Enter Label: Why I Suddenly Stopped Listening to Podcasts

& how the search for better ones begins

Dear Companions,

The love affair is over. But the title is a lie. I am still listening to podcasts (lately Shawn Ryan,

Triggernometry

)—it’s just nowhere near a hundred of hours a week like it once was.

It began in the throes of Long Covid. I lay awake with Theo Vonn’s voice under my pillow. From there the voices multiplied. Rogan, Gillis, Lex, Malice, Carlin—the whole world of podcasts became my soundtrack for stabilizing.

I turned something on as soon as I woke, just to escape my body, which was constantly plagued by pain. For someone who struggled with the day-to-day, it was the perfect medium: endless, funny, distracting voices at my fingertips.

Perhaps the greatest time in history to be sick, from that perspective.

I’m embarrassed now by some of these people, but you have to understand: they were funnier when they weren’t in the mainstream, when only a few thousand people were listening to Kill Tony. Now he averages 1M viewers. Paramount just bought Bari Weiss’s Free Press for $200M.

There were healing-inspired voices too—The Emerald, Tara Brach, Attia, Sam Harris, Buddhist teachers, podcasts on pain recovery. Then a few of them got dragged in the mud— Huberman and his sex life, Bryan Johnson and his ex-girlfriend. In any event, the last year or so was less about healing, more about distraction.

But, it wasn’t just distraction to get up, to buy food, to pee, to do the dishes. I was interrupting the pain pathways by intentionally diverting attention. This was neuroscience, this was Dr. Sarno, this was TMS. Five rounds of IVF back-to-back? Never mind—Tim Dillon was there to make me laugh.

I consumed voraciously—podcasts, books, shows. Despite limitations and solitude, I devoured ideas, reshaped them, and clamored to participate in online conversations. I wrote here once a week. Maybe I too contributed to the noise?

Now I can stand silence. Or music. I randomly listened to Violet while walking to the drugstore yesterday—a massive departure, since by 11am I’d have been two podcasts deep a year ago. It’s a kind of freedom.

Perhaps I’ve trained my brain not to panic. Perhaps it’s because my obsession has transitioned, to building the Healingvrse.

But maybe it’s more than healing. Maybe it reflects cultural shifts too.

---

Eighteen months ago, I felt the beginning of the change. I was already deep in my podcast addiction, but lamenting the lack of diversity. I wrote about how we needed more female Joe Rogans.

So, I suppose this post is a postscript to that. The honeymoon did end, there are three possible explanations: nefarious design, simple boredom, or that I simply healed out of the phase.

---

1.. Nefarious Design

One explanation: these spaces began to function like cults.

As the YouTuber Drunken Elephant posts, comedy became part of a digital migration—a way to escape fear and chaos while techno-wizards like Elon Musk built hyperrealities.

The signs of a cult were there:

• Veneration of the leader (Rogan).

• The pride of being “anti-mainstream.”

• Comedians deemed sacred, civilians lesser. (Yes, Rogan calls non-comedians civilians.)

• Martyrs of “truth” against censorship.

But this identity only works in opposition to the mainstream. After the election, it became harder to play the martyr. The egos grew, drunk on power. Rogan at the center, with Dave Smith arguing against Douglas Murray that podcasters could rival trained historians.

The overconfidence, the lack of education, the hot takes, the politics smuggled in as comedy—it infected what once felt like escape. It’s not that I can’t get through a two-hour interview now; I can’t even stand a TikTok.

It’s like an ex-Scientologist: outsiders can shrug, but once you’ve believed, the mere whiff of it makes your throat close up. That is to say, I experience active revulsion.

---

2. Benignly Boring

Or maybe it's simpler.

I overconsumed them. What once felt like warmth broke down into static, the voices like firecrackers in my ear.

The same guests, the same conversations, the same echo chamber. This is what I wrote eighteen months ago: either you diversify, or you wear yourself out. Unbelievably, the lineup hasn't changed. Still no women on Rogan. Still the same comedians recast as pundits. The same themes.

They wore themselves out. And maybe, so did I.

---

3. Healed Out of It

And so I'm left searching for new voices that can still keep me company - on a walk, on a night when sleep won't come. I still find podcasts somehow warm and supportive, I just no longer need them to crowd out silence.

And anyway, now we have AI.

With much love from the Healingvrse,

Rebecca