I took podcasts I liked, picked my favorite parts from a particular time span (usually a year, but sometimes a month or a quarter), and then chopped and tacked and made a best-of compilation out of it. It got way more popular than I expected, and the warmth and support from fans was heartwarming and truly lovely. Eventually I found I no longer had the time to maintain the show, so I ended it in 2015.

The original concept was totally self-serving: I liked podcasts a lot but there was no easy way (back then) of keeping old episodes at hand, and no easy way of quickly finding the best parts of a particular episode. A year's worth of episodes of, say, the gaming podcast The HotSpot (the first podcast This Year covered) probably ran about forty hours or so, of which there were maybe about four hours I would have liked to revisit. So I went about cutting those bits out and stringing them together into long compilations. Part of the idea, and one of the reasons why I think people liked This Year so much, was to stick to a given podcast's format—so The HotSpot opened with discussion of news, and then went to phone calls and emails; I'd play news clips first, and then phone calls, and then emails. The whole idea was to make it feel as much like a real episode of the podcast, but one that was... well... really long.

I started with video games podcasts; they were always This Year's most popular episodes. It had entirely to do with the communities on Giant Bomb and NeoGAF, where the compilations were often posted (and continue to be re-posted) and where the show gained particular traction.

I produced compilations for all manner of shows, including comedy, sports, culture, and drama podcasts, as well as radio shows like Loveline and even Chris Morris' BBC Radio 1 show Blue Jam, which is probably the weirdest radio show ever created, and is one I don't have enough imagination to describe let alone classify. I fell out of love with some of the shows over time (The Adam Carolla Show, for instance, is one I stopped listening to years ago, as I lost interest in Carolla's style of comedy and the format of his show—his work on Loveline I still believe to be great).

This Year was an accidental project. I would not have made my compilations public if the first one or two hadn't taken off as they had. Positive feedback, support, and the small and dedicated fan-base made me keep going with the show. I am hugely thankful for all who ever gave the show affection or praise, but I have especial gratitude to those who donated their money to me. Some gave hundreds, which I still feel guilt about to this day. I don't think I deserved that much for what I was doing, but I suppose that's indicative of what the show meant to them. I was and still am in equal parts stunned and moved by their charity and commitment. If you donated to me during the four years I worked on This Year, please know that seeing a donation of any size come in meant the world to me: on the surface it meant that I didn't have to worry about finding a way to pay for the show's hosting fees, but in a more meaningful way it told me that the show was wanted and valued. That support is something I will always remember and cherish.

In the end I stopped working on This Year simply (and entirely) because I ran out of time. I wanted to find ways to continue, but couldn't—I started the show while in university and ran out of steam by the time I started a full time job. But you can find every episode of This Year, including the previously unreleased episode #100, below. A final thank you to those who listened over the years! It would not have happened without you.