podcasts: past, present and future

Finding extraordinary stories on park benches

Tom Rosenthal wanders London's parks with a simple mission: find someone sitting alone on a bench and ask if they'll chat for his podcast, his podcast "Strangers on a Bench." He keeps his guests anonymous - no names, no workplaces. Listening to a few episodes hammered home the realization that there's n... See more

The conservative media landscape in the United States is exceptionally well-funded, meticulously constructed, and highly coordinated. Wealthy donors, PACs, and corporations with a vested interest in preserving or expanding conservative policies strategically invest in right-wing media channels and up and coming content creators.

This creates a well... See more

Podcasting is a medium made for this kind of storytelling; if journalism is, as someone once said, “the first draft of history”, then maybe podcasting is the second. As a medium, it has a wider intellectual bandwidth than broadcasting, which has to address mass audiences, whereas podcasting can serve niche interests and make more assumptions about ... See more

The creator economy is in its early days, really. The mass adoption of television occurred in the 1950s, and the creator economy started in earnest around 2010, so we’re just about 15 years into it. It’s concerning that these media executives think they are superior to it and have a better way of operating, when they obviously do not. They should b... See more

The Talk Tuah podcast is flopping

Almost immediately after going viral on social media as “Hawk Tuah Girl,” Haliey Welch cashed in by landing a podcast deal sponsored by online betting platform Betr.

The show’s first guest, Whitney Cummings, actually made for an entertaining episode, but since then it’s been downhill. The absurdity of the show itse... See more

And I’m discovering other ways to ease myself back in gently, such as podcasts about music. Rob Harvilla’s exquisite 60 Songs That Explain The 90s has just returned with a new colon: The 00s, which is satisfying my nostalgia RDA but also reminding me why new music was so important to me back then, and why it still could be now.

Because as a reader ... See more