5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
I hate podcasts with a passion - but I'll make an exception for these
It's not simply the sheer preening audacity of believing the planet awaits your wisdom which offends - though that does grate. It's mostly that podcasts are so bloody awful. We don't need another one. The internet is full. There's nothing left to say.
There are 3.5million podcasts on Earth right now. That's like the entire population of Uruguay - including new born babies - producing their own podcast.
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Podcasts make me stabby because I love radio. I've worked in radio, I've hosted loads of hours of talk radio for the BBC. When radio is good, it's great.
Podcasts take everything which makes radio good, put it in a headlock and run with it into a brick wall, repeatedly, until it's dead.
The principle problem is the rank amateurishness. Search for podcasts on any given topic - sport, history, politics, culture - and nine times out of 10 it'll be some lonesome gimp in their egg-boxed attic droning into a mic. It'll sound more like a serial killer tape sent to the police than a functioning piece of radio.
I'm into topics like mythology, ancient history and anthropology. So let's say I go hunting for something like the history of Babylon, or the lives of Neanderthals. Up will pop a podcast so unlistenable, so lacking in production values, with a script so shonky, that it offends against reason.
What's worse is the podcasts which could be good but deliberately cock it up. There's a show called Myths and Legends. I should love it. Each week, it's meant to retell a great myth. But the producers feel compelled to mess with it.
They try - God help us - to be funny. If I wanted stand-up routines, I'd go to a comedy club. I'm here for the gods and monsters.
Or there's You're Dead to Me, a history podcast, which again thinks listeners can't appreciate facts unless some comedian mugs for the mic. It's actually a bit offensive. A spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down is not required. We've got brains.
The use of music is often so dreadful it will render an entire podcast unbearable. We don't need mood music like we're at the silent movies in the 1920s. Give me a wee intro tune to brand your show and then get into the intelligent chat.
When crap music, naff comedy, bad scripting and multiple ads for crypto-currency and haemorrhoid cream collide in podcasting, being a passenger onboard a crashing plane becomes more appealing.
The infection has spread from the internet to the home of traditional radio. The BBC now airs multi-part podcasts that sprawl over weeks, when a tight half hour would suffice.
A Radio Four podcast called The Grave Robbers - about criminals faking wills - runs for five 30 minute episodes.
Don't get me wrong. The story is important. But two and a half hours? That's longer than the movie All the President's Men - about Watergate.
The BBC now seems more interested in podcasts than TV or traditional radio combined - which may explain why most of its output is so dire.
The podcasts which really make my eyes sweaty with wrath are ones like Newscast, where a bunch of hacks - in this case the insufferable Laura Kuenssberg and Paddy O'Connell - talk about stuff they've just talked about on the proper news.
It's the same with the Today podcast with the equally intolerable Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson. Why does it even exist? It's like some horrendous audio Groundhog Day. And don't even get me started on Americast with Justin Webb.
For context: Robinson pockets £410k, Kuenssberg £395k and the horrific Webb £365k.
To compound the absurdity, some of these podcasts are in video format too. Why? It makes no sense.
Evidently, nothing out-stinks the conspiracy podcast, however - the type of dreck put out by someone like Joe Rogan, a comedian and fight commentator who somehow single-handedly took over the world's media and got Trump elected. He's the Idiocracy made flesh.
He's also the reason why everyone wants their own podcast. If politics is showbiz for ugly people, then podcasting is influencing for folk who look like giblets.
At least once a month, someone will ask me if I'd like to start a podcast with them. The notion is that as I'm a journalist I could balance out whatever they represent - food, academia, sport, movies, juggling, wig-wearing, yak-wrangling.
And at least once a week, someone will ask if I'd like to come on their podcasts.
The answer to both is no: primarily because there's bugger all money in it, unless you're Joe Rogan or Laura Kuenssberg.
Why would I spend an hour in your basement broadcasting to an audience of zero when I could be sleeping or earning actual money?
It's amateur hour for narcissists with too much access to technology.
I'm also pretty disgruntled - certainly lacking in gruntles - over the rebranding of great radio as podcasts. Melvin Bragg's In Our Time is quite simply unparalleled.
It's perfect radio. Now, though, the BBC calls it a podcast … even though it has been on Radio 4 since 1998, long before the word 'pod' was ever coupled with 'cast'.
I'm not going to pretend there aren't some great podcasts. I'd endure an entire week of gurning idiots cracking Covid jokes over blaring elevator music and adult diaper adverts for one hour in the company of Paul Cooper and his Fall of Civilisation's podcast.
It's everything great radio should be: subtle and unobtrusive music, atmospheric audio, brilliant scripting, pitch perfecting hosting. A masterpiece.
The very best podcasts - like Cooper's - go on to have lives beyond internet sound files. That's how you know they're good. Cooper got a book out of his show - deservedly so.
Another great comes - astonishingly - from the BBC: the Uncanny podcast with Danny Robins. It takes spooky events - ghost sightings and such - and subjects them to a thorough investigation.
It's slightly gimmicky - with a resident sceptic and believer - but it's just too well made to find fault with. And the music is absolutely on point. Robins saw his podcast turned into a TV series.
When podcasts first started, there was a glut of murder and true crime shows. That's what seemed to sell, so that's what the herd copied. Now, like TV, the choice is all but endless, and there's no functioning filtering system. It overwhelms.
Podcasts have become a symbol for our cultural decay: there are no standards, just a roar of pointless noise. Amid the cacophony of dross, the real gems of genius are drowned. We cannot find what matters, because we're surrounded by mediocrity.
The podcast is perfect proof of this hard truth: everyone does indeed have the right to a voice, but sadly most voices are just so bloody dull.
Neil Mackay is the Herald's Writer-at-Large. He's a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics
