Peak podcast

With Donald Trump appearing on Joe Rogan last week, it feels like we’re at the close of a cycle that started about a decade ago - the end of podcasts as alt media.

Podcasts are not new. I can remember listening to them on the old click wheel iPods (circa 2007), which had a feature for them.

But I would say they really took off a decade or so ago, a supposition which seems to be borne out by statistics.

As you can see below, the percentage of people in the US who listened to one in the last month has gone from 15% in 2014 to almost 50% today. It’s hard to imagine that the same trend didn’t take place across much of the world.

Why did this happen??

Partly it’s a function of technology. The ability to stream audio on the go has made this much easier than it was 15 years ago - you could not stream on click wheel iPods, you had to download episodes and then upload them on to your iPod via iTunes. Listening to something on the go and in the spur of the moment is clearly much easier.

The more important trends driving this though (in my opinion) were…

1. People were tired of cable news soundbites

Modern TV news really began in the 80s. CNN was the first 24/7 news channel and launched in 1980. The 1987 James Brooks film Broadcast News played on many of the themes of what was then something like a novel concept.

The problem is that this format is lowbrow and soundbite driven. There is no room for any kind of nuance or long-form discussion, with competition between networks effectively creating a race to the sensationalist bottom. They were also big gatekeepers in terms of what opinions were shown and which were not.

You could argue something like William Buckley’s Firing Line show was a counterbalance to this, although it actually pre-dated cable news. But it was stiff, not very popular, only aired on PBS, and was taken off air in the late 90s (more because Buckley was old than viewership numbers).

There is a paradox in media today, whereby people are on the one hand typecast, usually by marketers, as having goldfish-like attention spans but at the same time those same people are willing to listen to - or even watch - a three hour podcast, often covering a wide range of topics in-depth.?

My view is that cable news left an appetite for longer form, more informed discussion, where you could really delve deeply into issues and not have it feel hyper partisan or simplified into a soundbite. Podcasts allowed for this to happen.

2. Alt opinions, niche topics, expert views

I began listening to different, long-form podcasts in earnest in Summer 2013. This was the end of my first year of university and I worked night shifts at Wimbledon as a cleaner on centre court - one of my favourite jobs ever.

At that time, podcasts opened up a wider range of different viewpoints that were often absent from mainstream news channels. Definitely in the 2014 - 2020(ish) range there was a genuine counterculture feel to many shows. Red Scare or Rogan are good examples.

You then had the ability to access niche topics and/or people who were leaders in that field. For example, I remember doing a seven day hike in late 2021 and in the course of one day listening to podcasts on tail risk hedging, Chinese industrial policy, and then an explainer on Japan’s economic crisis with the History of Japan Podcast. A thrilling day, I’m sure you’ll agree.

It is hard to think of another medium that would allow this transfer of information and make it so accessible, plus have people that are deeply familiar with the subject matter being the ones discussing it. The only alternative I can think of is looking up university lecture videos on YouTube.

3. Craving for the genuine

People in general like the feeling that they are interacting with or listening to someone who is ‘being real’ with them. Whether that’s actually the case or not is secondary to them feeling like they are.

Even now, mainstream news feels overly polished and constructed. In contrast, if you sit down for a three hour podcast, you get a more human feeling to someone. It is more uncut and raw.?

This is also why CEOs and other public figures posting on X are popular. You feel that you are getting something straight from the horse’s mouth, rather than via a PR person and through a medium that means everything looks and feels staged.?

This applies to any public figure and is also about ‘fandem’. Why wait years for Bret Easton Ellis to publish another book, for example, when you could listen on a monthly or even weekly basis to his podcast? Not only that, but you feel you have greater proximity to the celebrity or figure you admire. With Ellis, you are not reading his words second-hand but hearing them from him directly.

More than anything, the feeling that you are dealing with a genuine person and are being given something authentic has driven podcasts' popularity. A major component of this is the feeling that you are ‘connecting’ with celebrities in a more direct way. The K-Pop app Weverse and porn site Onlyfans work on similar principles, although both take these themes to the extreme.

"Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation"

The beginning of the end of podcasts as counterculture probably began in 2019 when Joe Rogan had then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on his show.

However, I believe Mark Zuckerberg has been the best at understanding the new reality of media. He first appeared on the Lex Fridman podcast two years ago and has since transformed into a guy that looks like someone who would try to sell you black hat SEO tools at an affiliate conference.

Everything he has done has been an effort to make himself seem more ‘relatable’, human and approachable. And I believe it worked. Contrast his persona today with 2018, when he appeared in front of the US congress. He was depicted as distant, robotic and even alien-like. This was a theme Fridman played on when he first had him on his show, by getting him to fill out a captcha form to ‘prove’ he was human - pretty funny to be fair.

Zuck did this to recalibrate his public persona and he chose podcasts because he understood that, as a medium for developing an individual’s brand, they have more influence over public opinion than TV and traditional media does. They offer a better means by which to mold your own public persona. Why else would Trump appear on Fridman and - now - Rogan? The same reason.

This does not mean that podcasts are going away but they are no longer ‘alt’ media - they are part of the media. Traditional news organisations like the BBC and CNN remain good ways to convey a polished, higher quality brand image and short sound bites. Their prestige remains, even if their viewership does not.?

Podcasts are a better way to convey your personality and create a more relatable, authentic-feeling public persona. Note that the inability to do this, even if it is an act (eg. Bill Ackman is a good example of someone who knows how to pretend to be ‘genuine’ with new media), is arguably a severe weakness today, particularly if you do want to have a meaningful public persona.?

The question is how long that can last, given that part of the authentic feeling of podcasts lay in the fact they were perceived as something ‘alternative’. But is there anything less genuine and more contrived than the Diary of a CEO? Are we tired of two dudes in black t-shirts talking to each other into large microphones? If Goldman Sachs, Bill Ackman, and the potential next president are all into this stuff, is it really meaningful anymore?

Cable news has been around for almost 50 years now and is still popular, so I don’t think podcasts will go away. In fact, it makes no sense to say that because podcasts are popular, they’re not going to be popular.

Still, the hipster part of me finds it sad that a medium which felt fun and different a decade now feels boringly mainstream. In the mid 2010s, Rogan was fun to listen to. Now I find him as partisan, annoying, and predictable as any cable news show. In 2014 - 2017, I remember regularly looking to see who had been on his show. Now I can’t remember the last time I did that.

The attractive quality of podcasts that still remains is the ability to get insights from people that actually know what they are talking about, particularly in niche subject areas.?

They also still offer a much better way for people or an individual to talk about a given subject in more detail, compared to a short-form TV interview or news article. Plus the relative ease with which you can set one up means you are still getting different opinions out there, which you may not have seen in the press two decades ago. These are all big positives and it’s cool to think that an entirely new medium of communication now exists.

And on that note, if you are looking for a podcast covering the leveraged, over-the-counter derivatives trading market. Well, I have a great podcast that you might want to listen to…