As a long-time listener to Slate’s podcasts, it pains me to voice my concern over their direction during the past year or so. I still listen to and enjoy the older “core” podcasts such as Amicus, the Political and Culture Gabfests, etc. And I’ve been tremendously impressed with their Slow Burn series. Where Slate has really gone off the rails is with their newer generation of podcasts, particularly their human interest ones such as “Big Mood, Little Mood” and “How to Do It”. These have been almost uniformly dull and awful. Listening to these über-chatty hosts evincing a fake jokiness, all while talking about banal trivia is like chewing on tinfoil. Even when the hosts are supposedly talking about truly relevant and potentially interesting cultural and/or technological phenomena (as in ICYMI), they show an almost uncanny knack of imparting almost no really useful information!
Finally, I want to touch on the departure of two podcasts, John McWhorter’s “Lexicon Valley” and Mike Pesca’s “The Gist”. Both highlight the recent misdirection at Slate, although perhaps in different ways. The reason for McWhorter’s departure from Slate seem to be a bit clouded, but I will note that “Lexicon Valley”, a show characterized by witty erudition, has been replaced with “Spectacular Vernacular”, another podcast mediocrity seemingly designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. As for “The Gist”, I will admit that I never particularly cared for its host, Mike Pesca. But I was nevertheless appalled by the way in which he was unceremoniously kicked to the curb by his superiors. Maybe, just maybe, his actions merited some sort of slap on the wrist, but to essentially fire him represented an egregious overreaction that reflected very poorly on the management philosophy and business ethics of the Slate organization.