’s first Podcast Asylum”
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September 21st, 2005 at 2:18 pm
I’d need to see a photo of the dusky handmaiden before I could decide.
September 22nd, 2005 at 4:44 am
Hi Lee,
Tell Sven to heat up the coconut oil and come on over!
September 22nd, 2005 at 6:07 am
Ha ha ha!!!
But surely your hunk of a husband is more than a match for Sven?
Besides, you’d have to come here; Sven doesn’t travel well, unlike your husband who, I understand, loves nothing more than racing from hotel to hotel around the country in search of fast and stable internet connections, ironing boards and proper irons {smile}.
September 22nd, 2005 at 4:59 pm
Compulsive Podcast Bookmark Disorder
Here’s another podcast-related disorder (and the running joke runs on): Compulsive Podcast Bookmark Disorder I genuinely wish I was making this up, but much the same as the “podcast anxiety” phenomenon I identified a number of weeks ago, I can…
September 26th, 2005 at 6:02 am
[...] Due to popular demand and ever more research becoming available, there is both further evidence of mental health issues related to podcasting, as well as photos of the dusky handmaidens working at the Podcast Institute now available on the updated Postcasting Syndrome post [...]
September 26th, 2005 at 6:14 am
[...] Comments/Notes/Links: Shel Holtz, Derek Leverington, For Immediate Release, the Podcast Institute, Allan Jenkins, Donna Papacosta, Heidi Miller. [...]
September 28th, 2005 at 11:11 am
[...] Update on the Podcasting Syndrome post, where the Podcast Institute ’s Canadian research fellow, Dr. Papacosta, has confessed to a debilitating and as yet untreatable disease. [...]
October 12th, 2005 at 8:40 pm
[...] Links: Ben Hamilton DynamicWebHosting Hobson & Holtz Report Blog post on memos Dan York Heidi Miller Donna Papacosta The Podcast Institute My ‘How to blog’ post [...]
October 20th, 2005 at 7:54 am
[...] I’ve become quite the podcast junkie, as those who see me with my earbuds running down into the beaded pouch I got at Target to hold my MP3 player can attest. In fact, thanks to my contributions about podcasting syndromes, I am now listed as co-founder of the Podcast Asylum. [...]
November 4th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
I think the professor are doing good job to eliminate tarauma on their part. We should also acompny them.
November 9th, 2005 at 7:33 am
[...] She’s even come up with a new condition — Excessive Podcast Stat Disorder — to be added to the Podcast Institute list shortly. [...]
January 9th, 2006 at 9:31 am
[...] As many of you know, I started “smoking the podcast dope” in May of 2005, and by September, after contracting a bad case of earbud isolationism, had co-founded the world’s first Podcast Asylum. [...]
February 21st, 2006 at 11:44 am
[...] Four Places I’d Rather Be Enjoying the ministrations of Sven at the Podcast InstituteIn perfect healthCaught up with everthingNew England in Autumn [...]
April 8th, 2006 at 4:10 am
now if we could only find a way to cure blackberry’s carpal
April 9th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
ha ha ha!!
Methinks there’s a whole new blog theme just in that!
July 30th, 2006 at 10:22 am
[...] Lee Hopkins: Better Communication Results With funding from the World Health Organisation, leading mental health researchers Professors Lee Hopkins and Sallie Goetsch have opened the world s first … [...]
December 30th, 2006 at 9:51 am
[...] As many of you know, I started “smoking the podcast dope” in May of 2005, and by September, after contracting a bad case of earbud isolationism, had co-founded the world’s first Podcast Asylum. [...]
May 24th, 2007 at 1:26 am
[...] and depending on one’s gender and preferences, repeated sessions of massage therapy by either our dusky handmaidens Agnes, Denish, Delores and Monique, or our toned and burly Swedish masseuse named [...]