The Debate: Are there too many podcasts?
We’ve all thought it. Now let’s ask it. Are there too many podcasts? Our Jack Mendel goes to head to head with podcast-producer Stuart Thomson
The Debate: Are there too many podcasts?
Yes: Go outside and have a conversation IRL instead
Podcasts majorly took off in the heat of the pandemic, when we were locked up inside, and unable to socialise as normal.
Thankfully that’s no longer the case: we can all meet up with our friends once more, and stop listening to Steven Bartlett tell us how perfect his life is. Our lives might not be perfect – but hey at least they’re real.
Podcasts are not in-and-of-themselves bad. I listen to one or two myself, mainly educational ones.
But the sheer number of podcasts, particularly on the news (please no more Amol Rajan, I beg you), football, sport in general and ‘wellness’, is enough to make anyone want to feel like they’ve been hit by a tidal wave when they never even wanted to get anywhere near a beach.
Worse, these days podcasts are at least one quarter advertisements – and why are they all for Betterhelp? Surely not everyone needs therapy?
Unlike Twitter/X where people’s views can be challenged, hour-long streams of consciousness every day, are repetitive, unstimulating, boring and – more dangerously – encourage groupthink.
There are too many narcissists who’ve mic’d up and decided they are experts in their field, and that everyone should listen to them, all the time.
This very large grey and boring (usually male) podcast monolith now exists, but it is declining.
One reporter noted online that in 2021, nearly 750,000 new podcasts were created. This was more than all new podcasts created during 2022, 2023, and so far in 2024 combined.
The market is saturated and people are getting bored with it, finally. Go and discuss things with actual people instead.
Jack Mendel is assistant digital editor at City PM
No: Who could possibly become the arbiter of pods?
There is no such thing as too many podcasts. It is all about providing choice and competition, and what gives anyone the right to put themselves forward as an arbiter of what podcasts should or should not be published?
There will always be room for the blockbuster The Rest Is… type pods alongside those which explore more niche interests that may attract only a handful of listeners. But those types of pods can be important to that small group (hands up: I run the Public Affairs in Practice podcast).
Producing a podcast isn’t always about securing a large number of listeners or generating ad revenue. It can be about fandom, showing support, connecting people and sharing new perspectives. They can be personal or professional. People and companies start podcasts to build reputations, show their expertise and win business. Which of these would be stopped?
The danger in limiting podcasts is that the market simply becomes dominated by big communications brands and celebs. Real and authentic voices would never have the chance to thrive under those conditions. Diversity would be lost or curtailed, and the variety of podcast formats reduced. Podcasts would become bland, generic, beige blancmanges.
A thriving community of pods opens opportunities for learning. It allows different formats to be explored and diverse voices empowered because they can be produced cost-effectively. Podcasts democratise communications. Taking democracy away is always dangerous and counterproductive.
If people don’t want to listen, then they won’t listen. But that does not mean they should be stopped from producing them. If anything, there should be more podcasts, not fewer.
Stuart Thomson is host of the Public Affairs in Practice podcast
The Verdict: Pause The News Agents and say ‘hello’ to the world
Podcasts have been criticised from many quarters over the past five or so years. They are annoying, full of adverts and self-help tips as Mendel points out, or they are responsible for people wafting through places and inevitably stepping into oncoming traffic.
Thomson is right that podcasts can connect people with like-minded spirits purely through the gifts afforded by self publishing (and the comparably lower effort, time and money required to make a ‘pod’, compared to – say – books).
But Mendel is not wrong to say that leaves us cowering under an ever-growing mound of podcasts, many of which – let’s be honest – are trash. His point that having the often male, the often pale, the sometimes stale, voices droning on in your ear during any conceivable minute of the day can be damaging is astute. Receiving too many ideas from other people (or another person) can numb people’s brains. It prevents people thinking for themselves, or – as he says – talking to other people. After all, the other option is not necessarily silence (though perhaps we should become more comfortable with the sound of nothing). Happily though, the public forum is not dead and buried yet. So go on – pause the pod and strike up a convo with a neighbour. We dare you.