OK, not *every* podcast sucks
It's possible to break through the platform paradox and hear intelligent conversation. But you have to dig a bit.
This is my monthly (and sometimes, like now, more frequent) newsletter, where I write about my strange intellectual obsessions. If you don’t yet subscribe, click here. My book, The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives, is available for preorder in the usual places, including from the publisher (click “Buying Options”).
In my last newsletter, I argued that we put up with mediocre TV and podcasts because we have been made to have an affinity for the platform, not the content. That is, we watch whatever’s on TV, whatever podcasts come to our phones, and we convince ourselves that it’s all worthwhile, often because we’re “learning something.” (We’re usually not.) Our loyalty is to Netflix, not to whatever shows they’re putting out. (And who even knows what they’re putting out? Doesn’t their programming all run together?) It’s possible this is what Marshall McLuhan meant when he said the medium is the message. But I’ve never read McLuhan. So I don’t know.
I am hardly immune. I have plenty of platform affinities. It used to be, I would read anything published in Harper’s. Later, it was The New Yorker. Now, it’s The Point. The platform does the hard work of sorting and judging, and I just read whatever comes through the mail slot.
And I listen to plenty of podcasts. I’ve been bicycling a lot this summer, and most often, I have a podcast playing in my ears while I circle the lake. But I don’t listen to the most popular podcasts for the most part. In fact, I was just scrolling through a list of the most popular podcasts, and I hadn’t heard of many of them. (Apparently, there are a lot of true-crime podcasts out there.)
So I thought I would share some of my favorites with you and link to some of my favorite episodes, perhaps just to prove that I’m not a reflexive hater of the genre.
Know Your Enemy (Simplecast, Apple Podcasts): I wrote in praise of this podcast about American conservatism and its hosts Matt Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell last time, so I won’t go overboard here. I’ll just suggest a couple of great episodes to start with. Their dive into the work of philosopher Allan Bloom and the novel, Ravelstein, that Saul Bellow wrote about Bloom was a riveting listen. I often come away from KYE caring deeply about something I knew nothing about prior to their conversation. An earlier episode, focused on George Scialabba’s book, How to Be Depressed, brought intellect and emotion together in a living argument for human solidarity in the face of our common frailty.
Feminine Chaos (Acast, Apple Podcasts): Culture writers Kat Rosenfield and Phoebe Maltz Bovy bring tremendous intelligence and humor to bear on our culture, in order to find the bigger significance behind seemingly small online or local blow-ups, all of which somehow connect to former New York Times food writer Alison Roman. A bowl of broth is never just a bowl of broth, as listeners will soon learn. Most recently, Rosenfield spoke with multi-genre writer Leigh Stein about online controversies in poetry — yes, there are poetry controversies in this day and age! (Quite a few, now that I think of it.)
Public Intellectual (Libsyn, Apple Podcasts): Host Jessa Crispin aims her sharp analysis and sardonic affect at all manner of literary and cultural products. (Last newsletter, I mentioned a very insightful essay she wrote about TV.) Crispin’s podcast conversation with frequent co-host Cameron Steele on cancel culture is the smartest thing I’ve heard (or read) on the topic, partly because it went way beyond what gets called cancel culture and embraced bigger questions about publicity and privacy. I listened to it twice and want to go back to it again. More recently they had an equally engaging, related conversation about who gets to tell your personal story in fiction and film. (The answer: Matt Damon.)
The Ezra Klein Show (NY Times, Apple Podcasts): The most popular podcast I listen to regularly. I wasn’t always a fan, but I’ve come to appreciate Klein’s curiosity. He also brings in great guests. He is able to pull in huge figures like Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. But I often most enjoy his interviews with lesser-known intellectuals. Recently, he had the philosopher of technology L.M. Sacasas on to discuss 41 questions about technology — highly recommended to get you thinking about what technologies do to us, what virtues and vices they make possible. (By the way, I strongly recommend Sacasas’s Substack newsletter, The Convivial Society.)
The Unspeakable (Podcast One, Apple Podcasts): The premise on The Unspeakable is that writer Meghan Daum brings on guests to discuss the issues around which there is a lot of unspoken disagreement: race, death, sexuality, and so on. Often, that means hosting guests who are not particularly welcome on big-name podcasts, like the editor Leon Wieseltier. Through it all, Daum displays the wit and curiosity that made me want to model my own writing on hers. (If you haven’t read her essay collection, also titled The Unspeakable, do so.) Indeed, one of my favorite Unspeakable episodes was more of an essay — no guest, just Daum talking about the challenge of making a midlife career “pivot.”
The Relentless Picnic (Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts): The Relentless Picnic makes the greatest demands on listeners of any podcasts on this list, but it also offers the greatest rewards. There is no introductory material to the episodes; you are simply launched into the middle of a conversation among three exceptionally well-read friends. The key themes become clear over time as the hosts take the discussion to far-off places: the nature of reality and human life, morality, mortality. Their most recent effort has been a series called “Cabin” exploring Thoreau, the Unabomber, and the pandemic. I often re-listen to episodes several times, and each time, I notice a new layer to the conversation.
Two of the best episodes are “Shallow Banquet” and “Passage Potluck.” In the latter, the hosts randomly choose passages from great (or terrible) books and try to understand what they are saying to us. In one instance, they use one passage to interpret another, and the result is the most sublime moment in all of podcasting history. I don’t want to spoil it. Hear for yourself.
I notice that some of my favorite episodes of these podcasts are not interviews with guests. While I quickly get annoyed when podcast hosts rely on their charm and mutual admiration to carry the show, it really is enjoyable to listen to people who have a rapport built up over months and years together. They are able to draw on deeper wells than a single host can in an interview.
By the way, I don’t like Radiolab because it has, quite literally, too many bells and whistles. I can’t handle the insane overproduction. Just do normal things!
Last time, I also complained about this not-really-golden-age of television. I want you to know that I do watch TV. I even watch Netflix! I love “The Crown,” in part because I “learn” so much by watching it. I also watch TV that isn’t very good. Last month I read a New York Times Magazine article about what it means to act blind, which focused on the CW show, “In the Dark.” So, to see what the article was talking about, I watched the first episode. Then I watched the rest of the first two seasons on Netflix. Then I downloaded the CW app and watched as much of the current season as I could. Then I tuned my TV antenna to channel 33 and watched last week’s new episode. Suffice it to say, I’m hooked.
“In the Dark,” however, is not very good. The production values are pretty high, and the lead actor, Perry Mattfeld, who is sighted but plays a blind woman, is often very good in portraying a frustrating character whose inability to let go of her obsessions lands her and her friends into absurdly dangerous situations and preposterous scripts. “In the Dark” is supposed to be kind of like “Veronica Mars” (which I’ve never seen) but seems to me like a cross between “The Wire” and “Scooby-Doo.” The holes in the plot could be measured in astronomical units. But I can’t stop watching. Send help.