Emily Ferguson

Ever since I found out Santa Claus wasn’t real a year ago, the idea of him began to give me the creeps. Who is this immortal jolly elf, and what does his business of breaking and entering once a year even have to do with Jesus’s birthday, or even St Nicholas? Christmas is a season of traditions, both personal and religious. Each year, its celebrants decorate their gingerbread houses, wrap their presents, decorate their fir trees, drink their eggnog and see Santa Claus at the mall. Some people even go to church.

There is a moment in the first episode of Dolly Parton’s America when you think the sainted songstress may have made the worst mistake of her career. ‘Do you think of yourself as a feminist?’ asks host Jad Abumrad. ‘No, I do not,’ Dolly says. There is a pause as wide as the gap between those who have four-year degrees and those who don’t. After Dolly says she thinks feminism means hating men, Abumrad cuts to an interview with feminist, Heartland author and Dolly superfan Sarah Smarsh. They grasp for a reason why Dolly would think so non- progressively. The interview starts to feel like a wake.

Most of the podcasts that sell relationship advice imply that romance is synonymous with sex. The theory of that equivalency has been a theme in the arts for centuries: Shakespeare, Flaubert, Thackeray and Tolstoy all exposed its follies and truths. Unsurprisingly, the podcast hosts have a less poetic, nuanced note than the classic writers, such as giving the advice: ‘If you’re having a dry spell, listen to us or break up.’ Tony and Alisa DiLorenzo are a Christian couple who have married for 23 years. Perhaps surprisingly, their podcast, ONE Extraordinary Marriage, depicts sex and romance as interchangeable. Tony and Alisa, who couple on the page in their co-authored book 7 Days of Sex Challenge, start each episode with a ‘hug’.

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. People who go into the wild looking to meet bloodthirsty predators are either a living Xanax pill or some sort of dominatrix version of Jane Goodall. Especially when it’s winter. Save yourself a mauling by a hungry puma, swap your earmuffs for earphones and get wild with The Wild, in which ecologist and award-winning filmmaker Chris Morgan leaps sure-footedly from one wildlife topic to another like a mountain goat. Like Nature itself, The Wild is pretty random but always red in tooth and claw. Morgan focuses on the overlap between animals and humans: something people tend not to consider when they move into areas where the neighbors are bears or cougars.

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. Everyone loves a good murder. Tales of cold-blooded killing were bringing in audiences even before Truman Capote elevated the telling. Now, as if tales of real-life slaughter aren’t enough, podcasters color the horrors and hook the listeners with spooky music, awkward cliffhangers and a dubious sociological moral. The typical true-crime podcast has hosts who seem to be chugging wine from the box and narratives ruined by contrived social implications. A cynic or a detective would link this style to the appearance of listicles of the best true-crime podcasts in Good Housekeeping, Oprah Magazine, Town and Country and Women’s Health.

This article is in The Spectator’s October 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. ‘Man the food-gatherer,’ wrote Marshall McLuhan, ‘reappears incongruously as information-gatherer.’ Once we foraged for information in the library. Now we graze among the podcasts. In the age of compulsive eating, podcasts are compulsive listening, an attempt to fill the silence. Nothing better to do? Click on a podcast, and let your attention drift. It takes no effort, it dissolves minutes into hours, and talking about the ‘great podcast’ you just listened to can sound just as smart as saying you’re reading War and Peace. After all, podcasts were originally made by nerds, for nerds.