On the Media Menu: Comfort Podcasts and Bandwagon Television

Getting away from politics with a hilarious horror ride on the Werewolf Ambulance, making a killing in Assassin's Creed, and taking a spin on The Wheel of Time

Back in the days that now seem like ancient history, I listened to a ton of political podcasts. I can’t even name most of them anymore but the full slate of Pod Save America headed the pack. As a product of journalism school who caught the news junkie bug as a tween, those podcasts slotted right into my daily firehose of news and commentary.

Then, toward the end of Trump’s first term — never has typing the word “first” hurt so much — and the debut of covid, I started dropping them from my rotation. Slowly at first, leaving the more obscure ones behind then finally ditching even the Pod Save crew.

I’d come to realize I needed to preserve what little sanity I was maintaining. Those podcasts weren’t informing me, they were reinforcing me. There’s nothing wrong with that in general; it can be a powerful thing to find media that shares your point of view, especially if you live in sea of people who don’t. I didn’t outgrow them, I just didn’t need them.

Of course, I still needed something to p…