Podcasts: Not Yet
Wow, was I wrong! I love podcasts and spend more time listening than I do watching TV. But of the 42 classmates responding to a “quick survey,” 12 had never listened to a podcast on a phone or tablet because they were not interested in the format (3), preferred reading (3), didn’t know how to download one (2) or were too busy to add another media type.
Of the 30 who did listen on phone/tablet, about 20% don’t subscribe to any shows, 50% subscribe to 3 or fewer, 20% subscribe to 4-10 and 10% more than 10.
The low response rate is itself a “tell” — ho hum. Well according to the latest market research from Edison Research (see this report, p. 62), only 22% of American adults 55 years and older listen to podcasts. For those over 70, it’s gotta be in the teens (or lower).
What are the most popular ones among Yale 1969 classmates? Well, here they are, simply listed, with those having more than one mention in bold text:
* All In with Chris Hayes
* Aria Code
* Bag Man (Maddow, concluded)
* BBC History Hour
* Blackout starring Rami Malek
* Car Talk
* Currents, by Norton Rose Fulbright
* Dateline (for mindless true crime falling asleep)
* Deep Background, with Noah Feldman
* Dial It Back Or Die, by our own classmate Mike Folz (see separate review)
* Experts Only, by Clean Capital
* Five Thirty Eight Politics
* Firesign Mystery Theater
* Fresh Air [Terry Gross]
* Hidden Brain
* Homecoming [serial story, concluded]
* How I Built This [how startups happened]
* Intelligence Matters, with Michael Moritz
* Land of the Giants [about rise of Amazon and Netflix]
* Long Now: Seminars About Long Term Thinking [Stewart Brand]
* Lexicon Valley
* Making Sense [Sam Harris]
* Naked Scientists
* On Being
* Open Yale Course “Political Philosophy” with Steven Smith
* Open Yale Course “The American Revolution” with Joanne Freeman
* Open Yale Course “The Civil War and Reconstruction Era 1845-1877” with David Blight
* Outside Podcast
* Pivot [Kara Swisher and NYU’s Scott Galloway]
* Planet Money
* Pod Save America
* Prof. Richard Wolf of Univ. Of Mass @ Amherst
* Radio Lab [Jad Abumrad]
* Recode Decode [Kara Swisher]
* Revisionist history [Malcolm Gladwell]
* Science Friday
* Selected Shorts
* Serial (concluded)
* Star Talk Radio
* Talking Sopranos
* TED Radio Hour
* The Argument
* The Axe files
* The Daily [most popular mention; NY Times deep dive into important current story]
* The Digital Story
* The Ezra Klein Show
* The Happiness Lab [Yale prof Laurie Santos, see “Can Yale Make You Happy?“]
* The Hilarious World of Depression
* The Last Archive [Jill Lepore]
* The Moth
* The New Yorker Fiction
* The New Yorker Radio Hour
* The New Yorker: The Writer’s Voice Fiction from the Magazine
* The Nimble Photographer
* The Oath with Chuck Rosenberg
* The Plot Against America
* The Stop Down Photography Podcast
* The Tech Guy
* This American Life
* Trump Inc.
* Uncivil
* Up First
* Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me
* You Are Not So Smart
* You Must Remember This