Absolute waffle. That is what I had to sit through to get that one sliver of insight. It was a three-hour podcast, one of many that clog our online space. The host was wearing glasses, so I knew he was serious.
Unfortunately, I had to stop after 45 minutes. The performance of intelligence was too much.
I had felt the same when I heard an Indian billionaire talking to an American multi-billionaire about the future of the world. The former wanted to sound prescient; the latter wanted to tell jokes. Both failed miserably.
Oh, and then there was the “scoop”—an infamous fugitive who had duped a national bank was sitting there, claiming that he was unfairly targeted. I had tried to help him out by drinking a lot of his beer over the years, but alas.
The problem is that there are just too many podcasts in India. Or rather, too few good ones. My first editor and his acid tongue would have lashed me for speaking to just one person for a story. And yet here I was, engrossed in stories about the rot in Bollywood, coming from one bitter director.
The core attraction of podcasts lies in our DNA—Indians love stories. The person telling them could be our grandmother or a fitness influencer.
Not surprisingly, we are only behind the Americans and the Chinese in terms of podcast consumption. As per a PwC report, there are over 5.6 crore monthly podcast listeners in India. It’s a booming market, which explains why anyone with two mics and a few hours to kill has started one.
But, as with anything in life, you have to work hard to get to the good stuff. So, as a man of rigour, I did just that. I hopped from pod to pod, looking not at the host but the guest. If someone I admired—a prominent Hindi writer-lyricist, for instance—had gone on a show, perhaps it was worth a listen.
Following this plan, I discovered a podcaster whose unpolished English belied his fresh perspective. He would talk about influencer culture, brain rot, and subaltern life beyond the binaries of popular politics. Heck, he even gave me a new take on my hometown—a hotbed of caste pride and Toyota Fortuners—and told me that “cringe” content could be a tool of subversion.
Sometimes, though, you don’t need to flip through nonsense. A good voice can fall into your lap. Like in 2020, when an Australian writer filled my ears with stories and data, and changed the way I looked at my favourite sport.
From tales of a bygone era—where square cuts and syphilis went hand in hand—to the modern age, where precision is not only about where you bowl, but also what you tweet, this guy’s voice has been the one I have heard the most in recent years. After the sweet voice of my wife, that is.
And if ever the day comes where we Indians become podcasting kings, I can rest assured that my earphones and I did more than our share and suffered for the greater good.