Podcasts are the most intimate content medium

If I were to list the top five most influential content creators in my life, I think nearly all of them would be podcasters. Some podcasters might even be among the most influential people in my life period. I'm not sure if you can relate, but I think it's worth exploring. What makes podcasts so influential?

In my freshman year, I really wanted to intern at a podcast studio. Specifically, Pushkin, Malcolm Gladwell's company. Revisionist History was (and still is) one of my favorite podcasts, and Gladwell is a thinker who has influenced many of my views.

While I didn't end up working at Pushkin, it got me thinking about why I wanted to work in podcasting and why I felt such a strong connection to some of the hosts I listened to.

I've come to the conclusion that podcasting is the most intimate content medium. It is conducive to the strongest parasocial relationships, has the most potent ability to influence thinking, and creates the deepest sense of community out of all the popular content mediums. (The other content mediums I'm referring to are broadly TV/film, books, YouTube videos, Tweets, and blogs)

I've thought of three characteristics of podcasts that make them the most intimate content medium

Podcasts are longitudinal

The regular cadence of episodes, combined with podcasts typically being listened to as they come out, means you can follow along with the "character development" of the hosts in real time. Podcasts will reference things from current events and past episodes. Hosts discuss what is going in their lives right now. It all creates a sense that you are getting life updates from a friend.

Other mediums like books and TV/film don't have this element. It's like the difference between meeting someone once for coffee and seeing someone every week to catch up. A deeper relationship will inevitably form in the latter case.

Podcasts are sufficiently long

The most obvious benefit of this is that podcasts can go really in-depth into things. While Tweets and YouTube videos typically cover very surface-level content, podcasts are regularly multiple hours long, and you can get the sense that a host is putting everything they know on the table for you to hear.

Another aspect of length is that long enough episodes force non-conformist views to come out. You can only ramble for so long about a topic while saying uncontroversial, inoffensive content. At some point, the hot takes start coming out, and a deeper connection is formed.

It is analogous to making friends in real life. If you meet a bunch of people but are careful to present yourself as neutral on controversial topics and avoid offending anyone, you will be unmemorable. While most people won't not like you, you won't make any meaningful friendships either.

To form a connection, you have to reveal your true identity. This means talking about the things that make you different from every other person out there. It requires you to reveal information that pushes some people away. People who share contrarian opinions form connections because it creates a sense of exclusivity in their relationship that bonds them together.

This is a cool video that talks more about this concept:

Podcasts are (relatively) niche

Podcasts are usually a secondary content medium for creators. For creators that aren't podcast-native, the podcast audience is typically superfans, the top X percentile of followers. Think: how many people watch CONAN and how many listen to his podcast? How many subscribers does CGP Grey have on YouTube, and how many people listen to Cortex?

For podcast-native creators, it's almost always the case that their audiences are just small. There are a few big names out there, like Joe Rogan and Lex, but relative to other content mediums like TV, movies, and YouTube, podcasts are still pretty niche.

The result is that listeners feel embedded in an exclusive community. They are the top fans and most dedicated supporters. Creators also feel more comfortable sharing on podcasts relative to their other platforms. Podcast listeners often get sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes, and more personal content than the main audience. So part of the reason podcasts are more intimate is literally because creators feel more comfortable sharing intimate details on podcasts.

Other factors

• Easy to consume

  • Leads to a high volume of content being consumed more consistently

• Podcasts are listened to during times of solitude

  • Act as a replacement for intimacy and connection in the real world

• Audio only

  • A voice in your head feels more intimate than text or a voice+video on a screen

The most compelling proof that this intimacy exists can be seen in advertising rates. The CPM (price companies pay for 1000 impressions) of mass market web ads is about $5, the average CPM for YouTube is less than $15, and the CPM for podcasts is $251. It should say something about the connection between host and listener if advertisers are willing to pay a premium to exploit the relationship.

Podcasting and communities

I think podcasts and intimate mediums as tools for community building are underexplored. Podcasts facilitate two of the necessary components of a good community: ideological alignment and a sense of camaraderie/closeness.

Ideological alignment

The first part of creating a strong, internet-native community is having an ideologically aligned group of members. This idea is much better explained and more deeply explored in The Network State, but the internet has enabled the creation of ideology-first communities. Pre-internet, the most important factor for creating community was geography. People spread across the world had no way to efficiently communicate, collaborate, and strategize.

Today, the emphasis can shift to finding the most dedicated and like-minded people. The answer to "how can we gather and organize a group of like-minded people" is borderless and infinite.

The intimacy of podcasts makes them especially powerful for influencing ideology. As I mentioned earlier, some of the most influential ideas and people in my life are from podcasts.

To plug a couple, Not Overthinking with Ali and Taimur Abdaal has been tremendous in shaping how I think about relationships, success, and social interactions. Cortex with CGP Grey and Myke Hurley was my first foray into self-improvement and lifestyle design. I still reference in conversation ideas from episodes I listened to many years ago.

There's some research showing that sharing political views with someone makes you more likely to be accepting of them and view them in a positive light. You can probably check this through experience—I bet many people would automatically view others differently if they were Democrat/Republican or a Yankees/Red Sox fan.

Similarly, the ideas I've learned from podcasts are sometimes so core to my beliefs that sharing the same views with a stranger can be enough to form a connection—and a collection of people could form a community.

Camaraderie, closeness, and niches

The second element of a strong community comes from its nicheness. Why do some of the most niche things have the strongest following? They are aligned in belief but also small in size. The fewer the people in a strongly aligned group, the more intimate the community experience. The feeling that only a few people in the world share your niche beliefs/interests makes you appreciate those few people more.

Podcasts as a medium are still young. While they are becoming more mainstream, there aren't many blockbuster podcasts the way there are movies or best-selling books. I'm guessing that many people who listen to podcasts listen to a couple of popular ones (Rogan, The Daily, Planet Money, etc) but also to a few niche shows and those are the ones they feel the strongest connection to.

Building it out

The reason I'm interested in this is that while podcasts are theoretically good at creating good communities, and many podcasts have strong communities, podcasts haven't been used in a more ambitious context.

Shows have communities, but they are usually fandoms. A community of fans and supporters who enjoy the personas and characters on a show. With the emergence of DAOs, it seems like podcasts and the audio medium might be powerful tools for creating resilient and motivated communities.

Many DAOs today suffer from an inactive community base. Only a tiny percentage of members participate in governance, and most users go inactive a few days after joining the Discord. For instance, Nouns, a community that can cost upwards of $100,000 to be a part of, has a voter turnout rate of roughly 25%. More accessible communities typically have even lower rates.

While Nouns and other DAOs have podcasts, they aren't used as entry points. Starting a community with a podcast might offer better filtering than what DAOs currently do. Instead of proposing an ambitious idea, asking people to join and contribute, and hoping enough stay dedicated for the project to succeed—use podcasts to cultivate a discussion community first. Then, as ideas and ambitions arise from conversations, a more organized group can form to take action.

I think podcasts as an entry point works because engaging in thoughtful discussion is a form of contribution. The people most excited about an idea have already been contributing to it. If a community is birthed this way, every member will have self-vetted themselves through discussion and connection to the podcast.

There is definitely ideological alignment—the ideas will likely have their roots in the topics and perspectives talked about on the podcast. There will also be closeness. High signal discussions among relatively few people are the perfect place for camaraderie to develop.

Right now, podcasts are mainly used to evangelize ideological communities. But maybe we should start using them as the birthplace of the next wave of DAOs and digital communities.