Ear Candy

Maybe you're driving to your golf match. Maybe you're taking a walk in the afternoon. Maybe you're working out on the elliptical at the gym. Each is a solitary pursuit that makes using your hands for reading or typing problematic, and so leaves your ears ripe for the picking. Once upon a time you might have turned to a radio to listen to tunes or the news. Travel down the timeline, and that transistor got swapped for an MP3 player of some flavor, enabling you to listen and relisten to your favorite artists. But increasingly those alone-times are the perfect opportunities for you to add your name to the 584 million others who stuff their ears with a podcast.

Just forty years old, the podcast started as an "audiolbog" back in the 1980's. It took 20 years and the internet to take it from a curiosity to a thing, one that today counts 55% of the population as listeners. And we/they have plenty of options: as of March 2025, Spotify had more than 6.5 million podcast titles on its platform.

A big reason for that is that the barrier for entry is almost nonexistent. For sure, there are highly produced productions like "Radiolab," "This American Life" and "Serial," each of which integrates voices, natural sounds, music and effects into a seamless sonic tapestry. That requires a raft of producers, researchers, writers and editors, all of which cost bucks. But the vast majority of podcasts are much simpler affairs costing far less: a mic and a person spouting opinions, occasionally joined by a guest to play off of or tangle with. Slap a musical riff on the front and back, and you have the Joe Rogan Experience, currently reaching 14.5 million listeners

It's an oddly retro approach to this most contemporary of media channels. No computer-generated imagery, no swirling electronic scores, no fully rendered imaginary ecospheres. Rather, it's just Billy in his bedroom with a $99 Blue Yeti USB Microphone, ranting about illegal immigrants/ Elon Musk/ water pressure/ fluoride/ Real Housewives/ Tom Cruise/ eggs/ WNBA/ electric cars/ etc., and sometimes all in the same show. It's not a lot different from being seated next to Uncle Ernie at Thanksgiving.

Likewise the commercials that pay the bills. These are integrated into the streams, and have a kinship with the very first radio ad from 1922. That 15-minute promo on New York City's WEAF for the Queensboro Corporation promoted apartments in Jackson Heights, Queens, and was just, well talk. And so it is for most podcast commercials. Called "Live Read" even if it's prerecorded, the format eschews any fancy production values in favor of a simple recitation. Usually it's just the host or a regular guest reading a script that is supposed to feel like you and they are having a chat: "Friends, before we move on, I want to talk to you about Johnson's Miracle Elixir. Ever feel drab and blue? Well, Johnson's Miracle Elixir is the perfect cure. And if you order now, you'll also get a trial portion of Johnson's Miracle Tonic for free!" The copy could be lifted from a Stephen Sondheim musical, albeit with a URL at the end.

More and more audio podcasts are even adding a video component, driven by the simple fact that they also cost nearly nothing. It was shock-jock host Don Imus who added a camera to his radio studio back in 1996, and broadcast live on newly formed MSNBC. For some reason an audience got hooked on not just listening to people talk for hours on end, but watching it. Fast forward to today, and the biggest growth channel for podcasts isn't Spotify or Apple Music, but YouTube: the platform now has 1 billion active podcast consumers every month.

What's there to listen to or watch? For sure there are the 800 pound gorillas like the aforementioned "Joe Rogan Experience," Alex Cooper's "Call Her Daddy" and Shannon Sharpe's "Club Shay Shay," but much, much... much... smaller game as well. "2 Fast 2 Forever" rewatches the entire "Fast and Furious" franchise over and over and dissects it endlessly (they're on episode #403). "The Episodic Table of Elements" is exactly what it sounds like: a discussion of the periodic table (they're currently on #94, plutonium). Or "The Empty Bowl," described as "a meditative podcast about cereal." Check out episode #114 which seeks to settle the important question of Boo Berry vs. Count Chocula.

In the 1989 classic film "Field of Dreams" Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella hears a disembodied voice whisper, "If you build it, he will come." Kevin Costner does exactly that, and the ghosts of baseball past do indeed materialize. With podcasts it seems it's not that much different, just with an audio slant: if you record it, at least someone, somewhere, will listen.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford listens to podcasts when he walks. His column appears weekly via email and online on Blogspot and Substack as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.