Business Media is All in the Mind
Parasocial relationships, pod psychology, and much more
Welcome back to The Workaround. I’m Bob 👋
You’re in good company with over 11,000 fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.
I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.
Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app. Or listen and watch on YouTube.
I’m excited to share the next episode in my series of conversations with interesting people on topics where business and life intersect.
My discussion partner this week, Joe Hovde, is a data scientist who has worked in retail media, the venture capital industry, and now the podcast+broadcast business at Spotify.
We were briefly at the same company a few years ago, but never met until I became addicted to his Substack, Residual Thoughts. Over there, Joe shares “short, data-centric observations about business, technology, and psychology.” Recent topics have ranged from an analysis of the fast salad industry to the use of first names in interviews to the optimal time to see a celebrity comedian at The Comedy Cellar.
What I love about Joe is that he plays the game of business well, but, more importantly, he’s very interested in watching how the game works and why it works the way it does.
For our discussion, I asked him to serve up a topic on his mind. And, true to form, he suggested a doozy…
Here’s a summary, a teaser, an amuse-bouche to get you to hit the play button above ^^^ or see our faces on YouTube.
“Why Does Business Media Evolve Toward the Spiritual?”
This is the starting point for our conversation, based on Joe’s observation that a growing number of podcast hosts, such as Patrick O'Shaughnessy at Invest Like the Best and Tim Ferriss, began with simple interviews and how-tos, yet have evolved to cover topics related to psychology and spirituality. They are asking about guests’ childhoods and digging into key turning points in their lives. And they do not shy away from topics such as the hard problem of consciousness or the value of psychedelics.
Joe and I explore how this is a sign of what we want to see in someone that’s in our lives each week: Personal growth. We also explore how these hosts may be reflecting a broader societal shift, thereby deepening our understanding of how our minds function and guiding them toward the next stage of evolution.
Podcasts are Parasocial
But part of what makes personality-led media so popular today is that they forge Parasocial Relationships with us. While we may initially read or listen for information, we keep coming back because we’ve gotten to know and like them. We often form a one-sided friendship with creators when they share their stories with us. We care about them as humans.
And just as we watch our friends evolve through new jobs, relationships, children, and facing life’s ups and downs, we enjoy creators who share how their lives are changing over time. It’s a long, long way from a media world of catching glimpses of actors through their on-screen roles, or a relationship with a nightly newscaster.
Not Every Creator Evolves
But not every creator takes us on a personal journey.
Some don’t want to get personal, of course. However, many feel trapped into sticking with a formula that brought them popularity. This is where audience capture can set in, or a general fear that going off topic will lead to unsubscribes.
Sadly, it seems that this fear stops them from progressing as creators and human beings. Formulaic content starts to bore them, saps their energy, and they eventually dial it in or bow out altogether. It’s hard to feed the content beast if you’re no longer interested, no matter how much money is coming in.
As for Joe and me, we wrapped up our conversation with a commitment to keep the changes coming. We consume much more content than we create, and we discussed how this input becomes our own mirrored reflection back into the world.
Who knows what we’ll talk about in ten years, but it’s going to be a lot different than what we discussed today.
To enjoy the whole chat, hit the play button above, subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or watch us on YouTube!
Helpful links:
Residual Thoughts - Joe’s Substack
If you like my work, please click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏
Intersting point about creators not evolving. In many ways, the algorithm punishes too much experimentation (once you've found something that works) so it can feel dangerous to try. But it's definitely worth it (and make things more fun).