Everybody has a podcast.

The founder has one. The studio has one. The creative guy has one. The guy who teaches people how to grow their podcast definitely has one. Maybe he even has a video stream with it.

And increasingly, nobody seems to be asking the obvious question:

Does anybody actually need this?

I started a podcast once.

I interviewed great people. The conversations were good. I enjoyed doing them. But were they good enough that I should keep pushing them into people’s lives?

No. At least, not in my opinion.

So I stopped.

Because attention is valuable.

If I’m asking someone to give me forty minutes, an hour, maybe two hours of their day, I should probably be giving them something in return.

A new idea; a useful perspective; a story; a laugh; an escape; something. Otherwise I’m not contributing to their life. I’m just occupying it. And there is already plenty competing for that space.

The problem gets worse because podcasts don’t exist in isolation.

We listen to the same people interviewing the same people, discussing the same handful of ideas.

Creativity; Leadership; AI; Purpose; Burnout; Authenticity; Failure; Community.

Then those ideas travel.

The podcast guest becomes the conference speaker.
The listener becomes the presenter.
The presenter becomes the writer.
The writer starts a podcast.

And somewhere along the way, everybody starts using the same words.

You hear it on stages at conferences.
You read it in articles.
You see it in keynote decks.
You hear it again in the next podcast episode.

Same references.
Same frameworks.
Same cultural observations.
Same carefully packaged vulnerability.
Same same same.

And because recommendation systems are very good at giving us more of what we already like, it can feel like we’re exposing ourselves to lots of different thinking when really we’re moving around inside a very comfortable intellectual neighbourhood.

That’s the bit that worries me.

The repetition starts to feel like truth simply because we’ve heard it enough.

And eventually it gets into our own heads.

A writer sits down to write and hears the rhythm of the things they’ve been listening to.

A designer gives a presentation and unconsciously borrows the language of the last six talks they watched.

A conference speaker tells a story they genuinely believe is theirs, but somehow it has the same arc, same lesson and same conclusion as everybody else’s.

Culture starts eating its own leftovers.

That doesn’t mean podcasts are bad.

Some are brilliant.
Some teach you something genuinely new.
Some are deeply researched.
Some make you laugh.
Some take you somewhere else entirely.

Escape has value too.

The problem is the endless middle: conversations that exist primarily because content needs to be produced.

The guest has an audience.

The host has an audience.

Put them together, record an hour, cut it into clips, post the clips, tag each other, collect the reach.

That’s not necessarily dishonest.

It’s marketing.

But marketing still consumes attention.

And attention is one of the few things nobody can give you back.

Which is why I think creators have some responsibility when they ask for it.

Not every conversation needs to be recorded.
Not every thought needs an audience.
Not every company needs thought leadership.
And not every empty moment needs another person speaking into your ears.

There’s value in walking somewhere or doing your workout without headphones.

Looking around.

Getting bored.

Letting your mind wander somewhere it hasn’t already been directed.

Because consuming thought is not the same thing as thinking.

And perhaps the best test before publishing another hour of conversation is very simple:

What am I giving someone in exchange for their attention?

If the answer is nothing particularly new, useful, moving, funny or beautiful… maybe there doesn’t need to be an episode.