Help me locate episodes of an old podcast.

June 29, 2011 6:20 PM

Where might I find episodes of a defunct podcast called Josh In Japan (circa 2006) that is no longer on iTunes and no longer has a web site? Do any of you mefites have the files sitting on your hard drive?

I've searched everywhere, including filesharing networks and all over the web. All the web links to the MP3 files are dead. I've even gotten in touch with the podcast creator, who said he no longer has the files himself.

Really a larger issue, as it's a shame that many defunct amateur podcasts are probably gone forever. I used to listen to this show back in the day and would like to get the episodes I'm missing. Any ideas? Anyone have the files and willing to put them online somewhere?

posted by iamisaid to computers & internet (5 answers total)

I just did a quick search at Archive.org and did not see it there either. If the producer doesn't know where to find a copy I'd say it's time to let it go. Searching the Internet for somebody that has a copy of a 4 year old podcast on their hard drive seems like the proverbial search for the needle in a haystack.
posted by COD at 7:01 PM on June 29, 2011

COD: " seems like the proverbial search for the needle in a haystack."
Metafilter is the right place to ask these needle haystack questions though; maybe give up if no one here can help you or at least direct you toward someone.
posted by dancestoblue at 7:10 PM on June 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

I found this.

Could you perhaps contact the uploader and ask if they have more episodes?
posted by smithsmith at 7:52 PM on June 29, 2011

Googling the file names from some of the podcast links turns up several potential hosts, but plugging those addresses into the Wayback Machine traces them through a series of redirects to either Josh's now-dead personal server or to Libsyn.com, which masks the source files from Archive.org through a non-archivable PHP page. You might try getting in touch with somebody there to see if they still have the files available (or at least can tell you what the source URL would have been so you can see if it was ever archived), but they probably don't have those around anymore.

But really, if the podcast creator can't help you, you're probably only going to succeed by finding somebody who has the files on an old iPod or computer somewhere. It's too bad -- it sounded like an interesting podcast.
posted by Rhaomi at 8:12 PM on June 29, 2011

As an outside shot you might try posting in Japanese language learning / Japanese culture forums. I know reddit has several which might have people that have archived the podcasts for themselves:

Japan
LearnJapanese
JapanLife
posted by sharkfu at 10:38 AM on July 4, 2011