09-05-2025
Why this Kansas Reflector columnist is muting all of those rambling, chatty podcasts
Eric Thomas writes that he is giving up banter podcasts, which "leave me bloated, foggy and listless." (Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector)
A confession: I'm trying to quit my podcast habit.
My family and friends know I am the least likely person to write those words. If you were in a conversation with me over the past 20 years, there was an 87.3% chance that my first words would be: 'I was listening to this podcast and …'
Baseball. Politics. Soccer. Comedy. Environmental issues. American culture. Entertainment. And science.
This week, my son pondered the possibility of plugging a USB drive into his head to upload knowledge for an upcoming test. For me, that has been the intellectual equivalent of podcasts.
In fact, my writing for Kansas Reflector began as 'Audio Astra,' a digest of podcasts about Kansas or related to Kansas. If you didn't know that, I forgive you. Those columns were even more torturous to read than they were to write — and that is saying something.
For hours each week I would listen to niche-y podcasts about Kansas forests, Midwest farm wives or the history of the Riverside Zoo in Wichita. As I listened to many of them, the audio quality often buzzed and screeched in my AirPods, even more so when I was writing on deadline and had to listen at 2x speed. I considered sending a few different podcasters a new microphone, just to improve my personal listening experience. I was a scribe — perhaps the only one — in the Holy Church of the Modern Podcast.
And yet, here I am today speaking heresy against them.
(Plus, I am writing for a publication with its own podcast. And I just finished judging a podcast contest.)
Even more absurd is the timing of my takedown. Americans are listening to more podcasts each year. While it's true that counting podcast listeners has been an imperfect task recently, most media watchers see podcasting as a promising and growing media format.
Why my grumpiness toward podcasts then? Some of my malaise with podcasts is just that: my burned-out ears have been fatigued by thousands of hours of listening. My auditory claustrophobia is real.
But there is something else — something about the podcasts themselves. It's their flabbiness.
Here's one example. While folding laundry the other day, I turned on one of my favorite mindless podcasts, 'Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend,' a comedy podcast hosted by the former late-night host. The jovial and absurd interview episode has been a weekly staple of my listening for the last few years. And behold! Conan was interviewing Bill Hader, an actor who I admire so much that YouTube thrusts his content at me each time I log in. With all of that excitement, I clicked play.
After 56 minutes and 44 seconds, the interview ended. The pre/post banter slid into silence. That was two days ago.
Right now, I've been sitting at this keyboard for five minutes and I can't tell you a single thing that was said. That's an hour of stopping my ears up from hearing anything else. The squirrels chasing on the roof. The dishwasher sloshing. My son talking to friends on the phone in the next room.
All of that was blocked for unscripted celebrity chatter that I have entirely forgotten.
It's a specific kind of programming. Call them the banter podcasts. Movie stars sit down with other movie stars. Comedians sit down with other comedians. Joe Rogan sits down with anyone and everyone.
Of course, banter podcasts these days are incredibly popular. The top five overall podcast chart, as ranked by Apple, includes Rogan at No. 4, along with actor Amy Poehler's new show, 'Good Hang.' Plus, the No. 1 show, 'The Mel Robbins Podcast.'
Rogan is famous for making marathon episodes, like this week's interview with Cameron Hanes, which stretched for 3 hours and 18 minutes. What does Hanes do for a living? Well, he's got two podcasts of his own, among other things. Looks like a lot of banter on his channel too.
Podcasts, it turns out, have simply become too easy to make. A quiet room, a microphone and a friend. That's the recipe for your first episode.
With that rant out of my system, I'm not ready to delete my podcast app yet. Many news podcasts still deliver tight, focused and original reporting and rich, audio storytelling.
Last week, NPR's 'Fresh Air' provided an emotional interview with Noad Wyle about his starring role in my household's new favorite show, 'The Pitt.' From the New York Times, 'The Daily' distilled decades of reporting on investment genius Warren Buffett into 28 minutes on Wednesday. So, if I corner you at a cocktail party, watch out, because I remember tons of stuff from each of those episodes. 'I was listening to this podcast and …'
But the banter podcasts … they leave me bloated, foggy and listless. My recent peevishness with them was triggered by listening to more audiobooks. While podcasts and audiobooks might seem one and the same, I found audiobooks entirely different when I returned to them after months of endless podcast banter. Podcasts were often the casual and wandering Zoom call between two actors, each promoting recent movie releases on a Thursday morning.
Audiobooks, on the other hand, pack a punch. Authors boil down years of expertise into singular chapters. Audiobooks, especially with the aid of a good book editor, also present the ideas with urgent, concise language rather than the podcast standard: a series of stuttered questions interrupted by leisurely sips of podcast coffee.
My critique might smack of impatience as I strive to mainline terabytes of information into my brain as fast as possible. And perhaps that's true.
However, my main concern about flabby banter podcasts is the possibility that they are replacing our conversations in real life. How can we give our kids, partners and friends any real attention if we are racing to keep up with Rogan's 12 hours of audio during a six-day period this week? No matter how extroverted you are, there is only so much conversation capacity there. Maybe we need to save our banter bandwidth for real people.
This is my alert to whomever is tracking podcast analytics: You are about to see a dip. Not because my rhetorical wit and zeal here will sway millions of readers. Instead, with my throttling back on my daily podcast habit, you might notice a hiccup in worldwide podcast listening.
And yes, I would be happy to come on your podcast to explain. I have three hours free after lunch.
Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
