Why Podcasts Prove that Timing is Everything

Podcasts address issues like COVID-19 and Racial Injustice in a timely and thoughtful way

All media has its place in the sun. Radio with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fireside chats during the depression to distribute hope through the storm clouds of economic despair. For TV, the McCarthy trials in mid-1954 exposed a demagogic Senator – Joseph McCarthy – who used fear and paranoia to destroy the lives of thousands of innocent citizens. For print, which has the longest historical record, victory runs from 1776 when Thomas Paine published his pamphlet Common Sense to 1974 when two intrepid investigative reporters from the Washington Post unearthed a government criminal conspiracy and cover-up that brought down a president and perhaps diminished trust in government for decades.

Podcasts, of course, have no such history because in the world of media they are the newborn. Hatched from the womb of mp3 files and now carefully nurtured by smartphones, podcasts now project an immediacy that imbues them with a crucial role in popular culture.

Of course, social media advocates will reflexively point to the flash-bang, light speed reaction time of Facebook, Twitter and their incestuous cousins. However, the conversation on social media too often devolves into sound bites wars with links to questionable factual sources or worse, crackpot conspiracy theories made more credible because they are espoused by elected officials. Witness the pedophile pizza parlor, the faked moon landing, the staged assassination of JFK and even hordes of socialist terrorists invading small towns in air-conditioned buses with restrooms thoughtfully placed in the middle and rear of the buses.

Photo by Jordan Benton from Pexels

Let’s today look at podcasts and how they have addressed two issues that have burst through into the American public consciousness – COVID-19 and racial injustice.

Unmasking the pandemic

Since mid-March, new and experienced podcasters have adapted to the lockdown, post-lockdown and politicized public health powderkeg with new COVID-19 podcasts and existing podcasts now almost exclusively dedicated to COVID-19 coverage.

For example, Gimlet’s Science Vs podcast has been covering the Coronavirus even before the recognition of the pandemic with its first episode playing in late January.

Other existing podcasts continue to cover the pandemic even though the federal government has seemingly checked out. For example, The New York Times’ The Daily just finished an episode about widespread COVID-19 infections with an episode called, “What went wrong in Brazil?”

CNN’s podcast Coronavirus:Fact vs Fiction with Dr. Sanjay Gupta looks at the pandemic from a public health, mental health and economic health perspective with short episodes that range from Bob Costas on the future of sports to lessons on infection control from South Korea.

In America Dissected: Coronavirus by Crooked Media with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the podcast casts a wide net, with episodes ranging from how COVID-19 has devastated some Native American tribes to the viral identity of COVID-19.

Podcast-19 by FiveThirtyEight is exactly what you’d expect from the “stats” people with a strong focus on evidence, data and a sincere desire to combat politicized junk science with information as cleansed as possible from partisan posturing. Their episodes – about 20 minutes in length – address issues covered by many other COVID-19 podcasts such as mask-wearing, vaccine development and the rise and fall of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment. The latest July 3 episode posits a fascinating and much-needed question: How to convince many in the population who don’t see a pandemic that there is indeed a deadly pandemic that has so far killed at least 130,000 Americans in less than four months?

Finally, podcasts about COVID-19 have naturally exploded on Apple, Google, Spotify and other podcast platforms. And that fact exemplifies the timeliness of podcasts as a societal mechanism for conversation, context and change. Television tries to stay current but besides morning and nightly news shows and the partisan posturing on Fox News and MSNBC, coverage is still playing catch-up. Just last week, ABC announced that Strahan, Sara & Keke. will be put on hold for the time being in order to usher in a new program to take its place: Pandemic: What You Need To Know in the afternoon.

Changing the system

Unlike COVID-19 podcasts, which sprang to life earlier this year, podcasts about racial justice, systemic racism or being marginalized have been around for years. There’s no doubt that recent events propelled by the murder of George Floyd have generated numerous new podcasts and pumped new energy into existing podcasts.

Code Switch from National Public Radio (NPR) uses a compilation of different narrators and the podcast encourages listeners to grapple with their ongoing sense of horror when uncovering the truth of Black trauma, police brutality, and how racism impacts all parts of society. Recent episodes of note include a June discussion of “outside agitators” nebulously fingered for violent protests with little or no evidence and a mid-June episode called “Why now white people?” examining the recent surge in white participation on Black Lives Matter protests and racial injustice in general.

Justice in America is a podcast for criminal justice enthusiasts striving to situate mass incarceration in a larger historical context, Justice in America both breaks down buzzwords and shares useful terminology for self-education. Hosts Duffy Rice and Clint Smith encourage their following to understand the ways in which the U.S. criminal justice system is linked to a deeply rooted history of slavery and Jim Crow laws.

On the Intersectionality Matters podcasts, lawyer and leading scholar of critical race theory Kimberlé Crenshaw speaks with incredible candor rooted in her own academic and professional research. Her work simultaneously sheds light on and rejects America’s tendency to isolate issues of racial oppression.

On Pod Save The People, Social activist DeRay Mckesson leads discussions with co-hosts Brittany Packnett Cunningham, Clint Smith, and Samuel Sinyangwe that shift societal conversations. With backgrounds in activism and education, the hosts function as undercover reporters striving to document the full truth by shedding light on the overlooked stories impacting people of color and interviewing niche experts.

For instance, a recent episode explored the plight and challenges of black farmers – an issue typically ignored but in need of more attention.

Pod problem solving

Radio too often tethers us to a vehicle and while television attracts ears and eyes, it still exists as an activity done at the end or the beginning of a workday. Now reinvented in digital formats, print provides that same quick-draw access to information on our smartphones and tablets while social media paddles along in a fact-free zone as we question if the Facebook post we just read is indeed from a neighbor or some Russian, Chinese or alt-right hacker promoting chaos and civil unrest.

By contrast, the immediacy of podcasts offers listeners the opportunity to capture the essence of key issues like COVID-19 and racial injustice while still offering us the twin delights of reflection and rumination. Podcasts travel with us as informational companions hitching a ride on our smartphones and infusing us with intellectual and emotional resonance to make sense of our world.

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