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Pacific Standard
The Future of Podcasting Is Educational
0:00 01:35

The US is very quickly turning into a podcast listening country. In fact, in 2017, a survey showed that around 25% of Americans (68 million people) listened to some sort of podcast. In addition, 42% of those people were also willing to pay for the podcasts.Needless to say, there are a lot of people listening. However, what is something that is of greater interest is what they are listening to. While, things such as tech, news, and sports are popular, the most popular is actually educational podcasts! Listeners want to be challenged. With around 43% of podcast listeners not even having a college degree and with studies showing that auditory learning can result in better retention of info than reading, this means that the landscape of education could be changing in a profound way. Rather than higher education, political establishments, or even the conventional media shaping the content of what the public talks about, podcasters are taking this role on more and more.One of the most important things that educational podcasts can do is help strengthen the civic, political, social, and economic life of people through education. Before, this was the stated goal of higher education. But in reality, it has not worked out as well as hoped. In fact, 1/3 of adults even go to college. Another 1/3 take their intellectual learning from things such as religious fundamentalism. This opens up the opportunity for podcasts to be the best medium in order to educate the masses. In fact, you can do it while you are driving to work or working out. A famous example of this is the a secular religious podcast headed by Zachary Davis who is a philosophy student of religion at Harvard Divinity School. He tackles many themes including moral luck, blame, apocalyptic thought, and cannibalism. However, he doesn't dumb down the material. Rather, he usually starts with a popular and current news item and then delves deeper into the spiritual issues that underscore it.