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Xippy N's avatar

What’s amazing to me is how much of Substack is opinion pieces. Some of which and good and enjoyable - put I do prefer to listen to opinion with my ears. When I read an op-ed in the NYT or WSJ I almost get distracted by the empty holes by suspect facts or leaps in logic. Podcasts fill that void do well - it is a conversation that isn’t supposed to be comprehensive.

Now, written articles are great for conveying facts. Most newspaper articles worth their subscription are well done and give you a fairly decent comprehensive view of the topic. On Substack I mostly read fact pieces. Numlock News is also a good fact aggregator. Popular Information is a great investigative news stack I almost always read.

I do disagree, sort of, with the personality coming through podcasts vs Substacks. They are both a choice. Mike is fairly open about himself on The Gist -we think. Consider how little we hear of his sports interests vs what percentage he cares about it IRL. Same about his family or his previous employment. He makes rational choices about what he wants to share.

And, as to the known personality of the written mediums, I point you Xandra Ellin when she was writing the newsletter for On The Media. That was essentially a Substack post. We got know her pretty well - I think.

I am looking forward to see where Mike takes this.

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John Philpin's avatar

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.

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