From under a blanket, daily podcasts come of age
When it’s time to get to work, after a morning teleconference and a cup (or two) of coffee, Cardiff Garcia combs his hair, heads into the closet of his Upper West Side apartment and hangs a blanket over his head. Waiting for his FaceTime call is Stacey Vanek Smith, who answers from a makeshift fort — her own blanket, stretched over two side chairs — that she rebuilds each day in her Brooklyn living room.
For Smith and Garcia, hosts of the daily economics podcast “The Indicator” from NPR, these improvised, at-home recording booths are just one consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. As isolation orders have forced millions of Americans to reimagine their work, daily podcasters like Smith and Garcia have pivoted without missing a beat, broadcasting from closets and basements — or any other insulated place that can fit a dynamic microphone — to provide a nation of sequestered listeners with reliable news updates, a sense of community and a comforting voice.
“We want to be as much of a public service as we can,” Smith said.
Unlike live radio, where the conventional broadcaster can be brisk and impersonal, the on-demand nature of podcasts fosters a casually intimate atmosphere. And whereas cable news prevails in volume of information delivered per second, podcasts excel at what Mary Harris, the host of Slate’s daily current events show, “What Next,” calls “slowing down the news,” an asset during a moment when many are looking for a deeper understanding of a complex and invisible threat.
“I really wanted our show to be a place that wasn’t just drowning you in information,” Harris said. “At a time when so much is going on, we give you a moment of calm where you can just focus on one thing, get some history, get some context and feel like you actually understand what’s happening.”
Until 2017, when The New York Times started “The Daily,” daily news podcasts had been a tiny subset of the medium, which was then defined by talk shows on one end (“WTF With Marc Maron,” Bill Simmons’ “The B.S. Report”) and prestige, narrative-driven series on the other (“Serial,” “Radiolab”). But in recent years, the number and variety of daily programs, labors of love and endurance that can produce around 250 episodes annually, has skyrocketed. According to rankings published by the analytics firm Podtrac, four out of the five most popular podcasts in February were dailies.
Their popularity has surged as the coronavirus has upended all aspects of life, unleashing a ceaseless cascade of news and misinformation. Downloads of “The Indicator” were up 26% last week, according to a spokeswoman, and a representative of the Slate Podcast Network said its overall audience has jumped by 50% month over month. To keep up with climbing demand, NPR, CNN and the BBC have all created podcasts specifically dedicated to covering the pandemic.
Akilah Hughes and Gideon Resnick, hosts of the daily news and politics podcast “What a Day” from Crooked Media, are among those who have reoriented their shows to meet the moment.
When they started “What a Day” in October, the pair expected their first year would be dominated by Democratic primary coverage. Instead, they’ve spent much of the past two months interviewing epidemiologists and beleaguered healthcare workers.
“It felt important to do what we could to help explain how COVID-19 is affecting the country,” Hughes said. “We can all be jerks about politics in October.”
Sean Rameswaram, host of “Today, Explained” from Vox, delivers a brief on the pandemic at the top of every episode.
“Our listeners are writing to us every day with new questions about this story,” Rameswaram said. “The feedback we’ve been getting has been unlike anything that we’ve seen.”