A claim made by Mike Pesca on his ‘occasional’ 🔗 Substack. But maybe that isn’t the point? Maybe that is also not right? He asked for comments. This post is is my response. What do you think?
I definitely agree with the sentiment of your post. I do feel I kinda ‘know’ people on podcasts better than, those who’s newsletter or blog I read. That said …
To spend time listening to a podcast is a big time commitment. Example - listening to The Gist each week day requires me to devote around 2% of all my available time on that day, which translates to (maybe) 25% of my ‘disposable time’ (8hrs of sleep, 8hrs of work, (say) 6hrs of ‘life’ leaves 2 of disposable time).
Yes I can do other things while I listen, but it is still time intensive. PLUS, there is a commitment to that time to even get to know whether I want to listen. I know I can speed up the podcast - but really?
Meanwhile, I can grok newsletters, blogs et al pretty quickly and make a decision if I really want to commit time to reading it. So to get to information - the written word every time. To get to ‘know’ someone … audio.
But there won’t therefore be a large number of people in that category that I really ‘know’ - if in fact any. Example: despite listening to the Gist for many years - because I like the show and more often than not enjoy what you are talking about - I still don’t really ‘know’ you.