Sometime around the pandemic years, I began to notice that when friends called to catch up, alongside the customary news about careers, marriages, and offspring, they would update me on the fortunes of their favourite podcaster.
The trend reached a harrowing crescendo when an acquaintance of mine somehow became a devout listener to The Rest Is Politics and started keeping me informed about the latest exploits of his imagined companions, ‘Alastair’ and ‘Rory’. (Worst of all, his favourite of the two is Rory. I can think of only a handful of worse things to discover about a friend.)
The illusion of intimacy is understandable because podcasts are the most intimate form of modern media yet devised. We listen while jogging, commuting, cooking, walking the dog, or staring into the darkness at three in the morning. The hosts’ voices fill the quiet spaces of our lives with chat, humour, and hot takes.
Dedicated listeners like me hear the voices of their favourite podcasters for more hours each week than we do the voices of many of our relations. Which is extraordinary, really. Over time, it’s easy to begin to feel as though we genuinely know the person behind the microphone. But that’s an illusion which comes from what psychologists call a ‘parasocial relationship’ – a one-sided emotional connection between an audience member and a media personality.
The rhythms of podcasts mimic the conversations we have with friends. A good podcaster chats casually, digresses freely, shares personal anecdotes, and laughs at their own jokes. After several hundred episodes of somebody discussing their coffee preferences, childhood neuroses and opinions on everything from geopolitics to air fryers, the listeners’ subconscious can think: ‘Well, clearly this person must attend my birthday drinks.’
But the uncomfortable truth is that your favourite podcaster is not your friend. Brutal though it sounds, podcasters are uniquely skilled at simulating intimacy. They cultivate accessibility. They cough, ramble, lose their train of thought and interrupt themselves. The medium thrives on an air of studied informality. The listener feels addressed not by a performer, but by an entertaining acquaintance slouched opposite them in a pub, two and a half pints deep and just beginning to warm to the subject.
Our brains are wired to mistake repetition for familiarity, and familiarity for affection. Hear somebody speak for hours each week and your subconscious quietly files them away under ‘people I know’. Yet while you may feel you know them, they don’t know you – and may not especially wish to. It is an entirely one-sided relationship. Besides, if they suddenly stopped podcasting tomorrow, what would become of this supposed friendship?
A good podcaster chats casually, digresses freely, shares personal anecdotes, and laughs at their own jokes
Podcasting is not the first medium to encourage the fantasy of intimacy. Sir Terry Wogan famously advised broadcasters to imagine themselves speaking to a single listener in the next room. Millions of people felt he was addressing them personally. We experience similar illusions elsewhere too: with bartenders, restaurant managers, hairdressers, even those semi-familiar figures with whom we exchange a cheerful ‘hello’ on the morning walk.
Then social media arrived and detonated the meaning of friendship altogether. Suddenly a friend meant anyone you’d once met at a barbecue, briefly worked with in 2014, or followed because they posted photographs of aesthetically pleasing sunsets. Genuine friendship – the difficult, demanding, inconvenient sort, involving loyalty, patience, mutual suffering and helping somebody clear out their garage – became flattened into likes, comments and follower counts.
With podcasts, I sit on both sides of the fence. On the one hand, I am a podcast addict. As I stare at my breathlessly busy podcast queue, I find myself paraphrasing the first step of every recovery programme: I have admitted I am powerless over podcasts, and that my listening habits have become unmanageable.
I also host my own podcast, called Jesus Christ, They’ve Done It, about the BBC’s 1980s nuclear war film, Threads. It’s niche, irregular and probably too bleak to be a breeding ground for any sense of friendship, but what genuinely surprised me was how emotionally invested listeners became. People tell me a new episode can transform their week. They remember exactly where they were when they listened to particular moments.
And yet even the finest podcaster cannot offer the reciprocity that genuine friendship demands. Friendship involves listening as much as talking; remembering birthdays rather than announcing tour dates; helping somebody move house instead of imploring them to ‘smash that subscribe button’. Your favourite podcaster may entertain you, soothe you, and accompany you through the lonelier moments of life. But if you come down with flu, they are unlikely to arrive at your door carrying a pot of chicken soup.
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