Posts Tagged → outlet
What makes a good podcast
Podcasts are such a hot thing right now, and have been since the 2020 covid plandemic, that even people employed in the mainstream media are trying their hand at it. Part of the draw is cache, like la la I have a podcast, as though it confers personal specialiness and high intelligence, and the other part of it has to do with simple reach and monetary remuneration.
Everyone who thinks they are someone, or who wants to be a someone, “has” a podcast.
Podcasts are a big net benefit to the world, to humans, to public policy debates, to the spread of ideas (good and bad), information (good and bad). Podcasts have democratized the spread and flow of opinions (artful and bluntly foolish), and have drawn a lot of disenfranchised people, people dejected by the low quality of ubiquitous legacy mainstream media, back into the public marketplace of ideas and news information.
American culture and politics are arguably now informed more by podcasts than by corporate establishment outlets.
Since 2020, when the world was largely locked down and stuck inside, podcasts became the latest and greatest information outlet. Doctors sitting in their living rooms, describing in detail how their hospital administration had politicized their treatment of covid patients, covid survivors, parents finally seeing for the first time the utter slop being served up as “public education” by the politicized teachers’ unions, you name it, podcasts became the end-run around the censorship-industrial machine weaponized against We, The People by the legacy media, Big Tech, and the installed Big Brother Biden Admin.
The dam had to break, the river had to find its level, and the podcast world was the most creative way for people with information that countered the brazen lies of Doctor Mengele Fauci to feel heard. And so it was with people sick and tired of the establishment lies and narrative about covid, which was more about controlling people than it was about public health.
And now that a bazillion people have jumped into podcasting since 2020, a Jurassic-level leveling is taking place. No, no metaphoric meteor is streaking towards Podcast World, ready to hit the Yucatan square on its nose and re-assemble all podcast life on our planet. But simple market forces are beginning to play out. Some people, who had made a big name for themselves during the covid plandemic and the Biden years, are now struggling to find their place in podcasting. Others took a few Tucker Carlson punches to the head and fell down, only to climb back up and give Tucker a few in the kisser himself, and now he is fallen.
Point being that actual marketplace dynamics are determining the success or failure of the podcast world. Supply and demand, risk and reward, appear to be the main arbiters of a podcaster’s success.
Unlike the legacy mainstream media, which has long been propped up by one political party and its constellation of funders and, really, political donors. Market forces only lately seem to have become a factor in the staying power and eyeball presence of partisan mainstream media outlets like CNN, CBS, NPR, the Washington Post, the New York Times. Slowly, the water falls into the cracks, freezes, expands, and widens the cracks over at the MSM. But the cracks are becoming more apparent.
So what makes a good podcast? Here are some of my filters, or requirements, that keep me returning to a podcast:
- Knowledgeable and experienced hosts. Twenty-something-year-old podcasters may be cute, they may be smart, but honestly, these people have no real life experience that I can look to in order to trust and value their opinions. Alternatively, highly experienced adults who have maybe failed here or there in their adult career, now these people intrigue me the most. They are grounded in reality, and nothing trains like pain. I will spend my precious time listening to someone who has learned some tough life lessons, and is sharing them. Alternatively, I cannot spend my precious time listening to or watching someone who merely represents my own methodology or values. This is where political/ religious/ cultural ideology is least important.
- Smart, incisive, witty commentary is a must. Simply reciting a litany of complaints or critiques should be insufficient for every prospective listener who values their own time. Humor goes a long way with this listener.
- Understandable, measured cadence in delivery. One famous podcaster is smart and knowledgable, sometimes witty, but he speaks so damned fast I cannot understand what he says half the time. It is almost physically impossible to listen to such a person.
- Creative and able to link the mundane to the big picture. A great deal of podcasting is simply evaluating and relating news events through the eye of the podcast host, and their simple blunt reactions / analysis are not (or should not) suffice to get your attention. Looking for the meta-link between small facts on the ground and bigger body politic ripple effect is the sign of a true analyst. Someone who adds real value to our understanding of current events.
So, yeah, I thought we were done with the podcast thing a few days ago, but it is such a big and timely subject that this part of the discussion had to be addressed. Because Google / YouTube so aggressively censored political and cultural ideas that its far left staff did not like, Rumble became the go-to place for intellectual refugees. Give it a shot.
National Democrats: “Burn down America”
Yesterday I got my teeth cleaned at a local dentistry office. Same place I have gone for about twenty years.
The dentist-in-charge is a gay woman and liberal, but as human chemistry proves once again, opposites attract and despite our differences, we enjoy each other’s company. We are due to have a dinner date to hash out our political views (her idea). I think she is terribly naive and uninformed. She thinks I am a childish Neanderthal upset over someone bumping my tricycle (her words).
After all the cleaning was done by the hygienist, and the cursory inspection for cancer etc was done by the dentist, we immediately got into our usual political discussion.
“Have you not seen the video of corrupt Joe Biden bragging about interfering in Ukraine’s politics to protect his son from being investigated with Burisma?” I asked her.
“No, I have not seen that,” she admitted.
“But then again, I don’t watch Fox News,” she tossed in, as if the sole and only source of non-leftist political narrative is somehow bad and unworthy.
And also, it seems that to her, something factual and important is unworthy if it is available from an outlet she simply dislikes. Does this make sense to you? It can’t make sense, because things are either factual or they are not factual.
I don’t watch any cable news/ TV, so I don’t watch Fox News, either. But I do avidly seek all kinds of information across the Internet every day, from all kinds of sources. Sometimes Fox News pops up as a source, and usually other outlets are the source, including political activism outlets like BBC and NPR.
But let’s face it, whatever big array of news/political outlets the dentist lady is watching or listening to, they form a huge echo chamber into which nothing different or contrary can enter. Against that huge array stands Fox News, Breitbart, TheGatewayPundit, and a few other places that Google tries to prevent people from locating.
What strikes me about this discussion between me and the dentist is how it is a microcosm of greater America’s current politics and debate. America is as polarized now as it has ever been before, some saying like before the Civil War, and while I enjoy blaming the Republican Party for anything they have done wrong, the truth is that the national Democrat Party is simply waging an all-out war for political control. Or to blunt someone else’s control.
The national Democrat Party is going to tear our national fabric and basically burn down America.
With their sham-peachment (a fake show-impeachment with no due process and that is based on political differences, not illegal behavior) of the deservedly very popular president, the congressional Democrats are willing to damage America’s robust economy, America’s overall happy sense that our nation is on a good trajectory, and our political fabric. America’s political fabric is strong, but it can be torn, as we have seen in the past.
And America’s political fabric is what makes America so special. It is the unique glue that binds us all together, both the liberal lesbian dentist and the conservative NRA Life small business owner who gets his dentistry done by the liberal lesbian dentist. Together. Americans both. But in this current political abuse and over-reach, America runs the risk of being badly damaged, to the point where people begin to ask openly if we can all live with one another. It sure seems like one side is demanding all kinds of harsh societal controls and limits on individual freedom, which by definition is going to push other Americans up against a wall.
The national Democrat Party bears all of the blame and responsibility for the negative environment we are in, as does the national establishment media, which is openly an arm of the national Democrat Party. With the one exception of Fox News, America’s media are overwhelmingly partisan political activists, cheerfully mis-reporting lies and burying inconvenient facts, in order to sustain a political narrative that helps the Democrats and hurts the Republicans.
And so long as Americans like my lesbian dentist are unwilling to listen to new information, and allow themselves to be used like puppets, this divide will only deepen and the national Democrat Party will be encouraged to burn down America in order to prevent someone else from controlling it.
In the spirit of much-needed spirit-lightening political humor, here is a meme I did from my discussion with Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Wolf (D) yesterday. People who have seen it cannot believe it. We actually did share some laughs (and yes, I am desperately in need of a haircut, or rather, a shearing like sheep get). Enjoy:
