Why Podcasting is the New Front for Political Engagement

Podcasting goes to Washington.

This is the future of podcasting, where we ponder what awaits the podcasters of today.

From the school of podcasting, here's Dave Jackson.

And from the Audacity to podcast, here's Daniel J.

Lewis.

Daniel, future of podcasting.

Episode 53, podcasting goes to Washington.

Or does it?

So what are we talking about today?

Throw the sirens, because we're hitting politics, but not like on a partisan way.

But certainly everyone's been talking about this lately, calling it even the podcasting election, which I wish I registered that domain first, but a friend of mine got it, so I'm okay with.

Doggone it.

Yeah, hate that.

But this was, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, far left, far right, far in, far out.

This was indeed the election where podcasting took center stage in many ways.

And that, I think, was really exciting and opens a whole new potential and a new audience to the world of podcasts and to the potential.

And it's got traditional mainstream media, I think, a little afraid, and they should be afraid, but I think it's exciting, too.

I need to go back and find it.

But a couple years ago, I did an episode, and I said, I think podcasting can beat mainstream media at their own game.

And this election, I was kind of like, ooh, I should have picked a lottery number that day.

I was pretty spot on on that.

And I know on the no Agenda show, Adam played a clip, and it was some news team trying to figure out what happened.

And we're not here to gloat, and we're not here to cry in our beer either.

Again, we're trying to keep this nonpartisan.

But it was interesting because they were kind of saying, look, we told everybody all the facts that we had, and it was, they did this and they did this, and why didn't they follow our advice and vote the way we wanted?

There's a great documentary called the Social Dilemma, and it talks about how if all you hear is blue or if all you hear is red, when you finally see somebody who has a difference opinion than yours, you're like, how can you even think that?

And so this was just a great example of them going, how did we lose?

Like, I don't get it, you know?

So it was really interesting to hear.

And to me, I didn't watch the Call Her Daddy episode.

I want to go back and watch it now, because that was the one that Harris chose to go to.

And Trump went to a couple.

Really.

Well, let's be a little more accurate here.

Harris didn't go to.

Oh, that's true.

They rebuilt the studio for Harris to do there.

Well, it's also, it's important because I heard that wasn't cheap to build.

And it shows how much it was important, which it's kind of odd.

Like it was important enough that they build a studio for it in the expense of that, but not important enough to travel.

I'm guessing there were security concerns or some other publicity or something like that that was beyond their realm.

And so they thought maybe it's just best if we just do this all here.

So that aside, it does show that it was clearly important to them, to both sides, that Trump did go to Joe Rogan and then Harris did basically build her own podcast studio.

Hey, maybe she should use it for other things.

But she built the studio to match the call her daddy.

And it shows that both of them recognize the value in the podcast conversations.

Yeah, the other thing I noticed, and this wasn't a podcast, there's a guy named Philip DeFranco who's a pretty popular YouTuber and he does a news show and he was at the Democratic convention and he was interviewing some senator.

And I think the senator was actually kind of happy to not be able to just speak in sound bites.

Like he was acting.

They were having an in depth conversation on policies and the effective policies and why this would work and maybe this wouldn't work.

So it was this in depth stuff.

And you could kind of tell whoever they were interviewing was like, oh, well, this is refreshing.

I don't have to talk in 10 second sound bites.

I am of the mind of, hey, just give the Americans and the rest of the world, give them the facts and let us make up our own minds.

That's how I wish it worked.

It's instead of everybody like, well, you should think this and this is horrible, or this is great in that whole nine yards.

So I kind of like it when you have these longer discussions.

And the other thing, everybody thinks Joe Rogan is a Republican.

And I remember when he interviewed Bernie Sanders and I was not at the time, I thought Bernie was this crazy socialist kind of guy.

And I heard him on Joe Rogan and I was like, I think I'm going to vote for this guy.

I love the fact that Bernie was like, oh yeah, presidential debates are a complete waste of time.

It's whoever has the best sound bite wins.

He goes, but you're not really learning anything about their policies and blah, blah.

And he just said a bunch of stuff.

And I was like, wow, this guy's totally transparent.

And then he dropped out of the.

Out of the race, unfortunately.

But I don't think that Joe's a Republican.

I think Joe is Joe, and he's going to go with whatever policy.

I always say when the guy you vote for is going to vote the way you would vote if you could vote in Congress or whatever, that's the guy you pick or the woman.

America is not a democracy.

It is a constitutional republic.

And republic is not for Republican, but it is.

We elect people to represent us.

It's not everything is voted by a democracy.

We do have democratic processes for certain things, and there are some democratic aspects to it, but we pick people who we trust to make the kinds of decisions we would make or we would want to be made on our behalf.

And that's very different for the United States.

And I know a couple of other countries and some places do it like that.

But I think especially when America was founded, that was like the whole concept of, hey, no taxation without representation, down with the British and all of that is that it wasn't no taxation, period.

It was, hey, if we're paying taxes, we want to make sure we got some representation in our government that we're paying taxes to.

And that's our system today.

And so to hear people talk like people, not always like politicians, I think is really appealing to the public because of bringing it back to this idea of we are electing people to represent our interests and to represent us.

So let's get to know the actual people and you can criticize the politicians for, hey, they didn't go on this podcast or that podcast, or they only chose podcasters who seem to be in line with their own politics and such.

And you know what?

I think that could actually be a good thing in many cases, because you look at, for example, when Harris was on Fox news for a 20 minute or so, it was a mess.

I think everyone pretty much agreed it was a mess because it was not friendly territory for either of them.

No.

And seeing dad and mom argue and, guys, can you just work it out?

Can you have a conversation?

So not a lot of actual conversation took place.

And maybe there was some certain strategy to that that Harris had with why she went on Fox and the strategy for the questions that Fox had for her.

But when Harris went on Call Her Daddy, where it was a podcast that was in line politically with her, then they didn't have to disagree.

They could talk about where they do agree and Harris could let down her hair, in a sense and just relax a little bit.

Knowing, hey, I'm with someone that agrees with me.

We can have a more casual conversation.

We can talk back and forth.

We can build on each other.

We don't have to try and prove each other wrong or get in a point or something like that.

Same thing like when Trump went on Joe Rogan.

And I know they don't agree on everything, but Rogan as just a person, not in political aspects.

Rogan is very good.

And having conversations with people he disagrees with, that's.

I think one of his things that has made him really successful is how good of a conversationalist he is, that he'll be talking to people on completely different sides of an issue, maybe one episode right after the other.

And yet he can have a super engaging conversation and a super respectful conversation with both of them in both episodes.

So to hear the politicians relax a little and just be humans and talk with friends, almost in a way or sound like they're talking with friends and having the kind of conversation like, if you could sit down with a politician and talk through some of these things, this is what your conversation might look like.

I think that was fantastic for America to see.

And it reminds me of, well, Obama was the first sitting president, I believe, to go on a podcast as a guest.

George W.

Bush had the first podcast as a president.

But Obama went on Marc Maron's show WTF as a guest.

And it was a good conversation that he had with Marc Maron, and it was good to see a conversation like that.

You can't get that from mainstream media because mainstream media has the clock.

They have the advertisers.

They are limited in how much time they have to edit things down.

There are certain things that just cannot be said on broadcast television, but that can be said in podcasts.

The part of the Trump interview I liked is when Joe brought up the whole, I lost the election.

And so Trump kind of went into his typical jargon, and Joe's like, hold on, give me an example of one of these things that you're saying happened.

Like, you know, and kind of very politely just kind of pushed back on him, and he started to give some stuff.

And I was like, oh, well, that's interesting.

Why hasn't that been talked about?

So I thought that was interesting.

And just talking about dialogues.

I'm not a huge fan of Bill Maher, but he'll have somebody on and want to hear.

So I saw that Bill Maher was having Ben Shapiro.

So Bill Maher is pretty far left and an atheist talking to Ben Shapiro, who's really right.

And Jewish.

And I'm like, well, this is going to be interesting.

And I love the whole thing because at some point, they were actually kind of poking fun at their differences without saying, oh, well, you're an idiot.

And there were times when I forget what the one topic was.

And Bill said, we're not even going to talk about this because that's going to lead us nowhere.

Because he knew, look, Ben's not going to convince me to his opinion, and I'm not going to change his mind either, so what's the point?

And they just talked about the things they kind of agreed on.

And Bill had his opinion on the whole Israel situation right now.

And it was just really interesting to hear people go, well, I see your point of view, but.

And then they would give a different one, and they just had this dialogue.

And I was like, wow, I remember when people used to do this.

An actual dialogue.

So that's another thing.

I think we're podcasting Wins.

And the other one is.

And I'll give Jen Briney, she doesn't do this a lot, but Jen Briney from congressionaldish.com and she basically reads the bills that go through.

She talks a lot about what Congress is doing.

And I remember I listened to an episode and she did her little opening.

She said, hey, I want to start off.

I have to retract something from what I said in my last episode.

And that.

And it wasn't even.

I was like, she messed up and said somebody was from North Carolina when they were from South Carolina or something, whatever it was, but something that the audience was like, hey, that's not right.

And so she retracted it.

And I was like, I can't remember the last time I've heard anybody.

Whether it's, you know, news on tv, a newspaper, or nothing, nobody ever says, hey, we were wrong.

We got that one wrong.

And if they did.

Because if you think about the things that people were saying was the truth at the beginning of the pandemic.

And we found out much later that, yeah, they were way off base on that, but yet we never heard any network say, yeah, we got that one wrong.

We were kind of in a rush to get the facts and kind of missed that one.

And I think that's another one where I think podcasters.

Because as much as we are the host and we're the head of the show or whatever, I think most of us feel like we're in a partnership with the audience.

Yeah.

And we're leading the discussion.

But it is that It's a discussion where I think mainstream media is just like, oh, well, we're here to tell you the facts as we see them.

And we're not really interested in what you have to say.

I don't know.

And it's that as we see them, that is a very heavy, big thing that a lot of people don't realize, and you touched on this earlier, too, that a lot of time we're really arguing about interpretations.

We're not actually arguing about facts.

An illustration that I love to use for this because I'm very familiar with this industry in this field is the field of creation versus evolution.

Most people think that creationists have their little evidences and evolutionists have their little evidences, and the two never cross over.

But people don't realize, no, they're actually arguing over the same evidences.

Creationists argue that rock layers are evidence of creation and a global flood.

Evolutionists argue that rock layers are evidence of.

Of millions of years of evolution.

Creationists argue that fossils are evidence of creation.

Evolutionists argue fossils are evidence of evolution.

So they're really arguing over the same facts, but different interpretations of them.

And those different interpretations come from our starting points, our belief systems about the world, our worldview, a whole bunch of stuff like that.

It can just come down to as simple as, do you believe that XYZ is good or bad?

If yes, then you are going to treat that fact very differently and interpret a certain fact very differently than something else.

If you say that, hey, people who have pineapple on pizza, since pineapple on pizza is evil, therefore anyone who likes pineapple on pizza is the devil.

Well, you're just being consistent with your starting point, your belief system.

It is not a fact that people who eat pineapple on pizza are the devil.

That's an interpretation, starting from your starting point, your worldview.

And other people will think, no, this is fine.

I love pineapple on pizza and I know that I'm not the devil.

So, no, you're wrong and I'm right.

You're just arguing over interpretations.

But when you can have a conversation about things more, and not so much focusing on a presentation, but the discussion, that's when you can get those multiple sides of the same issue.

Or like some people have described blind people feeling an elephant and describing different parts.

You know, I feel a big floppy thing.

I must be touching a big tree with a giant leaf.

And someone else says, I feel something that's.

It's the stump of a tree.

And someone else says, I think I feel a snake here.

And it's got this giant mouth on the end of it sucking up peanuts from the ground.

And they're describing the same thing, but from different perspectives.

Podcasting gives the opportunity for people to sit down, be casual and conversational, and let their hair down, so to speak, and just talk through these things and be challenged.

Like Joe Rogan.

Challenging.

Well, hey, wait a minute, what are you talking about there?

Give me some specific examples, that kind of thing.

I wish reporters would do that more often.

And maybe some of that is because they just don't have the time to ask that stuff.

Or maybe some of those questions had to be edited out for the sake of time.

Sometimes I also think it's the whole echo chamber thing or their biases that they don't think of those certain questions and such.

And that's where you have to look at both sides and alternative media and such to be able to find someone who is asking those questions of those people.

It's great to see the gentle pushing and the challenging and the, hey, do you really mean it that way?

Or, hey, you know what?

The way you said that just sounded.

Do you realize how that sounded?

That sounded like this.

Is that the way you meant it?

And someone could say, well, no, that's not the way I meant it.

I meant it this way.

But I can see how you might understand it that way.

So you can really start to understand people on a human level.

And that's what's so great about podcasting, is that I think it makes that human relatability so much more accessible to more people.

I thought it was interesting.

I went to Twitter, but I wasn't logged in.

And it's a completely different experience if you're not logged in.

Oh, yeah.

And as you might imagine, one of the top tweets was from Elon, but he had been.

He was talking to somebody on the BBC, and they said, well, you know, since you've bought this, hate speech has been on the rise on X.

And Elon said, okay, but can you give me an example of the hate speech?

And he said, well, there was this one guy voicing an opinion.

It was basically, he didn't like the opinion.

And there was another one that he voiced.

And he goes.

He goes, but that's not hate speech.

You hate his opinion, but it's not hate speech.

Can you give me an example of hate speech?

And it was interesting watching this guy because he didn't have one.

So for me, I was like, that's an interesting argument.

I was like, I might have to use that Strategy in the future, just go, can you give me an example of one?

So that's kind of interesting to me.

I think we could get more listeners, viewers to podcasts that are hearing about what's a Call me Daddy.

What are they talking about?

And like, oh, I'm going to have to go check this out.

So anytime you get a big guest on your show, that might lead somebody to.

To listen, I think that's a bonus.

And so I'll be interested to see if we keep some of those new listeners.

And on the other hand, this might inspire some people to actually start a podcast and do it seriously.

And you talked about reporters.

Do you have an I team?

I know you're in Cincinnati, I'm in Akron.

We have the I team, special investor Carl Somebody, and he investigated the local guy and he's corrupt and blah, blah, blah.

And I'm like, oh, wow, look, somebody's doing some reporting.

I remember when, you know, if you think about it, all the, you know, our top story tonight was handed to me by some guy who got it from a big company who gave it to all the other big companies, you know, all the media things.

There's really not a lot of reporting except for Carl and the I team.

If you've been treated badly by a company, call Carl and the I team and they'll come and investigate and tell that guy to give you your money back.

But there's really not a lot of investigating.

Although I have heard mainstream media quote Twitter as a source.

You know, a man on Twitter said this or that.

But one of the things I think as podcasters we should do is a always cite our sources and then be open to the other side, like any time.

It's fairly well known.

I'm not a fan of Spotify, and if I really do go on a rant about why, I will just say, well, because they've done this in the past.

They've done this in the past.

I don't like the way they handle this, and I don't like the way they handle that.

If you really need a free media host, go see Red Circle.

But I always kind of quote wine.

I'm always waiting for somebody.

I always try to create an environment.

If somebody goes, hey, I'm on Spotify for whatever they're calling it this week.

And I think this and this, and I'm always willing to listen.

And I think that's.

I think podcasters are much more open to having some sort of dialogue because, again, we want to set up the buffet of knowledge and Let our audience figure out what's the truth, and we're going to present the truth as we see it.

But I think we are much more open to going, oh, I never thought of that particular angle.

And if someone wanted to set up that buffet for their own audience, Dave, where should they go?

That would be the school of podcasting.com and, you know, if I wanted a way to interact and build engagement with my audience and maybe grow the connection there.

If only there was a tool for that.

Daniel, do you know of any tools that might boost.

Yeah, that would be Pod Gauge Calm think podcast engagement, podgagement.com with now rankings and chart tracking features included.

Check it out over at Pod gauge.

Com.

This was not a dynamically inserted ad.

Yes, organic.

The other thing I thought was funny was apparently nobody cares what celebrities say.

And in some cases, we're kind of ignoring the mainstream media and looking towards podcasts.

Why do you think that, you know, mainstream is kind of losing their hold?

Well, I think some of it is the echo chamber effect, where people who follow or are big fans of certain celebrities are probably already going to lean a certain way or define celebrity however you want.

Whether it's a media personality, actor, actress, or television star, musician, anything like that, they're probably already leaning a certain way.

I would love to think that there's some critical thinking on some of the audience's part.

There are many jokes to be made about stuff like Taylor Swift, who has made her career of writing music, about her bad choices in men, should be trusted about her choice in politicians.

Or we could say so, and so is an actor.

They get paid to act genuine about certain things.

So can we really believe whatever they're saying away from the camera?

Is it truly their own opinion?

It's hard to really say.

I would love to think that people are thinking more critically about some of that stuff.

I don't know if they are.

But I think it's also gotten to the point that some people maybe are just no longer looking at it as just, what does someone else say?

But more, what do I think about what that politician is saying?

What have I heard?

What is my own experience?

And yes, still a lot of that is highly subjective.

It can be subjective based on your upbringing, your belief system, now where you live, even, like, you look at the map of the counties that went majority for Trump versus majority for Harris, and it's very predictable almost every year which side is going to go red and which side is blue and such.

But these kinds of things can be challenged by what we have in the podcasting world that while podcasting is still relatively free of censorship and think of not only just in censorship of political ideas, but also corporate censorship or even just, we could call it moral censorship, which, like you think about what is allowed on television.

Well, a lot of stuff is moral censorship.

There are certain words you can't say on broadcast television or radio.

There are certain things you cannot show in broadcast television or radio or can't talk about, regardless of the morality of it.

But some of it is just like, is it appropriate for children or is this appropriate to be broadcasting out to the world, stuff like that?

Well, in podcasting, as we've seen Edison research show multiple times, is people tend to self select and therefore choose their own kind of censorship, or lack thereof if they want to.

And that's what's so great about podcasting, is that if you want a comedy podcast that never has bad words, is never sexually explicit, there are clean comedy podcasts out there and some really good ones out there.

If you want the raunchiest kind of podcast you want, you can get.

There are podcasts out there for that.

If you want far left political opinions or far right far in, far out, you can get podcasts in whichever direction you want.

It can be good to consume, even from multiple sides, if you can stomach it.

You know, don't cause yourself stress or a hernia.

But it can be good to hear some of these things, especially when there is some of that crossover, like when you said Bill Maher and Ben Shapiro, who are like polar opposites, when they could sit down and have a conversation.

One of the things that.

That just shows, since I know nothing about the conversation that took place, but that shows a certain level of maturity for both of those people that they were willing to have that conversation knowing how polar opposite the other person was and how the conversation could go in front of their audiences.

Basically that's Bill was sitting there and Ben walks in and he goes, I really can't believe you're here.

And they both are just like, let's see what happens.

You know, like, nobody's going to punch anybody.

So we're okay.

Yeah, so it was really interesting.

I was trying to think earlier, like, when did I stop watching?

Because I used to wake up, make my breakfast and sit in front of the TV and watch the news.

And I haven't done that in a very.

It's one of those times when you think it's like two years and it's probably more like six.

And it dawned on me there was one where it just seemed like at least once a week, like it's going to happen.

It will happen very soon if it hasn't happened already.

Where a major story will be the Starbucks holiday cup and what's on it and what it says.

Does it say Merry Christmas?

Does it say holiday?

Is it red?

Is it?

It doesn't matter, because in the end, I think the general public now realizes, hey, that's an ad.

Like, quit trying to tell us that's news.

That's an ad.

And the other one was, I remember once on the Cleveland channel, the main anchor guy in the morning was marrying somebody, like they had a wedding.

And I'm like, wait, you're making the news now?

And then it was so obvious.

It's like, oh, yes, her dress was from Debbie's Bridal on 5th and 12th, and then the flowers.

And it was just this giant list of sponsors.

And I was like, are you going to tell me there's nothing going on somewhere that we shouldn't be knowing about?

But half the thing was like, here's the weather and the traffic and here's Wayne marrying Debbie and Bill or whatever.

And I was like, okay, I think I'm done.

This is ridiculous.

And you look at the media consumption habits of those different platforms and even just the nature of the distribution, like broadcast television and radio, you tune in and you get whatever they're giving you at that moment, and you're at their mercy for whatever song they play, whatever news they tell.

And people will come and go in the middle of a broadcast.

And so that's why they have to reset so much.

That's why they have to reintroduce their guests so much and why they have to recap and why they have to keep things short.

That doesn't happen with podcasts.

Well, it can, because people can pause an episode and go do something and maybe pause for days and come back, but even if they do that, they still have a lot of context simply by pressing that play button.

They probably see the COVID art, they probably see the title of the podcast, they probably see the title of the episode, maybe a little bit more information about that and maybe even just recognizing the voice, hearing the voice again, because it seems people recognize podcaster voices better than TV news personalities.

A lot of that leads to these mental cues that help you jump right back in where you left off mentally.

You can have the long form conversations and you can follow the long form conversations.

Often because of the nature of podcasting and even non podcast platforms like YouTube and I will call it A non podcast platform because I like being controversial like that, even stuff like that.

People don't just jump in in the middle, they are choosing to listen.

They have many visual cues of the context.

And also speaking about context, much of the context is focused on only that one thing.

Because many of the times the people making that content know I've got lots of time to share everything I want to cover.

I don't have to be talking about this one thing.

While all of these things, the lower thirds are telling you 20 other news stories and then we've got upper thirds telling you 20 other news stories.

And then when we've got stock tickers on the left side and news tickers, crypto tickers on the right side and the weather forecast on the bottom left, and then you've got the sports news on the right and all of this stuff like coming at you at the same time.

But in a podcast.

It's like one stream of thought, my friend.

Yeah, I remember I've only been on TV once.

It was on a local NBC station on, you know, the shows they show on Sunday morning that nobody's watching because nobody's up early.

And it was Golden Opportunities was the name of the show.

And it was, Dave was on in his suit to explain for seniors what is a podcast and how do you listen.

And it was a four minute segment and you know, they called and talked to me and then they called me again.

Okay, you're going to be on the show.

Here are the questions you're going to ask and make sure your answers are no longer than three minutes total and have them ready and blah, blah, blah.

And it was so, it really was almost like a play.

Scene one, Dave is introduced and then asked this question.

And then, and it was like, it was fun and it was neat and there was a lot of adrenaline flowing.

But in the end I was like, this is really not a conversation.

This is, and I assume every Tonight show appearance when they're like, so heard you went on vacation to Vermont last week.

You know, well, you know, it's just this.

And then you have the fun little story and then it's roll the clip and let's talk about the movie and that whole nine yards.

So I think again, that is something that if I'm doing an interview, I'll let them know why I brought them on and I'll give them the idea of the topics.

But I don't like to give them the question unless it's something like what's your favorite book?

Where they really want to take a second to think about it.

So I think that's another one where podcasting is just.

If it's edited, because we're all going to go places where we go that didn't work.

But if it's edited but yet still has that kind of.

I think you said it earlier, it's calm.

You know what I mean?

It's just a conversation.

There's no real.

It's relaxed, and we're just having a conversation, and what comes out comes out, and in the end, you go, oh, I didn't know that.

So I think we're going to beat them at their own game.

Unless they figure out that nobody's listening anymore and they should probably change by now.

Or when they figure out how to use Google Notebook lm.

Kyle and Sheila, strap in and take a deep dive into whatever it is.

Yeah, that's always fun.

Well, Daniel, I don't think we got any boost to Graham, so thanks to everyone who's been streaming to the show.

We do deeply appreciate that, and I think that's going to do it for episode 53 of the Future of podcasting.

Thanks so much for listening.

Keep boosting, Keep podcasting and have a happy Thanksgiving.