Podcasts and political listening: sound, voice and intimacy in the Joe Rogan Experience

ABSTRACT

Podcasts are an increasingly popular medium, however, their potential for political listening remains largely unexplored. This article examines the opportunities and challenges that podcasts provide in literally hearing voices. It analyses the globally influential Joe Rogan Experience podcast to consider its acoustic impact on audiences. It finds that audiences are highly attuned to the aural nature of this platform and can listen with a critical ear. This technology holds the capacity for challenging power in its production processes outside the state and market, its shift to informal speech and its intimate nature. Ultimately, this article argues that paying attention to sound through podcasts can extend our understanding of political listening and the media.

KEYWORDS:

• Political listening
• podcasts
• sound
• voice
• Joe rogan

Introduction

Australians are rapidly joining the world in embracing digital audio and tuning into podcasts. About 40% are monthly podcast listeners, a large 37% increase from 2021 (Edison Research 2022). These listeners are more likely to be men, young, urban, affluent and educated (Sang, Lee, and Park 2020). They usually listen to podcasts at home, on YouTube and because they want to hear a diverse range of perspectives (Sang, Lee, and Park 2020). Of news consumers, 11% of these listen to podcasts, tend to have a high interest in politics and are likely to be left-wing (Sang, Lee, and Park 2020, 14). At the time of writing, the most popular podcast globally was the Joe Rogan Experience (Edison Research 2022), which is hosted by a comedian and Ultimate Fighting Championship commentator that he started from his home garage. Rogan interviews a wide variety of guests including those from across the political spectrum, including Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, privacy whistle-blower Edward Snowden and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.¹ The conversations go for three hours on average in the typical ‘chumcast’ format of two people talking informally (McHugh 2016). In a media landscape where sound-bites, ‘gotcha’ interviews, hashtags and clickbait headlines have dominated, how can we understand this increasing turn towards slow, sonic political discourse?

The developing theorization on political listening presents an ideal framework in which to analyse podcasts and their role in the public sphere. However, most of this work has used aural terms as a way to register media’s social presence, rather than in the literal sense (Couldry 2006, 6). In this way, listening has been understood as a political practice rather than being ‘concerned primarily with auditory signals’ (Dreher and De Souza 2018, 24). For example, Crawford (2009) has engaged with listening as a metaphor for paying attention online. These studies have been critical in scaffolding the challenges and opportunities that political listening holds for democracy. Indeed, political listening has been considered crucial for democratic equality (Bassel 2017, 6). This paper focuses on the overlooked sonic aspect in considering what role podcasts and their acoustic impact may have on extending our understanding of political listening and the media.

The studies on political listening have analysed different forms of media, however, there has been little specific examination of the role of podcasts. Although podcasting undoubtedly shares many qualities with traditional radio, it is also distinctive as a medium and mode of communication (Berry 2016). Podcasts are mobile, intimate, highly selective, and participatory (Berry 2016, 12). Podcast fans are considered ‘super listeners’ because they dedicate more time than other audio consumers (Edison Research, 2014) and podcast use is ‘a strong predictor of political participation online as well as offline’ (Chadha, Avila, and Gil de Zúñiga 2012, 389). It should be noted that podcasts are also often watched online so there are multimodal qualities to the visual side of podcasting that are highly relevant to their reception. This article undertakes an analysis of the podcast that is most widely listened to: The Joe Rogan Experience. As Burgess (2006, 203) writes, ‘the question that we ask about “democratic” media participation can no longer be limited to “who gets to speak”? We must also ask “who is heard and to what end?”’ Empirical studies on political listening have tended to consider who on the margins is heard or not. This study makes a new contribution in analysing the voices who are most heard in crude terms of listener numbers.

However, this article not only questions who is being heard, but what is being heard: what noises, accents, silences and sound effects are audible? In doing so it acknowledges that the social, the oral, and the aural are thoroughly intertwined (Wood, Duffy, & Smith 2007). Importantly, sound generates environments in which knowledge is produced, and undergirds and forms the power structures it participates in (Kanngieser 2015). This article firstly brings together the literature on political listening, podcasts and sound to consider their relationship. It then does a content and acoustic analysis of the most popular Joe Rogan Experience episode and audience comments to study who is being most listened to and how. It finds that audiences do critically listen and pay attention to the aural nature of this platform. Finally, it argues that a sonic analysis of podcasts, through audio production and audience experience, can shed light on the broader social and political context of the media landscape.

Political listening, podcasts and sound

Political listening has emerged as a concept considered central to reinvigorating democratic deliberation. Dobson (2014, 8) argues that listening is critical to achieving the main objectives of democracy such as legitimacy, trust, disagreement, understanding and deliberation. The importance of listening is that it goes beyond calls for greater empowerment and amplification of marginalized voices. Rather, it focuses on the responsibility of citizens and institutions to hear and understand these voices. Bickford (1996, 129) has been at the forefront of challenging privileged audiences to engage with a ‘politics of listening’ that aims to disrupt powerful hierarchies and allow a plurality of voices to be heard. To do this, Scudder (2020) argues that citizens must be motivated beyond listening for empathy and inclusivity, but rather, see it as an essential act of democracy that takes into fair consideration what others are saying. This approach better recognizes the challenges of conflict and difference in the public sphere (Scudder 2020). Such courageous listening depends on putting our own perspective in the background while offering continuous responsiveness (Thill 2009). In considering how and when listening occurs or does not in the public sphere, we need to investigate the role of the media.

Dreher’s work has been significant in applying the concept of political listening to the media (see for key examples Dreher 2009, 2010; Dreher and Mondal 2018; Dreher, McCallum, and Waller 2016). These analyses are concerned with ‘when and how the media can facilitate difficult listening as well as encouraging openness and receptivity across difference’ (Dreher 2009, 451). Community media interventions and new digital platforms may offer the possibility of marginalized voices being empowered to speak up, however, democratic participation in decision-making also depends on being heard by mainstream media and political institutions (Dreher 2010; Dreher, McCallum and Waller 2015). But as Waller et al. (2020) found, there are media hierarchies of attention that exclude some voices while amplifying others. These studies identify the challenges of citizens and institutions to hear difficult and different narratives. Or as DeSouza (De Souza 2018, 460, original emphasis) so persuasively argues, it can be a wilful mishearing through privileged ears. The aim, therefore, is to locate political listening in specific contexts such as ‘embodied relationships, colonial histories and networks of privilege and power’ (Dreher and De Souza 2018, 35).

These ground-breaking studies have analysed different forms of media, however, there has been little examination of the role podcasts play in political listening. This medium is pertinent if we consider that political listening becomes literal through what and who is being heard aurally. In analysing podcasts, political listening goes beyond what is being said, to include what tone of voice is used, with what accent, which background noises can be heard and with what potential sensory effect. Rae, Russell, and Nethery (2019) explore this in their study of The Messenger podcast in which a detained asylum seeker exchanged voice messages with a journalist. They found that ‘podcasting can breach the secrecy that sustains a punitive detention regime and evoke empathy in listeners through the affective nature of voice’. However, podcasting is limited by the sense of distance produced by pre-recorded and edited sound and by the risk of creating echo chambers through the selective nature of podcast consumption’ (Rae, Russell, and Nethery 2019, 1036). This reflects other work that identifies the opportunities and challenges of the media in facilitating political listening, particularly to marginalized voices. However, as Rae, Russell, and Nethery (2019) also argue, podcasts provide unique opportunities for listening to and ‘earwitnessing’ accounts of those without privilege or power. As such, podcasts have the potential to facilitate a form of ‘acoustic agency’ (Waller 2018) and ‘a form of ethical responsiveness’ on behalf of the listener De Souza (2018, 22). What requires a more comprehensive exploration is how this medium, in particular, may or may not facilitate political listening.

Podcasts have been well studied and there is much debate about their difference as a medium from radio. Podcasting has been successful not because it has been a radio disruptor, but because it has breathed new life into pre-existing tropes and forms (Markman 2015, 241). The podcast listener may also be a ‘more actively engaged participant than the radio listener’ (Berry 2016, 2), because ‘when individuals select particular podcasts, what often attends is a heightened perception of personal relevance regarding that content’ (MacDougall 2011, 718). However, there are few studies that focus on political podcasts despite being a popular genre (Park et al. 2021). This oversight is critical if we consider the capacity for podcasting to create a ‘national public’ through its regular and connective circulation (Euritt 2019). Aufderheide et al. (2020) conceptualize a public service podcasting ecology that includes private media companies because they also provide informative, factual, topical and journalistic content. Political podcasts can also create a counter-public sphere through engaging journalism that uses satire to transgress authoritative mainstream media discourse (Park 2017). Such subversive podcasts are powerful in operating outside state regulations and having an offline impact on elections (Koo, Chung, and Kim 2015).

Podcasts can be created independently from commercial media and public broadcasters and without highly professional studio equipment and technology. They are not subject to state regulation that governs other forms of broadcast media. This means that producers can ‘do radio on their own terms – free from industry and/or legal restrictions’ (Markman 2011, 555). Although there has been a trend towards more professional and highly stylized podcast productions (Bonini 2015), the podcast medium still enables a relatively lo-fi, ad hoc, and sometimes subversive approach. As McHugh (2016, 65) observes, ‘Podcasting is fomenting a new, more informal, genre of audio narrative feature centred on a strong relationship between host and listener with content that is “talkier” and less crafted’. This kind of informal, conversational and vernacular language has the potential for political listening to hear difference and provide cultural connections. For example, it has been important in creating social spaces for Black Americans (Florini 2015). There can also be a mix of everyday mundane language and abstract speech of elite experts (Jarrett 2009). There are increasing concerns, however, that hybrid platforms such as Spotify, could threaten public podcasting’s business practices and advertising revenue (Aufderheide et al. 2020). As podcasting becomes more professional, there is the danger that the potential to provide a platform for those with less social and financial capital may become excluded. Lloyd (2009, 479) warns us against the corporatization of listening that can go ‘against its collective and democratizing energies’ to become a ‘soft technology of power’.

Another exclusive element is that because audiences need to make a conscious choice to download and listen to podcasts it risks becoming an ‘echo chamber’. However, there is also the potential for podcasts to forge a sense of community between creators and listeners (Markman, 2011). The appeal of podcasts is that we can listen to them at a time and place that suits us. Especially when heard through headphones, podcast consumption can be ‘deeply personal and highly privatized (and intimate)’ (Berry 2016, 13). The capacity of the mobile podcast listening experience to generate intimacy is, according to MacDougall (2011, 722), ‘at least akin to having someone speaking to or with the listener while walking, sitting, or standing next to him or her’. As LaBelle (2010, xxi) argues, sound can ‘infuse language with degrees of intimacy’. Sound media therefore have the ability to activate emotional responses. Because podcast consumption is a highly selective process it can be considered a practice of ‘intentional’ listening (Kapchan 2016).

Voice and speech represent particularly powerful acoustic phenomena. It is ‘the most immediate means of expression’ as ‘voices and how we listen to them, reconfigure our relationships to each other and to our shared worlds’ (Kanngieser 2012, 336–339). Sound generates environments in which knowledge is produced, and undergirds and forms the power structures it participates in (Kanngieser, 2015). However, these environments and power structures can be heard in a harmful way. De Souza’s studies (2018, 2020) are particularly insightful about the role of sound in political listening. She has argued that ‘listening to sonic archives expose the repetition of and resistance to the structural injustice of settler-colonial violence’ (2020). In being attuned to the acoustic violence of racism, listening practices ‘can unsettle the structures of power that condition and normalize their appearance’ (2018, 465). This article applies the concept of political listening and sound to podcasting technology to interrogate its role in providing a platform for voices that are most often heard. It does so by analysing the Joe Rogan Experience podcast that, at the time of writing, has the most listeners across the world.

‘It’s like he’s from the future’: when Joe Rogan interviewed Elon Musk

The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is ranked the most popular across the world with over 200 million monthly downloads. American martial arts fighter, television host and comedian Joe Rogan launched it in 2009 from his Californian home with video broadcasts uploaded to YouTube in 2013. In 2020, it became big business when Rogan took an estimated $200 million deal to shift from Apple and YouTube to Spotify and became the richest podcaster. The format is simple and low-fi – it is Joe Rogan interviewing his guest across a desk in a conversational long-form style that, on average, goes for two to three hours. Rogan joins other public figures such as conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, progressive economist Eric Weinstein, libertarian commentator Dave Rubin and psychology professor and author Jordan Peterson in a group coined the Intellectual Dark Web. As Parks notes, (2020, p. 178) they have ‘become popular by offering their often differing perspectives on a variety of issues such as identity politics, free speech, postmodernism and especially civil discourse’. Furthermore, ‘Rogan plays an extremely important role in the IDW by offering the widest reaching platform’ (Sang, Lee, and Park 2020, 180). Rogan has drawn ire for interviewing far-right figures who have been banned from social media for hate speech and giving conspiracy theorists a platform with minimal fact-checking in a trend that has put the spotlight on podcasts as a new medium for misinformation (Bogle 2020). But he has also given a platform to biologists, ethics professors and climate change experts. This diversity is why figures such as Rogan ‘have tapped into a wide market for audiences who may differ ideologically but fundamentally share a lack in faith in traditional institutions’ (Sang, Lee, and Park 2020, 187). Importantly, it is the podcast medium that has been identified as the enabler of these different worldviews coming into conversation with each other. As psychology professor Jordan Peterson said: ‘We inhabit the same technological space, more than the same ideological space … We’re all doing the same thing on the net, it’s not surprising that we are talking to each other … We are a loose collection of early adopters of a revolutionary technology’ (cited in Sang, Lee, and Park 2020, 185). In this interpretation the technology of the podcast enables those from differing ideologies to communicate together in the public sphere.

In the most watched episode ever, the billionaire, entrepreneur, engineer and new owner of social media platform Twitter, Elon Musk, made a first guest appearance in 2018. It ran for two hours and 33 minutes and more than 42 million people have downloaded it on YouTube. The episode made headlines mostly because the two smoked marijuana and drank whisky during the live interview. However, there were also long philosophical discussions about artificial intelligence, social media and revolutionizing transportation. This article analyses this particular episode in response to Burgess’ (2006) assertion that ‘the question that we ask about “democratic” media participation can no longer be limited to “who gets to speak”? We must also ask “who is heard and to what end?”’ Most empirical studies on political listening have considered who on the margins is heard or not. However, this study aims to analyse those who are most heard in crude terms of audience numbers. It does so by not only analysing the content of the podcast but also how it is heard in terms of acoustic effect. In following Kanngieser (2012, 337) it accounts for sonic inflections of the voice, pace, accent, dialect, intonation, frequency, amplitude and silence. Therefore, I undertake a sonic analysis of the podcast alongside a more conventional content analysis of the transcript. This requires examining a soundscape (Schafer 1977) such as an audio recording, which not only includes the acoustic environment but also the listener’s perception of it. Thus, for triangulation purposes, I also do an analysis of the most popular of the 124,520 comments under the YouTube clip. This comment had 500 replies and 143,000 likes, indicating the most audience engagement with this author’s interpretation of what they heard. The intent here is to also understand how others have listened to and perceived this podcast.²

The content analysis found there were many topics covered throughout the lengthy interview. These included flamethrowers, transport tunnels, artificial intelligence, chimps, social media, reality, cars, sustainable energy, the justice system, humanity, privacy, watches and what it is like to be Elon Musk. The most political content was about Musk’s attempts to get policymakers, including former president Barack Obama, to regulate artificial intelligence. He described warning politicians against the capacity for AI to be weaponized but it was ultimately futile. He repeats several times ‘nobody listened’. He later contradicts himself and says Obama ‘listened. He certainly listened’. If we consider how power and privilege have an impact on political listening these are quite extraordinary comments given the context that one of the world’s richest men spoke to one of the world’s most powerful political leaders and did not feel they were listened to.

There are few other sounds throughout the interview except for the two voices in discussion. This is in contrast to other popular podcasts that often have very high production quality, special effects, music and creative editing. The most distinctive sound is at a point when Musk is discussing cyborgs and Rogan says to the producer ‘pass that whisky, we’re getting crazy over here’. The listener then hears the sound of pouring liquid and ice cubes clinking around in a glass. The sounds of pouring, drinking and crunching ice can then be heard intermittently throughout the podcast. The acoustic impact was one of intimacy as two people held a long wide-ranging informal conversation that touches on personal questions over a drink together. This was compounded later in the podcast when Musk asks ‘is that a joint or a cigar’ and the listener can hear the sound of a lighter being sparked and a long inhalation of breath as the two share the marijuana.

There are quite stark contrasts between Rogan and Musk when analysing their voices in terms of pace, accent, dialect, intonation, frequency, amplitude and silence (Kanngieser 2012, 337). Rogan has a loud low voice with a Californian accent and he laughs often with a wheeze that is quite infectious. He speaks clearly at an easy pace to follow with expression and varying tone; he is excitable. He regularly interrupts Musk to speak in the natural way of two people who are in an informal conversation, rather than in the typical mainstream media interview style of question followed by an answer. However, Rogan will also sit in silence while he waits for Musk to elaborate on an answer and there are long stretches when he doesn’t speak at all. His dialect is very informal and he swears often. In contrast, Musk has a quiet low voice with a mostly American accent but the listener can detect other influences that are not always distinguishable but sound like formal English. He speaks very deliberately, slowly and methodically. He takes long pauses before answering questions and his sentences are short, well enunciated and grammatically correct. These distinctions between the two voices reflect concerns about how oral language through pronunciation, diction and grammar expose a system of social differences that can standardize dominant norms of speech (Bourdieu 1991, 54). Musk’s tone hardly varies and there is little expression in his voice even when talking about personal topics. He begins to laugh later in the interview and when he does it sounds quite controlled. His dialect is far more formal, but although he often speaks about complex engineering or philosophical concepts he does not use jargon. He does not swear throughout the interview and explicitly states that he has promised a friend he would not. The reader is now invited to listen to a short YouTube clip of the interview here that illustrates these differences between Rogan and Musk (until 00:21:53): www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycPr5-27vSI&t=1238s

The most popular listener comment on the YouTube clip was about the way that Musk spoke, rather than what he was actually speaking about. It had 143,000 likes and 500 comments. This is a strong indication that voice is not just about content, but about how it is being said and heard. Although, the comments from listeners were not just prompted by the way Musk spoke, but by the nature of his comment as well. The comment author wrote: ‘The way Elon speaks it’s like he’s from the future and is careful not to say something to disrupt the time-space continuum’. Those in response had various theories such as ‘he is just drunk’ or ‘just perpetually high’ or ‘he’s just shy and embarrassed about some questions’. Others drew parallels between the content of the interview about artificial intelligence and simulations and compared him to an alien or a cyborg such as’ he constantly sounds auto-tuned’ or ‘he literally is like a program'. Even his laughing is like the spelling ha-ha-ha’. There were also diagnoses of Asperger’s ‘which contributes to the monotone voice’ and gives him an ‘emotionless voice almost as if he can’t hear himself’. One listener thought ‘his speech pattern is a form of stuttering’.

Most listeners praised Musk and his ingenuity and these audience members attributed his deliberate way of speaking to intelligence. For example, ‘it’s weird because he’s supposed to be really smart, but he talks so freaking slow’. Several noted it was because Musk appeared to think before he spoke. There were others who suggested he was considering how he communicated to an audience of laypeople: ‘it’s because he has to filter and translate his thoughts to be comprehensible for a much lower tier IQ of a public audience’. There were several who raised his cultural background coming from South Africa, Canada and the US. Others perceived it as ‘an affectation…. Everything he says and the manner he says it is cultivated’ or ‘sounds like your everyday stuffy old English dryness’. These two comments echo those listeners who connected the deliberate way he spoke with his position as an elite, rich, powerful figure. For example, ‘actually he is very careful not to say things he is not meant to say. Because those who gave him the big name and put him in place where he is right now are not gonna be happy’. There were other more disparaging comments such as ‘Musk speaks like an individual enriching himself off the American taxpayer’s back, which is who he is’ or ‘capitalist mooch, a hoodwink tech … the way he speaks is not important. The way he works is’. On a final note, there was one comment in response that recognized the podcast as an alternative form of media. The listener wrote, ‘it is not that he would break space-time continuum, it was that he would break mainstream media’. This makes the distinction that, although Musk is a billionaire appearing on the most highly paid podcaster’s show, both elite rich powerful figures may be perceived as outsiders from the traditional platforms of media. The next section discusses how a sonic analysis might contribute to a deeper understanding of the role podcasts play in political listening.

Sound, voice and intimacy: podcasting’s potential to challenge mainstream media

This case study indicates that voice, speech and sound are critical to how political listening is experienced through podcasts. Despite the podcast being uploaded to the audio-visual platform of YouTube, it was the way in which Musk spoke that was most engaged with, rather than any comments about visual or content observations. Hundreds of thousands of listeners were literally attuned to tone, accent, pace and grammar. This supports the notion that voice has the power to construct sociocultural spaces (Connor 2000) and is ‘the most immediate means of expression’ (Kanngieser 2012, 36–339). The audience engagement also showed how sound and voice generates environments in which knowledge is produced, and undergirds and forms the power structures it participates in (Kanngieser, 2015). Musk appears representative of power and privilege in that his language is that of the dominant class: it is formal, grammatically correct, well enunciated and spoken in an upper-class English accent (Bourdieu and Thompson 1991). We can see how this can reinforce social and cultural hierarchies between those who are well-educated and those who are not. However, not all listeners were engaging in political listening with an uncritical ear to power and privilege. We can detect this in the comments that Musk is speaking with affectation because he is a ‘capitalist mooch’ who is ‘enriching himself off the American taxpayer’s back’.

It could be argued that podcasting has helped changed these power relations in terms of speech and language. This kind of informal, conversational and vernacular language has the potential for political listening to hear differences. There can be a mix of everyday mundane language and abstract speech of elite experts (Jarrett 2009) and this was certainly the case if we compare Musk and Rogan. This challenges the dominant formal language of ‘proper’ English that is often encoded and standardized in media organizations, although there has been a shift towards more informal modes of speech, even at public broadcasters (Newman and Gallo 2020). Rogan uses the language of the working class without intimidation or stigmatization. When Musk tells him he has promised someone he would not swear on the program, Rogan responds ‘tell that friend to go fuck himself’. It is this kind of informal rapport that Shapiro (cited in McHugh 2016) calls a ‘chumcast,’ which can make the listener feel included in a private conversation. However, it is not just the conversation in this episode that has this effect, but the sounds we can hear alongside it: the sharing of whisky and a joint. It has been argued that the technology of podcasting enables this ‘deeper level of intimacy’ (Berry 2016, 13) than other media forms. It is possible that the intimate nature of podcasts may help listeners be more open to political listening across difference. However, another limitation of this analysis is the lack of evidence to show what effect this political listening had on the audience. There was no data in the 500 comments about the way Musk spoke as to how it had made listeners feel. Therefore, more research is needed on how the affective and sensory nature of podcasts can impact political listening.

This case study also provides a very limited snapshot of who is most listened to in the podcasting public sphere. The most popular podcast is now worth an estimated $200 million and is given a platform on the major media conglomerate Spotify. The most popular episode of this podcast featured the richest man in the world who has direct contact with powerful politicians. In this particular episode, there is no political listening across social and cultural difference (Dreher 2009) when we hear two white, upper-class, middle-aged, straight men in conversation. This is perhaps no surprise given that podcast listeners tend to be young, educated, affluent, urban men. One journalist has attributed Rogan’s popularity to his superior understanding of men (Gordon 2019). The ‘opt-in’ nature means that these listeners are choosing to download programs with ‘a heightened perception of personal relevance regarding that content’ (MacDougall 2011, 718). One limitation of this study was not having the scope to survey listener demographics to confirm that other social groups were not ‘opting in’ and why. Another critical limitation of this study is its lack of comparative analysis with other podcasts, including other episodes that may include more marginalized voices. For example, Rogan’s interviews with Nick Yarris or Amanda Knox, who were both wrongfully convicted of murder, would not be considered elite voices. Therefore, this article is intended as a starting point to illustrate the value in undertaking an acoustic analysis and some possible tools to do future research of this kind on podcasts.

It is not a straightforward conclusion to assume that the Joe Rogan Experience, and popular podcasts more generally, are the same in instituting power and privilege as other mainstream media platforms. This podcast may be part of a large media organization now but it began and grew in listener numbers when it was created independently in a home garage without professional studio equipment by an entertainment media figure who did not have widespread recognition. The producers were able to ‘do radio on their own terms – free from industry and/or legal restrictions’ (Markman, 2011, 555). In fact, there have been concerns, even identifying the Rogan podcast, that the medium is too unregulated in relation to hate speech and misinformation (Bogle 2020). This shows how podcasts can mediate political listening outside the constraints of the economic and state markets. Nevertheless, the move to Spotify in 2020 indicates we may be seeing a shift towards the corporatization of listening and ‘against its collective and democratizing energies’ so that podcasts become a ‘soft technology of power’ Lloyd (2009, 479). In this case, we see podcasts such as the Joe Rogan Experience become a more dominant competitor in the public sphere for economic, cultural and social power. A comparative analysis of the most popular podcasts across several countries would provide more evidence of how they may or may not be challenging or conforming to other media norms and practices.

Conclusion

This article has contributed to extending our understanding and conception of political listening and the media through an analysis of the most popular podcast in the world. Bringing sound studies into conversation with political listening theory allows us to explore how and which voices are heard through the affective nature of sound and the intimate nature of podcasts as a medium. Most importantly, this particular study found that audiences are attuned, not just to the content of what is being said, but how it is being said. They are literally listening to tone, grammar and accent and responding to these aural effects, sometimes with a critical ear about their relationship to power and privilege. This initial study presents an opportunity to undertake further comparative analyses of podcasts including which voices are heard, how audio is produced and distributed and the acoustic affect they have on audiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The starting point for this article was to find the most popular podcast to analyse what audiences were hearing or tuning into. The top platform used in Australia is Spotify, which does not have a specific section on Politics so categorizes podcasts with political content into Society and Culture, where the JRE is situated at the top of the chart. Although not specifically classified as a political podcast, the JRE regularly includes interviews with politicians and policymakers and contains political content even in interviews with entertainers.

2. Ideally, the analysis would have been done on a purely audio version of the podcast, rather than the audio-visual medium of YouTube, however, this is the only platform that measures audience views, indicating it as the most popular episode. Also, since the move to Spotify there are no longer audience comments on the program. In analysing the soundscape, I did not watch the episode, I only listened to its content on headphones.