This is an excerpt of an interview that took place at On Air Fest on March 1st between Freakonomics Radio host Stephen Dubner and Hot Pod reporter Ariel Shapiro. The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. Alright so, you know podcasting. You know economics. What do you make of this moment in the podcasting industry? It really depends on what angle you’re coming at it from.
You just have too little control over your material. And if your material is what you care about, like, why would I want to do that? What would Freakonomics TV have looked like? The closest we ever got... I won’t name it, it was a big network. And they were perfectly good people. But it’s a volume business. Not that podcast production isn’t a volume business, but even with the best , there was a certain degree of velocity and churn and, not dumbing down, but kind of reaching for a center.