Who even listens to podcasts?” wonders William Mitchell ’25. Apparently not Blake underclassmen. Only 12% of Blake ninth graders said they enjoy listening to podcasts. Why is this?

 Most students claim they simply don’t have an interest in podcasts. Potentially a reason for this is that podcasts require an attention span that most students don’t have. As said by Abbott Neimann ’25, “I don’t have the attention span to sit and listen to two dudes talk.” It could be that the podcast market is not serving the right demographic or popular interests.

Among the eight freshmen we interviewed, there is one common theme of those who did report listening to podcasts. Half of those students reported listening to Anything Goes, a podcast created by popular YouTuber and social media influencer, Emma Chamberlain. Anything Goes offers advice on topics from relationships and dealing with failure, to pet peeves, and birthdays. The reason this podcast is so popular throughout youth is because it provides an unfiltered view on life by a teenager, or as Rossalyn Moore ’25 puts it, “feels like talking to a friend on the phone.”

Dana Specht, a social studies teacher, claims she typically listens to a podcast everyday and says that, “I think that especially if it’s a topic a student is not interested in, that they would not invest that amount of time.” She goes on to explain that listening to podcasts might feel like homework to students, who are already being “fatigued by assignments.” 

There are possibilities that students are not aware of enough podcasts; that students have not found podcasts that meet their personal interests. Not listening to podcasts is not considered a character flaw. Rather, it’s an indication that the podcast market isn’t providing listeners as well as it could.