Are podcasts making us dumber?

I was dumb before podcasts, but I might be dumber after them.

Two of my best friends died in the same month during my freshman year of college.

Zach played shortstop for his college baseball team so he took incredible care of his body. Jordan was the life of the party type who oozed charisma from his pores and could get a brick wall to open up.

Whenever I felt a little pudgy around the midriff and I needed some solid fitness advice, Zach was my go to resource. Whenever I got rejected by a girl and I needed a confidence boost, Jordan was my guy.

They knew their zones of expertise like the back of their hands and I took full advantage. Thanks guys. I miss you.

But there was plenty they knew nothing about. Obviously I wouldn’t go to them seeking sound financial advice. Nor would I seriously value what they said during a rant (fueled by a couple beers) about the presidential debate.

What does this have to do with podcasts?

Let me explain.

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Have you ever listened to a podcast where the host is interviewing an expert and suddenly that person starts talking about a topic you know they know nothing about?

Of course you have.

That’s why I fear podcasts are making us dumber.

I’m sure you’ve realized over the past few years that everyone and their grandma has a podcast now.

A handful have become mega-successes attracting millions of subscribers, and for good reason. The Joe Rogan Experience, Huberman Lab, Modern Wisdom, My First Million, and Diary of a CEO all come to mind.

So what’s the problem?

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Problem #1: supply and demand.

There’s only so many world class guests out there who are true experts in their field, can eloquently articulate their knowledge, and actually want to come on a podcast in the first place. Yet there’s currently 3.2 million podcasts (as of Feb 2024) fighting over them.

So if they can’t get a world class guest, who will they have to settle for? Controversial figures who are just there to shill their hot takes.

The supply simply can’t meet the demand.

Problem #2: we can’t get enough.

Our insatiable desire for more and more audio is causing podcasts to become content farms churning out too many episodes that are also too damn long.

This forces hosts to pry their guests to get into topics they know nothing about. For the simple fact that there’s another two hours left in the episode that has to be filled with something.

Problem #3: distinguishing expertise from opinion.

Here’s the real kicker: in between a guest sharing truly valuable knowledge about their area of expertise, they will start to pepper in bits of utter nonsense on topics they know nothing about without the listener knowing which is which.

There’s no friendly pause in the programming to alert us when the guest has entered mere opinionville.

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These amazing guests rightfully get invited on these shows to distill their decades of knowledge. But even the cream of the crop only have so much expertise to share.

A guest may be rock solid for the first hour of the conversation as they stay locked in to the topic they were brought on to discuss. But they eventually drift out of their zone of expertise as the conversation drags on. The host becomes tempted to lure the guest to start spewing their hot takes on whatever cultural garbage is in the news because everyone can comment on that.

Even if they are subjects they know about as well as Joe Schmo from off the streets (aka nothing).

The worst offenders are repeat guests.

They come on to share their decades of expertise which is wonderful.

But if the episode is a smash hit, they will get invited back on six months later. And since we don’t want to hear the same stuff they said last time, there’s a good chance they’ll be asked to share their useless take on the media headlines of the day.

This makes them more likely to spew utter nonsense that the listeners are inclined to take seriously because of how well they knew their topic of expertise on their first appearance.

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Here’s an example from Eric Weinstein on Modern Wisdom:

You don’t have to watch the clip but I want you to notice the title: “What Do Modern Women Actually Want In A Man?”

Our first question should be, “who is Eric Weinstein?”

A quick Wikipedia search will tell us that “he was the joint managing director for Thiel Capital (an American hedge fund) from 2013 until 2022. He has a PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard.”

Impressive.

But I hope your second question is, “what makes him qualified to speak about this?”

Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m leaning towards NOTHING.

Now I don’t have a bone to pick with Mr. Weinstein or Chris Williamson who’s the host of Modern Wisdom (I actually really like his pod).

Unfortunately, the guest is under tremendous pressure to drop gem after gem for multiple hours, even if they run out of expertise half way through the episode.

But what are we doing?!

When the host and guest run out of things to talk about, they’re tempted to start riffing on stuff like you and I would at a bar. The only difference is we don’t have millions of people hanging on our every word. Thank god.

Also, when a host has multiple three hour episodes per week, they can’t help but fill some of that time with useless (or potentially harmful) content.

See how podcasts could be making us dumber?

Now granted, there may be a rare occurrence when a guest is asked to talk about something outside their zone of expertise and they’ll respond with, “Ehh, I don’t know enough about that to comment.”

But I’d argue that’s a much less interesting answer and it surely won’t increase downloads. We the listeners are desperate for hot takes no matter how absurd they are.

Next thing you know, we find ourselves listening to Eric Weinstein’s take on modern women…

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Let’s take your insert-favorite-health-podcast as another alarming example.

One week they’ll have The Vegan Doctor on telling you that meat will send you to an early grave. The next week they’ll have Carnivore MD on telling you about the vital nutrients your body needs to thrive that are only available from, you guessed it, meat.

If you actually followed the advice of every health expert that came on, you’d be forced to completely change your diet weekly.

This is insanity, is it not?

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Podcasts are causing mass confusion.

When there’s so much contradicting advice being poured into your ears, you’ll stop listening to any of it.

So what?

Clearly podcasts are here to stay.

And I’ll be the first to admit I’m gonna keep listening. Because despite these issues, they can still be valuable vessels of knowledge. But we must be careful when deciding which podcasts to trust, no matter how much we may like the people behind the microphones (that goes for hosts and guests).

How do you decide who to trust?

Here’s one good rule of thumb: avoid any podcast that is treated as a business.

How will you know if that’s the case?

Every episode starts out with a quick word from BetterHelp, Athletic Greens, or Linkedin Jobs. Or worse, they interrupt you in the middle.

At that point, they’re just optimizing for the most downloads to please the almighty advertisers.

They don’t necessarily care about sharing valuable knowledge anymore.

They just want popular (or controversial) guests who will talk about anything and everything whether or not they have any expertise on a given topic.

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Luckily for you and I, there are still a few podcasters out there who create for the sole purpose of sharing valuable knowledge from their zone of expertise.

You won’t find any ads because they’ve made their money elsewhere.

Three of my favorites are: Naval Ravikant, Derek Sivers, and Morgan Housel.

It’s usually just them talking alone without a guest. And they may only release one new episode every couple of months, but thankfully you’ll know you can trust them.

But if you decide that you still want to listen to podcasts that insist on running it as a business, using click-bait titles, and actively seek out controversial guests who have no issue spewing utter nonsense, that’s ok too.

Just know that they are probably making you dumber.

Your thoughts? Please leave a reply below.

Photo by Jukka Aalho on Unsplash