We should look closer at the dismal state of mainstream podcasting
by Stephen Socolow ’25, Opinion Contributor
A few days ago, I saw an infographic that said that the Talk Tuah podcast was ranked fourth on Spotify’s Podcast Charts, a list of the streaming service’s most listened-to podcasts in the U.S. For those of you who are blessed enough to not know what that is, Talk Tuah is a podcast hosted by Hailey Welch. Never heard of her? No one has, really; though, you might know her by the name “The Hawk Tuah Girl,” which is how people know her colloquially.
For the particularly unplugged individuals who still don’t know who this is, on June 11 of this year, a YouTube channel called “Tim & Dee TV” asked a bunch of random people off the street the following question: “What’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?” They got many answers, including one from Hailey Welch, who responded that you should give your partner “hawk tuah.” To avoid getting too obscene, I will not describe what this means, though I am sure you can fill in the gaps yourself.
In any event, Ms. Welch went completely viral after this was posted online, for some reason. When the sensation was brand new, I assumed it would be more of a “fifteen minutes of fame” situation and that no one would remember or care about this come July. Yet here we are, rounding the corner into October, and not only is “hawk tuah” as ubiquitous as ever, but also Welch has started up a podcast called Talk Tuah that is, as of writing this, number six on Spotify’s American charts, falling only two spots from the infographic a few days ago.
Now, I could write an entire opinion piece about how stupid “hawk tuah” is overall, though I feel like that would be a waste of my time, since–at least I hope–most people agree with me that it is a stupid joke. What worried me a lot more was the fact that, somehow, Talk Tuah was ranked so highly in terms of listeners.
I then glanced up and saw something even more disturbing. In ascending order, the three podcasts that were above Talk Tuah on the infographic were Candace, which is Cadence Owens’s podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show and, at number one, The Joe Rogan Experience. This disappointed me, as, for those of you not familiar with some or all of those podcasts, they are all politically aligned with the far right.
Go to Spotify’s charts yourself, and you will see that there are a lot of true crime podcasts in the top twenty–which is fine by me–but also a great deal of other right-wing podcasts interspersed between them, including The Megan Kelly Show and the Dan Bongino Show. In fact, the first political podcast I saw that is not politically right-wing is at number twenty-five: the Pod Save America podcast.
Going to Apple Music’s podcast charts makes for better reading; Rogan’s podcast is at number four, and Pod Save America jumps to number eight. Carlson falls to 14th place, Kelly is at 18th, Owens at 20th, and–to my pleasant surprise–Talk Tuah is all the way down at 132nd. At the same time, unless I am mistaken, Pod Save America is still the only political podcast in the top twenty that is not right wing.
It is concerning to me how popular some of these podcasts are, as Rogan, Carlson and Owens have been saying a lot of incorrect and, frankly, dangerous things on their podcasts. There are a myriad of examples I could pull for each of these people, but I will just list a few recent instances so I do not get accused of digging up old controversies. Just this March, Owens falsely alleged on the Candace podcast that the first lady of France, Brigitte Macron, is a transgender woman; she doubled down later, saying that she would “stake [her] entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man.” Not only is this misinformation, it is also blatant transphobia. The month before that, Carlson hosted Vladimir Putin on his show, where he did not challenge him on multiple lies regarding the Russo-Ukrainian War. Rogan, as have the other two, has spread a plethora of mistruths regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine. Do not mistake this short list as me running out of examples; rather, it is so this article stays at an appropriate length, and so you are not bombarded with more examples than necessary to make my point.
All in all, I was saddened by reading across these various podcast charts, and seeing which podcasts were in the upper echelons of the podcasting world made me realize a lot of people are listening to bad content. Given that these types of podcasts advertise themselves as homes of “free thinkers” who are not part of the mainstream media, there are likely many listeners using them as their main source of information for the news, too. I think it reflects poorly on podcasting that enough Americans are listening to these types of podcasts to put them at the top. And for the love of all things right with the world, let the “hawk tuah” joke end, please.
