2025-03-15
46 分钟In 2015, President Barack Obama turned up at a garage in Los Angeles.
He was there to do something unprecedented.
The garage was where comedian Mark Marone recorded his hit podcast WTF.
That's short for What The...
I'm not going to say the last word because my mum may be listening.
Marone greeted the president and Obama made himself at home.
The trickiest thing about the interview, Marrone said later,
was persuading his neighbours to allow snipers on their roofs.
Marrone was surprised, though, that Obama had wanted to speak with him in the first place.
I would imagine the president had better things to do than talk to me in my garage, Marrone said.
A decade later, the move seems prescient.
Today, for politicians, Appearing on podcasts is a messaging necessity, not an oddity.
And podcast hosts are unbelievably influential, which is progress, obviously.
So influential, it seems, that it's politicians courting the hosts, not the other way around.
I'm John Priddow, and this is Checks and Balance from The Economist.
Each week, we take one big theme shaping American politics and explore it in depth.
This week, more and more of America's political debates are happening on podcasts.
Podcast hosts are trying to change how people vote and why.
Politicians are attempting to launch their own shows.
How is podcasting changing American politics?