In the 2024 election, candidate appearances on podcasts were huge, yuge even. Donald Trump showed up on an array of them, from Theo Von to Joe Rogan to Barstool Sports’ Bussin’ With The Boys. Kamala Harris did fewer, with Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy being the most notable. After Trump’s resounding win, some Democrats blamed Rogan for the victory, though even John Oliver cautioned against that notion. (Also, Rogan gave Harris an “open invitation” to come on his podcast, but she declined his terms.) 

More recently, Democrats announced they’re prepared to spend $20 million to figure out why they lost men in the election, with podcasts being listed as part of the solution to bringing them back. The thing is, though, while almost anyone with a pulse could explain why Democrats are losing men, they’re still missing the forest for the trees when it comes to why podcasts have taken an outsize role in American life, particularly for men. Fortunately, as they’re unlikely to listen to him since he voted for Trump, comedian Andrew Schulz recently offered a case study in why the medium is taking off in an interview, which you can watch here, with The New York Times’ David Marchese. 

The entire thing is worth your time, but Schulz gets to the gist of the matter fairly early in the interview when Marchese presses him on whether he felt he did the “necessary work of asking [Trump] difficult questions.” To this, Schulz replied: 

I don’t know what you think the goal of journalism is specifically. Is it to ask the things you’re curious about? Do you have a responsibility for your audience within The New York Times? Do you have a responsibility for the New York Times audience? Are you responsible for people in Dubai? China? Japan? They might have certain curiosities that you didn’t address. You’re going to let somebody down. What I’d like to see more is people asking the questions that they are curious about themselves, instead of trying to pander to what their audience is curious about. With the Trump interview, I had three things I wanted to ask him about, and I asked him those things.

An individual, in this case Schulz, was personally curious about some things, which he asked Trump about. His audience may have wanted different questions, but given the popularity of his show, he’s apparently doing something right. And that something is what the corporate media gave up on long, long ago: offering authenticity rather than trying to signal their own views, their own “correct” thinking, via their lines of questioning. 

What a novel concept! Why didn’t anyone ever think of this before? It’s not like it’s a new concept. Bill and Ted tried to warn us, way back in 1989, that “the only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.” That wisdom, formally known as the Socratic method for some reason, is a great foundation upon which to conduct an interview. Schulz simply follows that dictum rather than assuming he knows something and then trying to lead the audience into agreeing with him. 

Granted, the longer form of podcasts allows for this much more effectively than corporate media’s typically short interviews. It gives the guests time to relax and settle into a conversation rather than focusing on spitting out a few soundbites before heading to the next microphone. It increases intimacy and decreases how guarded a person is. It gets them talking, which goes back to the authenticity angle. 

But there’s more to it than that. I am admittedly biased in this area as I produce the long-form podcast Cookin’ Up A Story. While we split our shows into two episodes, we typically record for three to four hours every Tuesday night. The first hour is often just about getting the guest settled in and comfortable, though there are naturals who hit the ground running. The thing is, though, that the audience listens to all of each episode, even the slow parts. Sometimes, ones we think went terribly end up getting hugely, yugely even, positive responses. 

What draws our listeners in, like those who listen to Schulz or Rogan or any of the heavyweights, is that they feel like they’re in the room with us. It’s like listening to a conversation they might have with their bros while sitting around a campfire. Too many of our listeners don’t have any bros to sit around a campfire with. And while that can be great for podcast numbers, it’s not so great for the country. 

Without delving into the pros and cons of more sex parity in the workplace and the reduction in sex-segregated schooling, men don’t have spaces in which they can just be men. They don’t have avenues in which they can express vulnerability. (Sure, they may have wives, but most prefer their husbands to be more stoic.) They don’t have places to just be with the bros and blow off steam. 

So they created podcasts in which they can do that, and then other men started listening. Would it be better for them to find others to have those conversations with rather than seeking virtual brotherhood through the internet? Of course, which is also what the podcast bros, as they’re often known, are truly pushing. It’s not about politics or policy or even mixed martial arts. It’s about men being men. 

It’s also why the podcasters have more influence than the media. Schulz himself said that, like politics, podcasts are downstream from culture. They’re not pushing an agenda; they’re expressing genuine curiosity in their fellow men and women. They’re having conversations, which is something we used to do in real life in the days before the 24-hour news cycle. They’re aware that everyone has a story to tell and are letting them tell that story. 

In short, the secret formula the podcasters have figured out — the one that seemed to largely baffle David Marchese — is that audiences want to be talked to, not talked at, just like they do in person. They also want to be heard. And until the corporate media learn that lesson, they’re going to continue failing, lecturing us along the way to their final whimper.