Hacker Public Radio

Hacker Public Radio (also known as HPR) is a free culture and technology oriented podcast produced as a community collaboration since 2005. It originated in USA but has contributors from around the world.^[2][3] The community has a governance structure^[4] and maintains social media presences on Facebook, LinkedIn, Libera Chat,^[5] and Mastodon.^[6]

Hacker Public Radio
Presentation
Hosted by	Multiple hosts
Genre	Technology (Linux, free and open source software, free culture, hacking)
Language	English
Updates	Varies (3-5 times weekly, typically every weekday)
Length	Variable
Country of origin	USA
Production
Audio format	Ogg Vorbis, MP3, Speex
No. of episodes	4230 (as of 18 October 2024)
Publication
Original release	19 September 2005; 19 years ago (2005-09-19)
Cited as	11th Podcast Awards Technology runner-up[1]
License	CC By-SA 4.0
Related
Website	https://hackerpublicradio.org

Subject matter and format

The subject matter is described as anything that may be of value to hackers or hobbyists.^[7] Many are on open-source and Linux-related topics,^[2] or on security-related topics,^[8][9] with others on seemingly unrelated topics such as wild-swimming.^[10][11] HPR has the most frequent output of any Linux-related podcast.^[2] There are also some long-running series by regular hosts^[3] and in-depth discussions spanning multiple episodes.^[12]

Shows are typically published every weekday,^[7] and this schedule is achieved by actively soliciting contributions from the audience.^[9][13]

Not all shows are considered family-friendly,^[2] and as the community does not do any content moderation,^[13] all shows are marked explicit.

Production

The show is unique in being purely community-driven. Audio submissions from community members are published as shows. These submissions may have been captured in a variety of ways and submitted in multiple formats. Many have markdown or even multimedia format metadata associated with them, including transcripts.^[14] All submissions are licensed under Creative Commons. These are then processed by software written by the community,^[3] and released as Ogg, Speex and MP3 formats,^[2] with an entry in the episode guide on the community website.^[12]