True-Crime; Celebrity Invasion; Extremism: What's Happening To Podcasting?

 The number of functioning, active podcasts is as hard to pin down as the number of upcoming podcasts that Spotify has announced and actually has plans to produce. Essentially, it's a crap shoot, to borrow a gambling term.

With so many podcasts actively producing and releasing episodes, a listener would assume that there are an endless supply of topics available for any enterprising future podcaster to explore. 

Unfortunately, that's not true. Why?

Photo by Soulful Pizza

 

Because, too many podcasters -- mostly podcast networks -- are following the TV programming model of chasing whatever topic is popular at the time. 

So let's look at a few overexposed podcast topics, and also seek out areas that have not been explored in depth in podcasting.

To make this a positive experience, I am designating an award to the podcast topics that are the most overexposed. These awards are called, "The Overusees."

In first place in "The Overusees" is true-crime. The only people happy about the rising crime rate since the pandemic are true-crime podcasters. It just gives them more material. Sarah Koenig's Serial was truly a revelation and seismic shift in the trajectory of podcasting as an industry. Serial brought podcasting out of its nerd shadows and into the mainstream. 

But now, true-crime podcasts replicate themselves like germs in a petri dish (or, as Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene says, "peach tree dish"). Every week in podcasting, a new true-crime podcast is released with much fanfare. Don't get me wrong. There are a multitude of terrific true-crime podcasts. The Murder Sheet is one of my favorites. 

Dead End is a recent true-crime podcast by WNYC New York Public Radio about a prominent, politically connected married couple in New Jersey whose death was classified as a murder-suicide, but the podcast, bolstered by investigative work of the couple's son, has generated a new investigation by the New Jersey Attorney General.

In general, true-crime is a podcast genre with a lot of terrific content. True-crime in all media has exposed the flawed nature of police and prosecutorial processes,which breakdown much too often. As a result, innocent people are charged and jailed. Further, true-crime has revealed an open secret -- that is, minorities experience a different (much worse) justice system with horribly unjust outcomes.

So, yes, there is a lot of quality in true-crime podcasting. But even the smoothest, richest piece of New York cheesecake can be too much of a good thing when dive in for seconds.

In recent years, true-crime podcasters have been falling over one another to report on the same crimes. Predictably, bad stuff has happened. Plagiarism has been an ongoing issue with a few of these podcasts. Ashley Flowers of the Crime Junkie podcast has survived multiple charges of plagiarism by the media via Variety, The New York Times and Indianapolis Monthly, and numerous other podcasters.

We give Ms. Flowers no pass on this, but doesn't the ballooning number of true-crime podcasts lead to an environment where plagiarism can take root and prosper?

While podcasting swims in the shark-infested waters of sensationalizing actual crimes, the industry has practically ignored podcasts about the more important, albeit more academic, questions about crime. What are the root causes of crime? How to best tackle crime? Too academic? Does community policing work? Do community affairs programs work? Help me out here. Where are these podcasts? 

Last year, Gimlet / Spotify released Stolen: The Search For Jermain podcast, which focuses on the case of a missing Indigenous woman, Jermain Charlo, in Montana, who was out one evening at a bar in Missoula and never made it home. Over the course of eight episodes, podcast host Connie Walker was on the ground in real time tracking down leads through the dense mountains of the Flathead Reservation, all while examining what it means to be an Indigenous woman in America, as Jermain was.

According to U.S. crime statistics, Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience violence than any other demographic. One in three Native women is sexually assaulted during her life, and 67 percent of these assaults are perpetrated by non-Natives.

Podcast host Connie Walker, who is Cree from Okanese First Nation in Canada, has made it her life’s work as a journalist to tell the stories of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

 Last month, Gimlet / Spotify announced that Connie Walker is back with an all new Spotify-Gimlet podcast, Stolen: Surviving St. Michaels,which premiered May 17.

Where are those shows? Is Walker the only one?

Where are the podcasts about Homelessness? Housing crisis? Redlining?

Where are these podcasts? Not just an episode or two, but podcasts dedicated to these topics.

How about business crime? The Dropout by ABC Audio covered known sociopath Elizabeth Holmes, and it was an excellent show. But look at all the other corporate perps out there. The rogue's gallery of corporate malefactors is long and overdue for more exposure. Every coal company, Wells Fargo, Exxon, Mylan (who makes EpiPen), BP Deepwater Horizon, Volswagen, Spirit Airlines (how many times can they cancel my flight?), and Amazon (employees aren't robots). Where are those podcasts?

Thankfully, we have podcast journalist Amy Westervelt, who is on a crusade to explain in clear, vivid language the misdeeds and machinations of oil companies in facilitating climate change and then covering their tracks.

Westervelt is one of the most prominent and prolific reporters revealing spin and lies from oil companies in articles (see her recent work in The Guardian) and several hit podcasts: Drilled, a podcast about climate change, currently airing its sixth season, about "New Climate Villains." 

 Damages, her newest show, dives deep into climate lawsuits around the world. Why are some countries declaring "ecocide" a crime? How can wild rice sue someone?

Rigged, her podcast exploring the history of disinformation launched last fall, with season two coming later this year.

You can listen to these podcasts here. 

Where are the other crusading podcast journalists, exposing corporate malfeasance and all-around capitalistic douchebag-ery?

The next winner of "The Overusees" is celebrity / interview podcasts. Much like daytime TV, these "talk" shows have proliferated with a vicious fury. On the surface, podcasting being a audio medium, interview shows seem like the key that fits every lock.

Most of these podcasts follow an all-too-familiar pattern. A social media personality – typically with a partner – blabber on about pop culture, sex, overshare about their personal relationships and lamely attempt to brand their lifestyle, so the listeners will emulate it and purchase the appropriately positioned products.

By contrast, TV celebrities seem to want to clone Marc Maron’s WTF podcast and interview their circle of friends in some room of their massive home. However, they often lack Maron’s delicious caustic wit, so consequently, these podcasts have a daytime TV ambiance with all the accompanying self-revelatory schlock and empty-headed prattling.

Of course, with the tremendous success of Joe Rogan, it was inevitable that the copycats would sniff around the litter box. Rogan has probably forced enough people to eat lizard feces on Fear Factor for a lifetime. To his credit, he was able to launch a second career by identifying an audience -- white men 21-40 years old -- and has performed like a maestro for his listener base year after year to the delight of young men who feel slighted because they don't get to exercise their "unlimited" masculinity, and are so thin-skinned that any criticism of them becomes a conspiratorial cancel culture coup. Don't think a comedian is funny? That's cancel culture, they scream.

Too many new interview podcasts try to "Roganize" their persona, content, and interview style, but too often end up sounding like middle school boys telling poop jokes, aggrieved underachievers, or affixing blame to any group who is working harder and smarter than them. For all of his rhetorical blemishes, Joe Rogan is immensely successful. He deserves that credit. But we do not need 50 more Rogan-clones in podcasting.

Some terrific interview podcasts that want listeners to think and not throw a tantrum include People (I Mostly) Admire with economist Steve Levitt, where he can talk intelligently with people about nuclear weapons, the origin of the word motherf*cker, and a different way to think about dying. 

A newer podcast called Very Serious has Josh Barro -- formerly the host of Left Right & Center -- interview serious and insightful folks on issues such as responding to the energy crisis, bad COVID predictions, and the future of the media. 

These shows search for insights, not indignation and incendiary finger-pointing. On these shows, every societal problem does not have a villian whose lifestyle you happen to not agree with.

Third prize for "The Overusees" goes to the fringy shows that have begun to show up in podcast feeds. Regardless of political affiliation, podcasts that call for armed revolt, feign supremacy over another race of group of people, focus on grievances not solutions, and conspiracy theories that also involve testicle tanning, should return to the sanctity of their parents' basement.

When practically no one was listening, podcasting began as a grass-roots movement with everyday people broadcasting about their passions, hobbies, curiousities and areas of expertise. There are now crevasses in podcasting where hate, demonizing and blaming others for their shitty life, and an almost comical defense mechanism to hide behind "religious beliefs" has tinged too much of what podcasting has to offer.

 By contrast, there's a podcast Called Good Black News about contributions of black people that is positive, informative and uplifting. There's a podcast from New Hampshire called The Purple Principle, whose goal is to re-kindle a spirit of cooperation, moderation and compromise in our nation. There's a long-running show called Freakonomics Radio where the show regularly explodes preconceived notions, conformation bias and conventional wisdom.

While Fox News tells its viewers exactly what they want to hear, Freakonomics Radio does the opposite. Everything you thought you knew could be wrong. So refreshing!

In essence, this show -- week in and week out -- helps listeners question their most cherished beliefs. By contrast, these hate-filled podcasts simply spew out content sprinkled with arrogant self-righteousness that wants listeners to think, "I'm right. they just told me I'm right."

Finally, I recommend balance in podcast listening. Check out KCRW's Left Right & Center. The show is tagged as a "civilized yet provocative debate." If you're a conservative, you have a voice via the right-leaning guest, who will defend new election laws, the second amendment, and laws that ban abortion. If you're more progressive, your person is also there for you, who is pro-choice, supports gun safety, and racial justice. And if you, like many of us, find that we have opinions that transcend strict political idealoogy, there is the mdoerator who is the center. We are the people who want government to work for all of us, not just the rich, entitled, and connected.

Unlike other media like TV, radio and music, podcasting has a much more decentralized libertarian infrastructure. That's good. But for those of us who love podcasting, let's be there to protect it.

Let's not allow podcasting to turn into a 24-hour version of HLN's Forensic Files.  Let's not allow podcasting to devolve into an endless array of quasi-celebrities (TV, film, music, social media) flooding the zone with interview shows so that podcasting mimics TV daytime talk shows. TV can keep The View, The Chew, and others. I'll take This American Life, Ear Hustle, Larry Wilmore: Black on The Air, and others.

Finally, podcasting needs a precarious balance of freedom of speech and responsible content without descending into the hell of white supremacy, democracy deniers, and culture wars. For example, in late May, Secretary of the Massachusetts commonwealth candidate Rayla Campbell told GOP convention-goers that five-year-old students are taught they can perform oral sex acts on one another.

 Republican candidate for Massachusetts governor Geoff Diehl repudiated the sexually explicit and false comments made by Campbell during that same Republican convention, where he secured his party’s endorsement. Campbell offered no evidence for her wild accusation.

Yet, Campbell's charge was treated as true and reported in several podcasts as accurate without any vetting at all. It's the new strategy to fire up voters. Just make up the wildest shit possible that you know your base will believe -- because they desperately want to -- and put it in the media. If it's fact-checked as false, then just scream "fake news." 

As a long-time podcasting fan and advocate, I just believe that podcasting is better than other media. It can avoid the "fact-free zone" of reporting. 

To summarize, podcasting should not become a rogue's gallery of true-crime lurid tales, a media purgatory for celebrities whose TV show was canceled ten years ago, and a dumping ground for every nutball with a microphone and Audacity who launches a podcast about their latest pet conspiracy theories, such as "woke" crop circles, testosterone loss caused by being a decent human being, pedophiles delivering pizzas with extra cheese that turns people gay, and millions of mail-in ballots cast for Trump in the last election that have been buried under the Lincoln Memorial. The combination to that vault, for those who need to know, is, of course, 666.

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Try EarBuds Podcast Collective for its extensive and unique podcast recommendations to find podcasts with topics often ignored.