Can You Trust Podcasts? | Power, Women & the Manosphere

Podcasting is shaping politics. But who controls the mic and who gets left out? In this episode, we turn the mic on the podcasting industry itself. We start with Aiwan’s journey into podcasting, from the early iTunes and RSS era to producing shows professionally and use that to ask what makes podcasting so different from film, television and music. What emerges is a picture of a medium that still feels young, unstable and oddly opaque: open source, easy to access, but thin on shared standards, reliable metrics and real accountability. From there, we get into the politics of measurement, or the lack of it. We unpack the confusion around downloads, plays, streams and influence, and why podcasting can still feel full of smoke, mirrors and unverifiable claims. We also look at Spotify’s move to make play counts visible and what that revealed about hype, visibility and the pressures facing indie creators. We then move to one of the episode’s sharpest concerns: podcasting as a site of power. From the Steven Bartlett health misinformation controversy to the underrepresentation of women - and especially Black women - across major podcast ecosystems, we ask: who gets to dominate the mic, whose voices get amplified, and who still gets left out? Finally, we turn more directly to big ‘P’ of politics. We reflect on the so-called “podcast election”, the rise of right-leaning media ecosystems, and the way entertainment formats now carry ideology far beyond formal news spaces. Beneath all of this sits the major challenge: if podcasting is helping shape the future, who is building that future through sound, story and representation? And what responsibility comes with having listeners, however many they may be? 🎙️ In this episode:Origin stories and RSS feeds: How podcasting began, and how Aiwan found her way into the mediumThe Wild West problem: Why podcasting still feels under-regulated, opaque and structurally immatureMetrics or mythological claims?: Downloads, plays, streams and the absence of shared industry standardsSmoke and mirrors: Why podcasting can be easy to hype and hard to verifyMisinformation on mic: What the Steven Bartlett controversy reveals about health claims, platform power and mis and disinformationWho dominates the mic?: Gender, race, class and the myth of podcasting as a democratised mediumThe podcast election: How entertainment formats increasingly shape political discourseRight-wing media ecosystems: Why the best-funded voices often dominate culture through repetition and reachResponsibility and risk: What Rigour and Flow means when you are speaking into public life in real-time 🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts
🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: ​​https://youtu.be/f3owORRx3BY🔁 Share with someone thinking about media, politics and who gets to shape public conversation ☕ Want to support the show? Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow   Please rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes.Connect with us on:TikTokInstagramLinkedInAiAi StudiosRoots & RigourThis is an AiAi Studios Production©AiAi Studios 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.