Using YouTube's takeover of podcasts as a starting point, he explores how video has devoured audio and turned podcasts into something closer to daytime TV and late-night talk shows. NPR's Rachel Martin, host of the celebrity-interview show Wild Card, joins to talk about her own shift from intimate, audio-only conversations to highly visible video chats with mega-celebrities. She explains how the visual layer changes everything-from building trust with guests and audiences to deepening parasocial relationships, and why showing your face is necessary in a low-trust media world.
The Information Age has birthed the attention economy, an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars anchored in keeping eyeballs firmly glued to screens, thus generating ad revenue. Every second spent clicking and scrolling through the trivial and/or sordid details of other people's lives, people that you will most likely never meet- celebrities, politicians, influencers- is another dollar in some already obscenely wealthy tech bro's wallet.
