Mate, we should start a podcast

Here’s a thread no one really wants to pull on - where are Australia’s brocasters?

Not male podcasters, of which there are plenty, with lots more to come if the standard 5-6 pint pub chat (“this could be a podcast”) ever came to fruition. 

Brocasters refers to content creators who put men and masculinity at the core of their appeal, and lean right on the political spectrum. In the US, they’re typically former comedians like Joe Rogan, Andrew Schulz, Tim Dillon, and Theo Von.

They’re also incredibly influential. Rogan attracts over 20 million listeners every week. The debate over whether Kamala Harris should have appeared on his show took up whole chapters in books on the 2024 presidential election. The left is now scrambling for its own version of Rogan.

In Australia, however, the most influential political podcasters are typically progressive and female. There are exceptions - Olympic diver-turned social media star, Sam Fricker, hosts high profile politicians on ‘Diving Deep’, while Chris Griffin’s ‘The Pocket’ covers off the vital brocaster ingredient of saying idiotic things.

Commentator du jour, Hannah Ferguson, has a theory. The majority of US news, outside of Fox News, is broadly left leaning. Content creators act as the antidote to the establishment, and so lean right. In Australia, she claims, traditional media is more right wing, with a similar trend leading to progressive podcasters taking centre stage.

This, of course, does not necessarily mean these podcasters are women. But in practice, they are. The vast majority of content creators invited to the Federal Budget in March were women, including Ferguson herself, Daphne Berry, Molly Benjamin, Emma Edwards and Natasha Etschmann.

As new media continues its takeover, with more Australians getting their news via social platforms than traditional sources for the first time, knowing how these ecosystems are developing is vital in navigating them.

And as a reminder to almost everyone (including and especially ourselves), no, starting a podcast is not a good idea.