Buzzcast
Buzzcast is a roundtable discussion about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we are using, and dip into the Customer Support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up-to-date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you.
Buzzcast
The Most Annoying Podcast Stereotype And Why It's Wrong
Podcasts get a bad rap sometimes, and one stereotype just won’t go away. So we're breaking down why it’s totally wrong, why it keeps popping up, and what podcasters can do about it. We also dive into why long-form conversations matter, how podcasting gets unfairly judged, and yes—our thoughts on that SNL skit.
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All right. So, kevin, I've been thinking since our last episode. I think I understand why you did not like the SNL Medcast skit. All right, why do you think I didn't like this? Okay, so to set it up for anybody who didn't listen to the end of the last episode, snl had a skit and it was kind of like men Kevin's in my age. They don't really go to the doctor and instead they're just listening to podcasts. So the doctors do like a fake podcast interview and that's how they're getting guys to come in for their checkups Like tricking them.
Speaker 1:Kevin said I love SNL, but I didn't really love this one and I was thinking about it more and I was like what, what's in here that we didn't like? And I've got a theory. Okay, the theory is that it's just a straw man. The straw man is that there's all these guys out there that instead of going to the doctor, they're really just listening to podcasts and it's funny. I found it funny, but it is. It's definitely fake. I seriously hope it's fake and somehow it kind of is taking a shot at podcasting, which is near and dear to our hearts.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it takes a shot at podcasting by which is near and dear to our hearts. Yeah, and it takes a shot at podcasting by saying podcasts are kind of saying they're just as good as a doctor, but they're really not. And I basically have spent the last week thinking about all the ways in which podcasting is beautiful for what it is, but people need to stop misusing it People including SNL. So this is my theory.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:I think that's a good theory. Some of that's definitely resonating with me. Some of that is definitely true. I don't like when people poke fun at podcasts as like one of the leading sources of misinformation in the world. Yeah, like as a blanket statement or that sentiment. It annoys me because I do think there are a lot of podcasts that do spread misinformation and are just doing, you know, bro, science and garbage content, but there are a lot that are doing the opposite of that, that are exposing people to new ideas and new concepts and things that they never considered before, and I think, overall, that's totally great. And it's like there's tons of other stuff that they never considered before. And I think, overall, that's totally great. And it's like there's tons of other stuff that does the same stuff. Youtube does the same stuff. People who write books or editorials in very respected publications all of that stuff could also fall into the same category, but for some reason, podcasts have gotten a bit of a bad rap for doing this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to be clear the printing press, as soon as it came out, was all the most popular books were not the Bible. It was like how to identify witches in your neighborhood. It was misinformation, was like the first thing people pressed because they're all excited about all this crazy stuff in these books. But what I kept thinking was like misinformation and free speech and podcasting, and I kept going back to all these cases. I read about free speech and the best antidote to bad speech is more speech. We need more ideas and podcasts. We definitely are now at a point where we have tons of ideas, but just saying ideas is not the final step and I feel like that might be.
Speaker 1:Where is like a culture? We seem to be all a little bit confused right now. People are going on podcasts and we say all sorts of dumb stuff. We say dumb stuff on this podcast. That is not the end of the scientific method. It's not the end of fact finding. It's not the end of like we have the affirmative truth. We're just at the free speech, like we're not stifling ideas phase. We're just at step one of like hey, you can say what you want Legally, we're not even going to try to stop you from saying what you want, but that's not the end. We still have the scientific method, we still have good explanations, we still have fact finding, we still have articles and journals and everything else, and somehow podcasting has been like falsely accused, slandered by saying that somehow we now are the standard bearers for like podcasts. Are it? As soon as you say it on a podcast, it's good and it's done. No more work needs to be done after that.
Speaker 2:See, okay, so from my perspective I'm going to be like the female voice in this room. Here is I was thinking that it was more taking a friend, and so I trust them, as I would trust a friend, I don't know, for me it was more taking jabs at, like the people that are just like I love podcasters so much and I listen to them and I'm going to regurgitate everything that they say to all the people that I know. I don't know. It kind of feels like podcasters are getting ushered into this more serious stage, like us. We're talking, we're going to be wrong about things. That's okay because it's not to be taken that seriously, right. But it feels like podcasters are getting pushed more into, I mean, like this new media where it's to be taken more seriously, and they're getting like media passes and stuff like that and it's fully not reporters. These are podcasters and influencers. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Yeah, I think the the unlock for me was that it wasn't the Kevin and I are in the age group for men that don't go to the doctor. That is, I think, a fact. I don't think that that is incorrect, but it wasn't the like male part of me that bristled at it. I think it is the part of me that's like an advocate for the podcasting industry. There's just like oh yeah, of course, like it shouldn't be used as medical advice, but everyone knows that and I this is like the stupidest thing to do is argue with a comedy Cause it was funny, I found it funny.
Speaker 1:I know that like I don't have to fight the comedy, but I do think as podcasters we should every once in a while throw the caveat out there. We're in the idea space, we're in the exploration phase, but once people come up with good ideas, then we come up with good explanations. We then test our hypotheses and we come up with theories and we do studies and then we start publishing in journals and we do peer review, Like there's a lot of other stuff that comes up. All that we're in is just like step one. Of course, that's not the last step.
Speaker 3:All right, I'm resisting the urge to get too deep on it on a conversation around a Saturday Night Live skit. I would love to see how deep we can go.
Speaker 2:How far down the rabbit hole?
Speaker 3:I really am resisting the urge because, at the end of the day, podcasts are a place for people to come together and go as deep or as light as they want, and I think it should be, and should remain forever like a safe space for people to have conversations with their friends or with other people who are interested in similar topics sometimes experts, sometimes not and just say, hey, here's something that I've discovered for myself, here's something that works for me, here's something that I heard that I tried, that didn't work for me, whatever.
Speaker 3:And it doesn't all have to follow the scientific method and be fully. We have verdicts through blind studies and all that kind of stuff. Some of it is just conversations and as a podcast listener, you can listen in on those conversations and you can decide how much of it you want to believe and how much of it that you don't Right. Yeah, a ton of the most popular podcasts, in fact, one that Jordan just helped launch last week is talking about crazy UFO theories and stuff like that, and that's just a couple of people getting together and just talking about what they think about some stuff that they've read, you know, and their ideas around it, and it's just fun.
Speaker 2:And they know nothing.
Speaker 3:And that should be perfectly fine, okay. The other point I want to make, about the Saturday Night Live skit specifically, is that I just didn't think it was that funny, and so I am a little bit offended as somebody who enjoys funny stuff. I thought, it was a little.
Speaker 2:I'm offended somebody who enjoys funny stuff. I thought it was a little. I'm offended.
Speaker 3:Cause you weren't funny enough. I think it was a little bit of the same tired joke that they did last time. They did a podcasting skit. But the first time I thought it was really funny and that was you know, the the father son microphone that helps you fathers and sons have conversations, and it's playing off the joke that men have a hard time having deep conversations with each other, and this is a way for fathers and sons to actually have real conversations.
Speaker 3:Right, If we make it like a podcast, maybe they'll talk. And then they use the same joke they recycled it to how can we get men to talk to doctors? Well, it's the same thing. Men have a hard time talking, so if we put them in a podcast environment, they'll talk to their doctor. And so I'm like same tired joke again. You know, podcasts are kind of the a little bit of the punchline here, taking jabs at whatever, and so I think that's kind of the core of why I was like, eh, okay, great, podcasting again, a little bit more mainstream, but it wasn't the genius. That was like the original podcast get on SNL, which was the serial Sarah Koenig impression, which was genius and wonderful and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, and maybe I thought it was funny because I hadn't seen those other skits, those other podcast skits, and so for me it was a little bit more fresh.
Speaker 3:Oh, you hadn't seen the dad Mike.
Speaker 2:Uh-uh, no, I hadn't seen it, so to me it was new.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you go watch it, it'd be interesting to see if you think it's funny now that you've kind of seen the joke already once, because it'll just be a retelling.
Speaker 2:I have to be honest with you. I've tried watching SNL so many times and I just I don't think it's funny, so I don't watch it.
Speaker 3:I think like YouTube killed SNL because it used to be that you'd suffer through the hour and a half duration of the show for the one or two good skits on the show. Yes, and now you don't have to anymore, because they will just surface on YouTube.
Speaker 2:I just wait for someone to post them in the company chat or something I'm like. Okay, this is going to be good.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, I used to watch it on Saturday nights and you'd suffer through the commercials and then you'd have the musical guest who I didn't care about and I'm like, oh man, it's another 15 minutes. Hopefully there's another skit coming up. Youtube premium watching SNL is the way to watch SNL. Like I just do it the next morning and then you just go and it's like 25 minutes of I find hilarious skits and I watch it all and I'm like, oh, these are great.
Speaker 1:I send my favorite ones to my sister and not a two hour kind of going through it and watching tons of truck and beer commercials.
Speaker 3:Okay, so this this is a little bit off of the topic of the SNL skit, but Albin sort of hinted around it One of the things that I think is starting to resonate with people who listen to podcasts, or people who are starting to consider listening to podcasts, is that these longer conversations lead to people being more real and I think, potentially, like you, can say something that in and of itself could be taken poorly, but in the larger context of a very lightly edited long conversation where you get to hear the person you know for 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after, you start to really understand, sort of like, where their heart is, where their motivations are, some of their back history, some of their story, and then they express an opinion which may or may not be popular with you, like it might not resonate with you, you might disagree with it, but at least you're more open to it, knowing more context on both sides of those opinions.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think that is a really powerful thing in podcasting that you don't really get in, I would say, traditional media, whether you're reading a newspaper or whether you're watching an interview on a popular news show or something like that. Those things are all are tight because they're very time constrained, but it's one of the things that Joe Rogan is like the most popular example of a podcast that does this. But now other podcasts have started to follow this format as well, that you're not just having guests on who are expressing opinions about things and those opinions you might just disagree with and decide I don't like this person. But you're actually starting to get some of the story around that person.
Speaker 3:And who is this person? And they talk about hobbies, they talk about their family, they share stories and so you can say, listen, I don't really like how you've gotten to this opinion, a political opinion, a medical opinion, an opinion about education, an opinion about how you should do things in the workplace, whatever it could be. But you could say, well, but now that I know a little bit more about you, I understand how you've gotten to that place, how it makes sense to you, and they're just more like real life, humanizing you know, it's like I've got a lot of friends who we disagree on a lot of things with.
Speaker 3:I disagree with a lot of things in their lives and yet I'm still able to find some common ground. I'm still able to know them as a person. And so, even though we disagree on, like where your kids should go to school or like what is, you know your involvement in school sports look like, or the fact that you go to the, you know you're heavily involved in the PTA and you think that I should be too, but we can still have fun together. Outside of that, A lot of school conflicts, Kevin. I don't know what my examples are coming from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they aren't more humanizing because if you're a guest on TV, you know they're only going to pick 30 seconds and they're going to pick the 30 seconds that are the best for TV. And often it's when you misspoke and you said something really dumb and they went sound bite done. We got you Right. So you get a lot of interviews that are very wooden because people are thinking the whole time I got to be very careful. What exactly am I going to say? Is are thinking the whole time. I got to be very careful. What exactly am I going to say? Is it going to sound dumb? How will it come across if it's only this one sentence?
Speaker 1:And you just get a lot of very wooden interviews but podcasts, when you know this whole thing's going to be like 45 minutes, it may even be multiple hours then you know, oh, if I missay it and I go wait, let me say that again and you give some more context. A lot of times what sounded really dumb or misspoke in one sentence is clarified in the next, and that's becoming much more of the norm in podcasting. So you get way fewer of the gotcha moments. You get much more of the wow. I totally disagree, and yet I kind of see how we just have totally different life paths so we ended up at very different results.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's leading me to this new theory that I might be ready to accept for me personally, and that is like I think more short form content drives more emotional responses and drives more, you know, this side or that side, and in a lot of cases it also drives like like rage, like we have to do whatever we can to stop this or to shut this down or to censor this content. And then more long form content, like books and podcasts and stuff, I think, do the opposite. They kind of open your mind and you're like, okay, well, yeah, we, I there. There are other ways to look at this again.
Speaker 3:Even though I may not disagree with it, at the end of the day I don't necessarily think the person behind it or who believes that is, you know, the worst thing ever. We just disagree and it's okay to have disagreements and it's okay to share my idea and your idea and then still be friends and have a drink out. But you don't get that on Twitter, you're not going to get that on TikTok. You're not going to get an Instagram and YouTube shorts and even YouTube proper, like you know, three and four minute videos. You're not going to get all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Even the worst person. You're not going to be able to disagree with 90% of the things they say. You know deep down, even the people you find like the most confusing or the most confused, they still love their own family. They're still like day to day dealing with a lot of the same things that you are, and so when you hear their story, you're like, wow, even though I disagree on everything I've ever read, they've written every TikTok they've ever posted. Now, when I actually hear more about them, I get like they're just different. We're very, very different, but we still have like 40, 50% of the human experience is exactly the same.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, I think that that was a great deep dive into an SNL skit. Can't wait for more of that next week when we have our full Buzzcast episode and our sound off question for next week is what is the creator path you've taken? So we're still accepting some submissions for that. So go ahead and tap the text, the show link in the show notes to send that in and until next time, keep podcasting.
