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Posts Tagged → clicks

August 27th, 2026

The last bit about podcasting, honestly, I promise

Different readers provide comments here differently. Some send an email, which is fine, when the comment is substantive and or constructive criticism. I like those. This blog’s spam filters are set pretty tight, so to comment here, a reader has to really, really want to say something. I do not filter for content, unless it is egregiously vile, or dumb. People can disagree with my views, I am fine with that. And I can be persuaded about some issues.

So we got an emailed comment about this podcast business from a reader, in a distant state, who has himself had a couple podcasts. He (“AB”) points out that podcasting can be done with just as much disregard for the business end of it, as this blog has. Podcasting is a simple outlet for many people, just as basic writing here on this simple blog is important for me. His email is below.

And I would add that plenty of financially successful podcasts, now big money makers, many with celebrity authors, started out this way. Like some frustrated observer in a distant city, unable to get through to City Hall about some pedestrian issue, who then launches beautiful broadsides and tirades about the official inadequacies in City Hall. Which then harvests some inside information from disgruntled workers inside City Hall, and then becomes the second and then ongoing subject of subsequent podcasts. With ever growing public attention. And public pressure on City Hall.

This mythical podcaster then finds her- or himself suddenly providing an alternative voice for the other citizens suffering at the hands of City Hall’s corrupt or incompetent or lazy bureaucrats. This “voice” does an end run around the local mainstream media, which is like 98% of establishment media and, therefore, incurious, narrative focused, partisan, and on the side of established power, not with the citizens.

And the rest becomes history, as it is said: Plenty of now famous podcasters got their start in a garage, or in their car, or in a local park, ranting about real issues that the mainstream media outlets refused to touch. They found their voice, found or grew their issues, found and grew their message and audience, and voila, they quit their day job and have a podcast show. Making money from “clicks” on the internet and the rest of that related business churn. Rebel News comes to mind.

The biggest challenge seems to be what to do when it is not an election year, or Donald Trump is not on the ballot, or the news cycle is not on fire. Then the podcaster’s skill is really tested. In the past week I have tried listening to a couple different TimCast IRL, with Tim Pool off the air and on vacation and his gang running the show, and it is unbearable to me. It is like listening to a group of high school boys talk about Big Ideas. Just stupid. Sorry, Tim, sorry guys.

AB: “A few thoughts about your podcast post. I have had a podcast for the past several years and I had one with my wife in the mid 2000s. If you are going ahead and making that your major focus and where you are making it, as Sherlock Holmes once said, your bread and cheese, then you do have to concern yourself with clicks, downloads, sponsors. etc. At that point you also start getting into the audience capture problem where you just perform or take a point of view because that’s what your audience expects.

However, if you are doing the podcast just because you like the medium and don’t care about the stats or getting paid, then it’s a fun hobby. If you do it in the traditional podcast format (no video) then the overhead is almost nothing, just a good microphone and a quiet place to record. Just a few things to think about.”
And there we have it, the last word on this podcasting business, here, anyhow. Thank you, AB.
By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
August 26th, 2026

Podcasting’s dark side

The other reason I do not have a podcast, is that podcasting has a dark side. And while I may have an occasional “dark side” myself, I neither need any new ones nor do I want this particular extra one added to my already cumbersome burden (hello, this is called self-deprecating humor, something the folks in Rio Linda may not always catch).

Here’s the thing about podcasting: To succeed, you must devote yourself brilliantly, daily, and even then chase clicks. Most of us are not brilliant, nor can we afford to quit our day job to fully implement a podcast, and so that leaves just the click chasing. Or, as many podcasters who now have opened up a clear view into their own dark side, as is pretty commonly called, they/ you / the aspiring podcaster becomes a “click whore.”

In other words, to aggregate as many internet “clicks” as possible, a podcaster must throw a pretty wide net. This wide net requires the aspiring click whore to essentially bite the heads off of chickens, live (the podcaster, not the chicken, which becomes dead), on air. Yes, the old freak show stunt of biting a head off of a live chicken is perhaps just a teensy exaggeration here, but it is a sad fact that in order to attract and hold viewers, the successful podcaster must really stand out in a crowd. Daily.

As Jim Seif, the former secretary of PA DEP, said in a hearing back in 1998, after taking the podium from the sixth speaker before him, “I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s seventh husband. I know what to do, I am just not sure I know how to make it exciting.”

Great line, and I have used it several times myself, including on September 11, 2001, when I had just begun giving testimony in a Pennsylvania House hearing on land conservation. Moments later the 9/11 jihadi terror planes began crashing in NYC and DC and Flight 93 hit in rural PA, and everyone in the room was spared my own attempt to make the same warmed over fare seem appetizing, if not exciting. We were evacuated from the PA Capitol as I was in mid speech. Oh, my fortunate audience…

Anyhow, podcasters who have survived six months at it know that they must make the mundane seem exciting, or they must begin breaking taboos and saying naughty no-no things. All of it exciting, yes, until all those live chicken heads inside their stomach begin pecking away, trying to get out. The pressure to perform well enough to draw an audience every day results in some podcasters making nutty claims, and then doing mental backflips and wild leaps of logic to try and keep the whole dog and pony show going. They go nuts.

This dynamic is what destroyed Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens’ podcast careers, and Nick Fuentes has the rest of the same type of podcast listeners, who must also do hits of meth and huffing spray paint while nodding along with whatever repetitive thing he is saying that day.

As a podcaster, you will always find an audience, and some audiences are made of either really bored or simplistic individuals. Many podcasters have an audience of fifty, some get to fifty thousand. To get beyond that number, and thus begin to get enough clicks to make a living, well, you gotta be like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s seventh husband and perform like a porn star, every night.

Most normal people cannot or will not do this. I am not normal, but neither will I attempt to bend myself into a pretzel shape in order to chase clicks.

Oh, the irony that the ideologically rich and fabulously diverse ecosystem of podcastistan is ruled by such a hard iron rule! Would it not be somewhat of a relief to be a mainstream media personality, and have an incurious audience, or a dumb audience, or, in the case of CNN, almost no audience? So much easier!

This is the life of, say, George Stephanopoulos at ABC. He is an openly politically partisan activist, masquerading as a “news reporter.” He is not a fair-minded arbiter of accuracy or facts, and his audience would fade away were he to become such a person. No chicken head biting or dog and pony show for George Stephanopoulos. Just rote activism, day in and day out. Same boring narrative (“Donald Trump bad, Democrats good“), every day.

But it was this very vacuousness that created podcastistan!

It was the ABC News / mainstream media’s failure to address real substance, or to use accuracy and real facts, and its nonstop political partisanship, that drove thinking Americans away from the legacy media outlets in the first place. And it is this market failure of the mainstream media that is causing parent companies to turn over, say, CBS, to new editors, in the hope of breathing new life into the dead body.

See? There is no easy answer to this podcast thing. To jump into it, you must have something of value to say and the ability to say it in an engaging way. To get an initial audience started and then held, you have to hit the ground running hard. And to then maintain and grow your audience, you must have greatly incisive wit and glowing personality, as well as either a whole roost of chickens or a three ring circus full of dogs and ponies.

Yes, podcasters are better people than the George Stephanopolusususes of the world, but eventually the line between them can become thin, if one is not careful. Or one can become dark, and break taboos, and say naughty no-no things that hurt people, because stimulating a particular audience’s otherwise hidden sadism streak is all ya got left.

So no, no podcasting for ol’ Josh. Nope. None of it is appealing to me, though I do enjoy listening to some podcasts, here and there.

Thanks for being here and listening!

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment