Podcasts are hardly a brand new medium in American politics. However that doesn’t imply they aren’t disrupting the dynamics of the 2024 presidential race. Contemplate hotshot hosts like Theo Von, Ezra Klein, and Adin Ross; all of them have been capable of give listeners an intimate glimpse at politicians from Donald Trump to Tim Walz, say Atlantic workers author Helen Lewis and Bloomberg reporter Ashley Carman on the newest episode of Contained in the Hive. Nonetheless, as we’ve seen within the case of JD Vance—whose previous audio appearances have come again to hang-out him—the medium can reduce each methods. “They do sort of lure individuals into this rather more sort of confessional, chatty mode,” Lewis says. “And I believe that’s why perhaps they might turn out to be fairly harmful…politicians may not understand how that may look within the chilly gentle of day to different individuals.”
To totally perceive the enchantment of podcasts, it’s important to admire their historic progenitor: radio. “Conservative speak radio is actually a would possibly in that trade and actually necessary to the house, and we’ve actually simply seen them make that digital transition…in lots of different media codecs,” Carman explains. “Trump went on Sean Hannity’s podcast. Trump went on Dan Bongino’s podcast, [which] took over Rush Limbaugh’s spot on the stay radio model. So a few of these people are nonetheless within the house, and so they’ve made this transition to podcasts and now are discovering their viewers there.”
Later within the episode, Lewis discusses among the huge distinctions between podcasting and standard journalism. “Conventional journalistic norms are utterly out of the window in the case of these things,” she says of audio. “Lex Fridman, who’s a really fascinating interviewer and clearly a really good man, posted on LinkedIn final 12 months that he had spent Thanksgiving with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. And now [Fridman is], you realize, doing one of many huge flagship interviews of the [Trump] marketing campaign.”
“You already know, these individuals usually speak in regards to the sort of terribly corrupt, cozy nature of the mainstream media,” Lewis added. “However they’ve simply sort of ended up recreating the concept that all people goes on vacation to the identical locations, hangs out in the identical golf equipment, you realize, has the identical set of mutual associates.”
