Emotional Voices: Intimacy and Gendered Discourse in Podcast Production Culture

In the post-Serial podcasting boom of the past decade, “intimacy” has perhaps been the medium’s most remarked upon characteristic – cited as the distinctive feature of the podcast voice and the key element that distinguishes podcasting from other popular media, including also terrestrial radio broadcasting (Mia Lindgren, 2021). Producers refer so frequently to audio storytelling’s presumed intimacy in interviews, public Q&As, and other forms of “embedded knowledge” (John Caldwell, 2008) that it is now conventional wisdom. Yet, intimacy remains a concept that is often invoked, rarely defined. What exactly constitutes this affective feeling of closeness in podcasting? How is podcast intimacy constructed and controlled at the level of production? And what of the fact that such discourses of intimacy and emotion are often gendered female? How do cultural assumptions about intimacy – along with related notions of sensitivity, moodiness, privacy – impact podcast form and genre, along with the types of stories producers choose to tell? This paper uses a production studies approach to investigate the cultural practices and belief systems of podcast producers – an industry sector, it must be noted, that skews heavily female. Through ethnographic observation and two-dozen original interviews with creative workers – ranging from producers on prestigious internationally known programs like Radiolab, On the Media, and Millennial to numerous independent and amateur productions – it establishes a critical understanding of the industry’s “low theory” of intimacy, and how these working assumptions shape the content and form of the podcasts being created today