In general, I like to be a positive person. But only because I feel like that’s the thing you have to say before going off on a rant. Let’s cut to the chase…
What’s up with podcasts?
I was on a road trip to Maryland this weekend with my wife, my mother-in-law, and our little boy in the back. In need of some light entertainment, we decided to search for a podcast. None of us are regular podcast listeners, so we undertook a bit of a search. Based on recommendations from Spotify, we first tried Brené Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast. She was interviewing Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent in the Apple TV Show Ted Lasso. I’ve read one of Ms. Brown’s books, like her ideas about vulnerability as a strength in leaders and love Ted Lasso. But the atmosphere of this live-recorded podcast was so self-congratulatory and meandering that we could barely last five minutes. “You know what this needs?” my wife said. “An editor!” (This is also our favorite bit of film criticism to give, too.) Then we switched to Brett’s own podcast about films, called “Films to Be Buried With.” The format is a bit more structured and we thought it might be more our style. He was interviewing a British comic I really like, Romesh Ranganathan. There were a few funny moments, but again, guys, GET AN EDITOR. It just went off on so many tangents I found myself longing for a team of people to tell them both what wasn’t working. We also tried an episode of NPR’s How I Built This with the founder of Burt’s Bees, Roxane Quimby. Interesting subject, interesting person. But the interviewer asked long, meandering questions which weren’t really questions, and which Ms. Quimby often answered with a contemptuous monosyllable. 20 minutes into the episode, they were still establishing how Quimby ended up in Maine — let’s speed it up! We finished with a Marc Maron episode with Momofuku chef David Chang. After a hilariously-long (but not hilarious!) introduction and like 10 ad reads, Maron kept cutting Chang off and again…whole bits could have been cut.
Tell me: Why do podcasts spend five minutes before they start, telling you how amazing they are? How amazing this episode is going to be? Previewing all the good bits? Is it because they’re hoping people will just say, “well, I’ve come this far, now, may as well get to the end”?
I’m not your podcast patsy. Nobody’s audio rube. I even used my driver’s privilege to switch to a subject I hold holy, the game of squash. The In Squash podcast manages to land big names in the game, but the host doesn’t know what to do with them. Speaking to the former women’s world number one, he essentially asked: “I haven’t actually read your book, but perhaps you could tell me what it’s all about?”
We should stop putting up with this nonsense. The podcast emperor is wearing no clothes. It turns out these vehicles just become dustbins for ideas that didn’t survive elsewhere. Or that weren’t worked up more comprehensively. They’re not “taped-down” like a good piece of writing, TV script, or other sort of “content” should be. There’s no care in their production. And as a result, I think they reduce their stars to less than the best versions of themselves. Digital has meant people tend to think, “well, I can record myself talking for two hours and my audience will love it.” And maybe some people do. But I think generally, they are taking up time we could all be using to do something more productive or enjoyable—like, I don’t know, staring at the wall, thinking about death?—with the audio equivalent of Doritos. No nutritional content. You just eat compulsively.
I think it comes down to this. We all have ideas that are less than brilliant, but when it comes to the ones we choose to put out into the universe, it’s the least we can do as a courtesy to our audiences to be a bit selective, and to use an editor whenever possible. (Hi, Logan!)
Maybe my brief survey of the podcast scene wasn’t extensive enough, maybe I missed a hidden gem. If you have a podcast you love, I’d love to hear what it is and why you love it. Meanwhile, as I say, I do like to be a positive person. Most of the time.
