Podcasts: Sticking to Your Ideals, Not Ideology

 

Last week, I wrote about my personal experience with social media.  While there have been benefits to its emergence, there are so many aspects of it that have been destructive to society and that have contributed to the polarization: mobs, doxxing, censorship, trolling, and the undue influence on our electoral system both by shadow banning and other algorithmic influencing and, in Zuckerberg’s case, direct meddling in the election.

I also worry a great deal about being siloed, about being insulated from divergent points of view. By  following people that think exactly the way we do, to garner more “likes” that make us feel smart and witty, like Pavlov’s dog, I worry about becoming intellectually ossified.  Much of our intellectual growth comes from being challenged by facts and evidence and supported arguments that counter our views.  Making one uncomfortable and erasing one’s smugness is often the best favor someone can bestow upon you.

Douglas Murray’s latest column in the Spectator, “The art of changing your mind” was perfectly timed to address some of my concerns.  (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-art-of-changing-your-mind).  I have often thought of John Maynard Keynes’s famous response when a critic accused him of being inconsistent, “When the facts change, I change my mind.  What do you do, sir?”

Which brings me around to podcasts.  While social media has generally operated to harden us into tribes, created mobs, and often has permitted people to demonstrate some of their most impulsive and darker aspects of their personalities, podcasts have been, in my view, like throwing open a window on the first delightful spring day.   Of the millions of tweets posted each day, I highly doubt that anyone has been persuaded to alter their views on anything as a result.  But podcasts are different.  They are a happy development in a world of media propagandizing, trolling, doxxing, and impulsivity.

If you are intellectually curious, podcasts accomplish a number of positive things.  Most importantly, they allow for discourse that is more complex and nuanced than you can possibly get on legacy media OR social media.  On legacy media, segments are 7-10 minutes long, at most.  Twitter is even worse.  At 160 characters, it is impossible to put together a coherent view supported by facts, which is why most of these exchanges involve uniformed opinions, often with snarky, equally uniformed retorts.  The forced brevity facilitates polarization and we sometimes see otherwise  public intellectuals with some level of expertise spitting at each other like schoolyard children.  They allow a longer, more informed discussion and back and forth than is available on other platforms.

Podcasts allow for respectful discourse and exchange of views, especially if the podcaster is open-minded.  Joe Rogan is one.  Bari Weiss’s Honestly is another.   Bret Weinstein has also entertained lengthy discussions with individuals that have perspectives that are quite different than his.   These discussions have allowed me to rethink and reframe issues.   I often come away from some of these podcasts thinking, “Gee, I never thought about that in quite that way.”   It is healthy, and necessary if you are serious about reaching the truth of a matter.

Secondly, because of their length, podcasts reveal much more about the podcasters personalities.  We see the tartness and “mother bear” instincts of Megyn Kelly, the natural intelligence and inquisitiveness of Bari Weiss, and the wisdom and deep historical perspective of Victor Davis Hanson.  Glenn Loury has revealed much about his personal life, his highly indirect route to becoming a public intellectual, a route that took him through the ‘hood and rehab—it adds to his genuineness and humanity.

To be sure, there are drawbacks.  Legacy media constrains broadcasters to 30 or 60 minute segments.  The podcasters can go on for much too long, and sometimes take weird detours.  Good writers have good editors that keep them disciplined.   Podcasters have no such constraints.  James Lindsey’s New Discourses podcasts, for instance, can run for 2 hours or more, much longer than my attention span.  Tighten it up.

In a world of acute hyperpartisanship, I am making an earnest effort to both ignore pure propaganda, especially of the Woke kind, but at the same time, I am seeking out media outlets that foster honest and open-minded diversity of views.  While rejecting Wokeness in its entirety, I also do not want to get trapped in an intellectual cul-de-sac.  That can be as poisonous to one’s mind as buying the propaganda grist. 

Some of my favorite podcasts?   The Dark Horse Podcast with environmental biologists Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, New Discourses with James Lindsey, The Glenn Show with Glenn Loury (especially when he has conversations with John McWhorter—the  “Black Guys”), The Saad Truth with Gad Saad, and, of course, the two best interviewers in media Bari Weiss on Honestly and Megyn Kelly on The Megyn Kelly Show.   The Victor Davis Hanson Show is a weekly staple for me.

It is no small irony that, as someone who has spent much of his adult life as a Reagan Republican, I find that when it gets right down to it, the most interesting people and people with real insights in this new media are traditional liberals- Bret Weinstein, Bari Weiss and Abigail Shrier.   The first step to ending the emerging tribalism is to recognize the common ground you have with the people from other tribes.  Podcasts help get you there.