The growth of storytelling through podcasts
From as far back as anthropologists have been able to discover, human beings have sat around fires, dinner tables, and living rooms sharing stories. Storytelling was one of the first forms of entertainment and played a critical role in the passing on of history from one generation to another. Written language in 700 BC enabled stories to be remembered and retold again and again. Legends were created. Today we enjoy hearing and retelling some of those same stories, but we also like hearing and creating new ones. There is something riveting about hearing how your brother scored the winning touchdown at his football game, or how your grandma made the perfect pie, or even how an eccentric man with a mullet breeds tigers. This is because when a story is told well, listeners’ brains can mirror the storytellers’, which creates strong empathy between the two. This brain mirroring, named “neural coupling” by psychologist Uri Hasson, is a powerful tool that gives us the ability to mentally place ourselves in another world — essentially escaping our own reality — while listening to a story.
We are constantly finding new ways to tell stories, and one of the most unassuming of mediums has grown to be a mainstay: podcasts. Can you recall the first time you heard of a podcast? Probably not, because initially, no one understood their potential. Listen to someone talk about anything they want? Is it like the radio? Is it like an audiobook? Why would you listen to that? Such criticisms of the fledgling platform were common, but for creators it wasn’t about the number of listeners or generating income. They were simply passionate about their stories and wanted to share them with the world. Quickly, listeners were hooked. All we had to do was put on a pair of headphones, and suddenly we were transported to another world in a way incomparable to reading something online or in print. Through the power of the human voice and the enjoyment that comes from exploring niche interests, intimate connections could be forged.
Much of the earliest content on podcasts, because it was so easily transferred, was comedy. Comedy remains a frontrunner, with 36% of weekly podcast consumers listening to at least one comedy podcast a week. Other popular genres include news, society and culture, sports, and “true crime” documentaries. Podcasting is more than just a storytelling tool. Some companies are using it as a marketing tool. Furniture design company Kimball, for example, has a podcast in which they promote and market the products in their new Work|Able line. Even products need stories and reasons for their existence.
One form of storytelling that we as a society seem to have a particular fascination with is the crime drama. People used to pack courthouses when the best cases were being tried. Then came the Investigation Discovery channel, one of the first to bring crime stories into the media. Making a Murderer, The People vs. OJ Simpson, and The Staircase are just a few of the television documentaries that built the bridge to podcasting. The true-crime genre in podcasting had its breakout moment with the show Serial in 2014. Serial made it cool to listen to hours of testimony and interviews in a murder case, while at the same time exposing millions of people to the growing medium of podcasting. At this point, TV had created hour-long true-crime documentaries but had barely begun exploring the vast trove of content that podcasting was about to dig into. While Serial took many cues from the existing structures of true-crime documentaries, it reinvented those structures for the podcast, something that was revolutionary at the time. The strictly audio nature of podcasting now included music intros, ads, and casts of narrators and voices with sound effects, all coming together to create a compelling story. Serial was the fastest podcast to reach five million downloads, and it remains one of the most streamed podcasts of all time, with 500,000 downloads per day some six years later.
The release of Serial happened at a pivotal time as the availability of smartphones was growing quickly and as true crime was increasing in popularity on television, thanks to the Investigation Discovery network; Serial made use of an untapped medium to deliver content that was in high demand. As with many other social media outlets, podcasting has a very low barrier of entry. Most podcasters invest in a microphone, a pair of headphones, and some sort of editing software — and that’s it! Currently there are 800,000 active podcasts available on Apple Podcasts.
Today’s podcasts are enjoyed by a wide array of listeners. Nearly 51% of people in the US listened to a podcast in 2019. People between the ages of twelve and fifty-four are the most likely to listen, with about 40% of them listening on a monthly basis. Among those who are fifty-five and older, 17% regularly listen to a podcast.
The potential for production is seemingly endless when people of all ages, incomes, and races have stories to tell. Whether it’s a history podcast with people sharing about their ancestors, a tech podcast with reviews of the latest gadgets, or a podcast with people discussing and exploring their beliefs, the podcasting realm has space for everyone. Stories are powerful lessons that can be told time and time again; they never go out of style, and we never run out of them.
