The Case For Audio Podcasting: For Your Ears Only

 Let me state up front that this article is not a "I'm going to dump on video podcasting" piece. While I'm an audio advocate, I have a laissez-faire attitude. Video or audio, I want more people to listen to podcasts. I've been a fan for 17 years and a podcast reviewer for 15 years.

As an experiment to analyze the impact of audio only entertainment, I downloaded two movies to my phone. These movies were on opposite ends of the treatment spectrum. One was A Few Good Men and the other was a Hallmark Christmas movie, The Christmas House.

First, I re-watched the movies. 

Then I went for my daily morning walk and left my phone in my pocket and listened to the audio of both movies.  

I was shocked. The amount of audio -- whether in background sounds, speech, music, and ambient sound -- that I missed while watching the two movies was indeed startling.

In both movies, I heard characters talking offscreen, and ambient sounds that I didn't register at all while watching. 

In essence, it was a completely different experience.

At the Resonate festival last week, Sound Judgment host Elaine Appleton Grant relayed what NYU radio professor Ellen Horne said about sound: "Sound is touch at a distance."

When we listen to podcasts – whether they’re about current affairs or comedy shows – our brains get busy. We form pictures in our minds as we follow along with the podcast host, engaging actively rather than passively consuming content like on social media.

This act of forming mental images has significant benefits for our cognitive health. Listening stimulates mental imagery and helps develop stronger imagination skills. As you listen to a podcast, you might form pictures in your mind to follow along with the host. This can help develop your imagination and cognitive health

My goal today is simply to extol the virtues of audio podcasts. To me, audio podcasts are not simply a show without video. Instead, audio podcasts are specifically designed to elicit a specific response from listeners by stimulating your sense of hearing and the cognitive mechanisms related to such processes.

 The brain processes sound in a series of stages, starting with low-level features like pitch and loudness, and progressing to higher-level features like the source of the sound.

 Sounds can help create mental images and projections. For example, if you hear a motorcycle approaching, you might expect to see one around the corner.

Vision is an important sense for all who have it, but this doesn't mean hearing is less valuable. Science has proven that people can “see” without vision via audio cues, so while humans might lean on their eyes to sense the world around them, always remember that hearing is just as important.

Everyone has been fooled by optical illusions. Something similar is possible when listening to audio, but this occurrence is much rarer. In fact, it takes a bit of visual trickery to fool the human ear via the McGurk Effect.

To put it simply, the McGurk Effect occurs when a listener hears a word but sees different visual cues. If the word “bar” is spoken while someone’s lips move as if making an “F” sound, for instance, the listener typically will “hear” the word “far” instead.

This means that, just like the eye, the human ear can be fooled, but it takes a little visual help to pull it off.

 In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers from the Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley scanned the brains of nine participants while they read and listened to a series of tales from The Moth Radio Hour. After analyzing how each word was processed in the brain’s cortex, they created maps of the participants’ brains, noting the different areas helped interpret the meaning of each word.

For example, the You Probably Think This Story's About You podcast, which began in June 2024, is an exploration of love, betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of one man's deceit, told through the eyes of the women whose lives were irrevocably changed by it.

At the heart of the narrative lies Brittani Ard's own quest for truth, as she grapples with the shocking realization of how deeply she was betrayed. Through poignant storytelling and introspective exploration, Britt delves into her own complex childhood, marked by addiction, sisterhood, and the profound family ties that shaped her identity.

Brittani Ard's poignant storytelling and introspective exploration seeps through her pensive, cadenced voice and tender tonality.

There is a unique intimacy that forms between listener and podcaster. For instance, one warm spring day, I washed, waxed, vacuumed, tire-shined, and silicone-sprayed my Hyundai. The task took two hours, and during that time, I listened to three episodes of the Drilled podcast by Amy Westervelt. During that time and the task, it was just me and Westervelt, as I considered how the enemies of climate change are so powerful and unscrupulous. As my car began to look more presentable again, I reveled in the private world that I inhabited with the podcast, its host, and my car. 

Finally, there are numerous studies that show that listening to audiobooks and podcasts assists in the development of listening skills. Before you ask, these studies were not commissioned by audiobook publishers or podcast networks.

It’s not surprising at all that podcasts and audiobooks are enjoying a simultaneous explosion in popularity. The two audio formats are, in many ways, twins of each other. 

Humans have been sharing information orally for tens of thousands of years, while the printed word is a much more recent invention.

 Listeners can derive a lot of information from a speaker’s inflections or intonations. Sarcasm is much more easily communicated via audio than printed text. And people who hear Shakespeare spoken out loud tend to glean a lot of meaning from the actor’s delivery.

According to a study from University College London, people have a more emotional reaction when listening to a novel than they do when watching an adaptation. When we listen to a story, our brain has to create more content, such as imagery, to supplant the words.

This helps create a “greater emotional and physiological engagement than watching the scene on a screen, as measured by both heart rate and electro-dermal activity,” according to conclusions drawn by Dr. Joseph Levin. The science makes intuitive sense ‒ hearing a story read aloud emulates social tendencies, and humans are conditioned to communicate with each other orally. 

When we watch a video podcast, our eyes assume command of sensory input, reducing the ears to second-tier status. 

I'm a realist. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that podcast fans enjoy video podcasts. Live and let live, I say.

Yet for me, I revel in the sounds, the voices, and the echoes of my audio podcasts. When you listen to the Why Wars Happened podcast, your ears will alert you that host Emily Ross isn't simply reading about history, she's attempting to insert you into that time and space. I delight in how Ross is always on the lookout for delicious irony, wicked hypocrisy, and that innate sense of the ridiculous. Her shifts in tone, pitch, and speed are music to my ears, even though no tune is playing.

What makes Aaron Mahnke so good as the host of Lore is that he doesn't try too hard, mugging for the podcast mic. He doesn't try to sound extra creepy, with false intonations or tonal changes in his voice.

Instead, Mahnke allows the excellent script, creepy, plaintive piano background music, and the listeners' own imagination do the work.  There's studied patience to his voice that never betrays an urge to "get to the good stuff." No, instead, Mahnke prefers to construct his mood carefully, cautiously, and completely.

Aaron Mahnke doesn't have one of those voices that alone can scare the heck out of you. But he doesn't need to. Mahnke is a world builder by being a word builder. He uses all the tools to gradually draw you into his macabre world of sonic darkness. As a listener, you don't even know that you're knee-deep in it until it's too late.

 You won't be sorry. Or maybe you will after you listen and realize that the rest of the family will not be home for several hours. You're home alone. Where's my blankie?

For those who prefer video podcasts, let your eyes do the sensory work and enjoy. For me, I'll trust my ears to do the heavy lifting and revel in the sonic intimacy in an audio podcast.