The value of the human voice in the content age

About 14 years ago I got off social media for convictional reasons, which is a fancy way of saying I sinned too often there and didn’t like the way that made me feel. As a result, I’ve missed entire meme movements, TikTok dances, theological Twitter/X battles, political Twitter/X battles, and I learned what “6-7” meant way after everybody else. I don’t regret this for a second, even though bailing on social media probably hurt my publishing career a little.

Right around the same time I accepted an invitation to be a part of a podcast called “The Happy Rant” that was three episodes old. It’s the first and only time I’ve ever been “early” to a technology, and I accepted the invitation because podcasting felt a lot like something I grew up really loving: radio.

For an only child who grew up in the middle of a cornfield in Indiana, radio was my conduit to the outside world. I’d get home from school or practice and sit in my rocking chair (I was an old man at age 13) and listen to familiar human voices playing familiar songs doing familiar bits and running familiar contests. I loved it. These voices were a part of my life in that they lived in my bedroom, my car, and my headphones. I heard them when I lifted weights or went to the public pool. They taught me about metal and grunge and pop-punk and sports. When I was in Indiana the voices sounded like Indiana people and talked about the Colts and the Pacers. When I drove to Chicago the voices got gradations more Chicago-ish and talked about the Bears and the Blackhawks and traffic on the Dan Ryan. This was cool.

My students, on the other hand, have come up the proverbial chasm in the content era, which means that they can download literally thousands of packets of information every day that they will look at for 15 seconds and then immediately forget. Said content can be about skin care routines, breakups, someone eating the entire contents of a Taco Bell menu, or an image of one Spiderman looking at another Spiderman, which can somehow signify the dynamic in the New York Giants front office in that one Spiderman represents owner John Mara and the other one represents general manager Joe Schoen. It’s the electronic-device equivalent of some sad guy playing his acoustic set in a coffee shop where everybody notices him for a second and then basically ignores him.

All of this is definitely not art.

And neither was my podcast, which ran for a decade, and for which I did zero minutes of show prep ever. But we would talk for anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, and eventually accomplished what radio accomplished: building an audience that got big enough to rent to people who wanted to sell products to said audience. Said audience would show up for live shows, buy t-shirts and stickers, and say things like “I’ve listened to all of your episodes twice,” which was truly and genuinely nice and human and radio-like in that we were a part of their lives in some small way.

And because I’m for some reason pathologically averse to money, I shut down that pod after a decade in order to pursue two other less successful (but still semi-successful) ones.

I have a faculty colleague who in true faculty-colleague fashion likes to talk about the art of the gallery, the art of the salon, and the art of the back alley. I definitely haven’t been in academia long enough to be the kind of guy who says the word “salon” (which to me is still where my wife gets her hair cut), so I’ll substitute the word “living room.” To me, podcasts are the art of the living room, which is where elevated conversations used to happen, elaborately funny stories were told, good-natured disagreements took place, and where people connected with other people, which, because we’re created in God’s image, is something people still need to do from time to time.

With AI threatening to take over the world, I think, as children of the Creator, we should spend some time listening to human voices. This is probably less important than contemplative-gazing at a Renoir in an art gallery or whatever, but probably more important than scrolling on a platform where your time and attention are the commodity.