We've got to talk about podcasters
Welcome to The Ellen Experience
I’ve always been so curious about how historians will look back on this generation. If the internet is still around in thousands of years, then they will be able to paint a pretty insane picture of what we were doing in the 2020s.
Maybe they’ll reframe YouTube boxing as jousting for honour or Elon Musk as the modern-day Oliver Cromwell, a puppet master of the masses. Or maybe there will be a Great Reset and all digital information will be lost, and historians will be left scrabbling to translate ‘Skibidi Toilet Rizz’ graffiti and catalogue all the Funko Pops that will never decompose.
Whatever happens, it’s safe to say that we are in an age where celebrities and influencers are the mouthpieces of our generation. The medium of the podcast has seen impressive growth considering our attention spans are shorter than ever. Joe Rogan’s Spotify-exclusive gammon-fest often exceeds three hours in runtime, and he boasts 2,200 episodes with over 200 million monthly downloads. Lord knows how the man still has things to say, never mind that people are listening… but more on that later.
Podcasting is a huge field, and one I personally enjoy — but in this week’s newsletter, I wanted to focus on a very specific area of the medium that is starting to bleed into other social media platforms, and it’s worrying me.
It’s all about the influence of podcasters, and their true intentions and, ultimately, the lack of accountability for the information they spread and the damage it does.
Last week, the below clip from Paul C Brunson’s We Need To Talk podcast was circulating on Instagram. Brunson, who markets himself as a relationship coach, is one of three on the panel of the controversial Channel 4 dating show Married at First Sight, which, it’s worth mentioning, has cast multiple known abusers as spouses in recent years.
The clip is an out-of-context snippet of an interview with Ashley Cain, a reality TV star and former footballer (thanks, Wikipedia).
Cain blathers on about an attack on masculinity and masculine energy - but brings no evidence to support his claims of the suppressed man. (I point you toward the old adage: “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.")
As always in this newsletter, I ask you to approach this critically. Brunson’s team purposefully cut this line of dialogue to post as an Instagram Reel knowing fine well it would cause a stir.
I haven’t listened to the full episode (obviously), but in this clip, it doesn’t appear that Brunson questions Cain’s statements. The cynic in me thinks he’s probably rubbing his hands with glee off-camera, knowing that Cain is saying something inflammatory that will, undoubtedly, make for a great promo reel for the show.
Paul C Brunson is just one example of a swathe of podcast hosts who are positioning themselves as mental health advocates, or even specialists, and then platforming (and failing to challenge) people with troubling views.
I hate to dunk on Steven Bartlett again (just kidding, I can’t stand the bloke), but Diary of a CEO is a perfect example of this method of pretending to care, while also counting the ad revenue whenever guests say something that he just knows will go viral. We saw it with Molly Mae, when she said: “We all have the same 24 hours in a day as Beyoncé” and we’ve seen it again since with Boris Johnson, who told Barlett that, despite campaigning for Brexit, they had “no plans for government, no plans for negotiations, because it was not our job.”
Even in the research for this newsletter, I’ve found dozens of examples of Bartlett platforming people who are simply not qualified to talk about the topics at hand. His podcast is a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, extremists, and con artists.
Here’s an example from an episode where Barlett interviews Dr Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist and vaccine skeptic:
At one point Mr Bartlett asked Dr Malhotra: “Do you believe that if we hadn’t introduced the vaccine, more or less people would have survived Covid?... Was it a net positive that we had a vaccine?”
Dr Malhotra replied to this: “I have come to the conclusion that the Covid vaccine introduction has had a catastrophic net negative effect on the population and society.”
Later, Mr Bartlett asks: “Do you think there would have been less deaths overall if we hadn’t had a vaccine?”
In response to this, Dr Malhotra says: “Yes.”
Read the full quote and how it can be debunked in this article from Fullfact.org.
Steven Bartlett might defend himself by saying he is “hearing both sides,” but a quick glance at his Spotify listings for the podcast shows what his true intentions are — to shock, engage, and enrage as many people as possible, mostly using misinformation (or, at the very least, a lack of citations to peer-reviewed studies):
Money, money, money
Podcasters like Bartlett, Brunson, and, of course, Rogan are making money from turning long-form content into short-form, viral hits. But are the millions of listeners able to take a critical view on what they are hearing? Or do they just take it as fact? And what influence does this have on the wider world?
Well, the influence of these podcasters is far, far beyond what you might expect. In fact, they can take someone all the way to the White House. In the run-up to the 2024 US Election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump opted for podcast appearances over network TV in an unprecedented attempt to be heard by the masses.
Harris appeared on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy Podcast, while Trump sat beside Logan Paul on Impaulsive. I don’t know about you, but seeing Paul in the same room as Trump is giving me Black Mirror vibes… but what doesn’t these days?
Joe Rogan endorsed Trump in this election, despite advocating for Bernie Sanders back in 2020. He wields power and influence that politicians could only dream of… but who is he, really? An MMA commentator and washed-up comedian who found himself at the right place at the right time.
We live in a society where a man like Rogan can influence who moves into the White House, while also platforming the likes of Alex Jones, a man who denied Sandyhook ever happened, spreads anti-semitic theories about lizard people ruling the world and, yes, thinks chemicals in the water are turning the frogs gay. How on earth did this happen? And why do people still listen?
Where do we draw the line?
So, all of this makes it clear to me that these content creators are more than just entertainers, they are no able to influence societal changes at the very highest level. But what are their intentions? And how are they regulated?
The answer is their intentions are financial, and there is no regulation.
While traditional media is not perfect, there are still standards (and legal obligations ) to be upheld. Newspapers have printed lies, don’t get me wrong, but they are also viewed critically by the general public. For example, people (at least in the North) do not trust The Sun, a newspaper that published vitriolic lies about the victims of the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989. Although, the fact that the paper is still in print, and the website sells ads, makes me think I might be wrong about assuming The Sun is not a trusted institution.
What it comes down to is that there’s a difference between a newspaper and a podcast because the latter typically relies on one single personality and their views. Research shows that podcasters are the most trusted media personalities, and another study found that registered voters trusted podcasters over any other medium in the 2024 US election. Let’s face it, The Joe Rogan Experience wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for its host, and trust is integral to this relationship.
So, when a podcast platforms a problematic person, or endorses a presidential candidate, we are allowing these individuals to dictate our beliefs of society. We trust that what they are telling us is true, but so often it is not.
The intentions of a podcast host like Rogan are rarely good because they are not independent journalists or simply doing it out of the goodness of their own heart. They are business people. They know what makes money. Lies, conspiracies and inflammatory statements make for great entertainment. And great entertainment fills their pockets, while we, the public, are left with the proverbial egg on our faces.
Should one person wield this much power? And have we passed the point of no return? Will we see Elon in the White House next? I’ll come back to you on that one.
We’ve been super busy with work this week, so not a lot of grass touched. Here are some things I’ve been enjoying:
📚Pure Gold by John Patrick McHugh - A short story collection by this young Irish writer. I was drawn in by the quotes on the cover saying this was “savagely funny,” and it clearly meant funny in the gut-punch devastating way Irish fiction tends to be because I wasn’t laughing much!
🎙️ Master: The allegations against Neil Gaiman (Tortoise Media on Spotify): I am not enjoying this persay as it’s really awful in parts, but as big fan of Gaiman’s work I am horrified by this podcast, and I’m only onto episode 3.
See you next week,
Ellen x
If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:
💌 About this email
I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.
I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.
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Oh god I had to stop and have a think about the absurdity of the modern world at “the funko pops that will never decompose”
Another great post! I think it’s also worth mentioning that podcasters, like all other forms of citizen journalism, are rarely beholden to the rules of journalism law and practice.
Like you say, newspapers and media institutions like the Sun and BBC have been discredited in recent years and there’s a growing public distrust in ‘legacy media’ but - with exception - those institutions still have to abide to media law and regulations. Podcasters do not which is what makes them so so dangerous - they do not have to vigorously fact check or credit their sources, they are less responsible to their audiences, and suing them is a lot harder under defamation because - like you say - they are individuals who can fall back on ‘personal opinion’ as a defence.
Very scary stuff