We Still Don’t Know How To Write About Podcasts
Just over ten years ago, I got my first iPod. From then, it only took a matter of days before my ears were opened to the world of podcasts. As befitting my age and interests, I mostly listened to stuff like The LOST Podcast With Jay and Jack and The Instance. Since then my tastes have developed and diversified, as have the variety of podcasts available. In a cultural sense, podcasts are much ‘bigger’ than they once were. However, while each year sees the once-niche podcasting community further colonize the pop culture mainstream, it seems apparent that nobody in media or blogging knows quite how to write about them.
For most web-based media and blogging outlets, the bread-and-butter of pop culture writing comes in the form of news, reviews and the occasional ‘hot-take’ opinion piece sprinkled on top. However, podcasts don’t really lend themselves to these kinds of articles. Partially because, unlike films or games, podcasts aren’t really tied to any sort of PR cycle. They just get recorded and released. In rare cases like Barack Obama’s appearance on WTF with Marc Maron last year, the release itself can be an event — but for the most part it’s almost routine.
However, if we want to see podcasts written about for reasons other than their own ‘newsworthiness’, we need to find new ways of talking about them. We should be able to examine not just the people involved but try to build on the ideas they raise. We could take something like the fascinating parallels between the social dynamics of Harry Potter books and the Persona games in episode 62 of Daft Souls and explore that idea further with our writing.
Though their episodic format lends itself well to comparisons with TV, podcasts aren’t usually ordered and professionally produced in bulk. As mentioned previously, most podcasts are just recorded and posted until the people involved don’t feel like making them anymore. It’s worth speculating then on the how adopting TV’s season-based structure contributed to Serial’s propensity towards press coverage.
There are whole bunch of different reasons the first season of Serial was so heavily written about — but it’s worth focusing on how, unlike a lot of podcasts, Serial actually has a plot. It had stakes, drama and character development. These qualities invited tons and tons of audience speculation and enabled a lot of TV writers to apply their recap-focused approach to the podcast — allowing it to be written about in a way that a lot of other podcasts aren’t.
Unfortunately, Serial is more the exception than the rule. For less-serialized (no pun intended) podcasts like Welcome to Night Vale or Reply All, a recap would sidestep the entire appeal. For those podcasts, it’s absolutely not about WHAT happens — it’s about the experience of hearing a story unfold. At their most basic level: these types of podcasts are about listening.
There’s a reductive argument to be made that all media asks its audience to listen and pay attention. However, with podcasts, this emphasis on listening is intrinsic to the experience in a very particular way. It’s asking the audience not to listen necessarily to content but to a conversation. This isn’t all that different to the dynamic of radio talk shows and that perhaps explains why so many podcasts adopt that particular style. It also might explain some of our reluctance to write about them — it’s easy to relay the content of a podcast but hard to explain the appeal of the personalities involved.
Like any sort of media, when you follow a podcast you develop some sort of connection with it and the people involved. The Giant Bombcast might ostensibly be about video games, but fans are often much more interested in hearing about Vinny’s adventures with fatherhood or the inscrutable Dan Ryckert’s eating habits than they are video games. The colloquial tone twists the appeal closer towards listening to friends than listening to a news report — and this affects our ability to write about it.
Like any media, the potential of podcasts isn’t in just making us listen but in their ability to make us think — and writing about this dynamic is new territory for writers. Podcast writing doesn’t come with all the established conventions that film, TV and games writing have — and this freedom comes with a lot of exciting potential.
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