BB: Adam, I heard a story about you getting a phone call at the time from Steve Jobs, could you tell me that story?

AC: This was around 2005. I actually got a phone call from Eddie Cue, who runs all media at Apple. He said “Steve Jobs would like to meet with you, do you have any time for that?”. I said “Yes”, of course, and he said “Well, could you come to San Diego?”. I didn’t really know what it was about. I figured it might be about podcasting, but I wasn’t sure. And so, I had a very nice meeting with him, where we talked about a lot of different things, for about an hour. And then Steve said: “Hey, would you be okay if we put podcasting into iTunes?”. I said: “Yes, and guess what, I'll even give you the directory that we have to get you started.”. That same day, he announced podcasting in iTunes.

BB: But what did he need your approval for?

AC: I don’t think he needed me at all. But, surely he thought: “We probably should ask that guy who was driving this if he’d be okay with it”. Maybe he was expecting pushback, but I was delighted. He was willing to help with all kinds of things, and that was welcome at the time. And in that very meeting, Steve asked: “How do you do your recording?”. We didn’t really have any tools to record, there was not much going on at the time. But the Mac had an application called Audio Hijack Pro, and it was great because we could create audio chains with compressors, and replicate a bit of studio work. Eddie Cue said: “The RIAA wants us to disable Audio Hijack Pro, because with it you could record any sound off of your Mac, any song, anything.”. Steve then turned to me and said: “Do you need this to create these podcasts?”. I said: “Currently, yes!”. So Steve Jobs told them to get lost, and I thought: “Hey man, thanks, Steve's on my side. That's cool.”.