I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of people, myself included, use podcasts as basically the dog food version of friends. It’s not nearly so much about each thing the host(s) says, as “Would I want to hang out with this person and shoot the shit on a regular basis?”
Like the old men playing checkers in the town square or the retired guys at Starbucks every morning. Wtf do they talk about day after day? Doesn’t matter. They just would rather be in each other’s company than sit at home.
I’ve never listened to Maron. But my guess is that for a lot of his listeners, it’s more about it feeling like hanging out with an old (podcast) friend than the actual content.
This is what’s called a parasocial relationship. Who knows who psychologically healthy this is, but yeah, the biggest value I get out of podcasts is that they mimc the feeling of hanging out with your bros shooting the shit only it’s there whenever you want on demand. It’s not surprising my favorite podcasts are mostly just guys in my age demographic goofing around with the thin pretext that they’re reviewing a movie or playing an RPG or whatever…
Indeed, there are critical questions to be asked about the social complexities of gender, as well as medical ethics in a profit-driven healthcare system. We are simply not interested in any of that.
As a setup, this is last night:
mrs. spidercrab: spidercrab, I have been begging you to sit down with me and help plan a trip to Europe this summer. I have been thinking about this and trying to talk about this and you’ve been “too busy” and unavailable. We have to plan this and you need to sit down with me and take this seriously.
me: fine, let’s sit down and talk tomorrow night. I appreciate that I’ve been super busy and haven’t been able to put as much thought into this.
Tonight
me: ok, let’s talk.
mrs. spidercrab: I know I’ve been talking about Paris, but the more I read the more I think I want to go to Switzerland.
me: oh, that’s surprising. Why?
mrs. spidercrab: Copenhagen sounds really cool.
me: huh?
mrs. spidercrab: or, whatever, the Scandanavian area in general seems reall cool.
