Like many others, I abandoned mainstream media long ago. The endless spin, shallow reporting, and predictable and propagandist narratives made it unbearable. Podcasts once seemed like the antidote: raw, unfiltered, and intellectually daring. But after countless hours of listening, I’ve begun to notice something unsettling: the global podcast universe is slowly morphing into the very thing it set out to replace.
It doesn’t matter which show you tune into—the same pundits, professors, and activists appear on rotation. The circle is closed. What once felt refreshing now feels predictable and self-referential. And part of the problem is the commercialization and ruthless competition for views and followers. Every podcaster wants traction, and the easiest shortcut is to invite a star guest. We, the audience, fall for it every time—believing that the bigger the name, the more profound the insights. The reality? Most celebrities are exhausted, endlessly repeating the same theses. Consistent, yes. But new? Rarely.
Despite the promise of broader horizons, most discussions follow the daily news cycle or focus on whichever conflict dominates headlines. Everything else disappears. The world is effectively shrinking—reduced to a handful of regions and a narrow set of concerns. Some hosts release multiple episodes in a single day. How deep can those conversations possibly be? Often, what masquerades as productivity is really just mass production. The speed comes at the expense of substance. Meanwhile, Western voices dominate. Women are often absent altogether. So we all end up in the world of westsplaining and mansplaining.
When podcasters endlessly guest on each other’s shows, swapping seats and recycling conversations, the result is not dialogue but repetition. An echo chamber with shinier packaging is still an echo chamber. The real challenge is not in lining up “big names” but in expanding the conversation: making it more polemical, more creative, more imaginative, more globally aware, more diverse.
Perhaps the true problem is our own laziness. We have grown accustomed to outsourcing our judgment, waiting for the “best” or most famous voices to tell us what to think. It is comfortable, quick, and flattering to believe we are following the wisdom of giants. But perhaps it is precisely this habit that leaves us intellectually dependent, recycling dominant (even though alternative, critical) insights instead of creating new ones.
Local and national podcasters are on the rise for quite some time, but their reach remains limited, often hindered by language barriers or uneven production quality. The same pattern repeats everywhere: chasing visibility, recycling familiar perspectives, and favoring recognizable names over truly fresh voices. The result is a public sphere that is narrower, less inventive, and less daring than it could be. But it remains a (relatively) profitable one…
If podcasts are to be more than mainstream media’s digital twin, we need to demand more—not only from hosts but from ourselves as listeners. We must cultivate curiosity beyond celebrity, seek voices we disagree with, challenge accepted wisdom, etc. Otherwise, the danger isn’t just boredom—it’s intellectual stagnation. If we do not break this cycle, we will soon discover that these “alternatives” were never really alternatives at all.
If we don’t insist on new voices (especially from the Global South/majority), bolder ideas, and sharper arguments, the “alternative” will soon be indistinguishable from the mainstream it once sought to escape.
Maybe I am wrong… I am just sharing my observations.
By the way, I still find Substack more inspirative than podcasts. It feels like a space where ideas can breathe, develop, and push us beyond the recycled talking points.
- Originally posted on Substack.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Biljana Vankovska.