Ban podcasts!

I was a guest on Last Orders, the Spiked podcast, last week.

Hosted by Tom Slater, editor of the online magazine Spiked, and the IEA’s Chris Snowdon, each episode addresses three topical issues, usually from a libertarian perspective.

Recorded at Spiked’s current office in Canary Wharf, we discussed the public health industry’s wilful ignorance of public opinion, and the ‘big fat myth’ of child obesity, subjects that were prompted by articles Chris had written for The Critic. At my suggestion, we also addressed the ongoing story about political bias at the Beeb. The latter allowed me to talk, briefly, about the Media Monitoring Unit which monitored political bias on British current affairs programmes from 1985 to 1990, demonstrating there is nothing new in the recent allegations of bias.

Finally, in the spirit of a nanny state-themed podcast, Tom invited me to nominate one thing I’d like to ban. I was going to say loud music and noisy neighbours, but instead I chose podcasts, before qualifying it to “90 per cent of podcasts”.

No podcast, I said, should be more than 30 minutes, the shorter the better. If I had to choose a favourite, it would be the Tim Rice podcast, Get On To My Cloud, not because I’m a fan of musicals (I’m not), but because no episode lasts more than 20 minutes.

I was aware, as I said this, that we were approaching 40 minutes, and although I could have talked for a lot longer I’m not sure listeners would have appreciated it. (I know I wouldn’t.)

Off air, when I enquired about listening figures, Tom told me the various Spiked podcasts each get between ten and 20,000 views on YouTube, and that’s before all the audio platforms are taken into account. But what about the zillions of BBC podcasts for which the licence payer is presumably having to fork out and fund? Who has time to listen to even a fraction of them, let alone all those ‘independent’ podcasts?

Anyway, as Chris and I were leaving, Miriam Cates, the former Conservative MP, arrived to record the weekly Spiked podcast with Tom and his colleague Georgina Mumford, but you have to be a subscriber to listen to it. Last Orders, on the other hand, is free to all. If you have a spare moment, have a listen. Click here.