TORONTO – 26-year-old Samuel Griff shakes his head disdainfully as he recollects the countless times his podcast recommendations have been dismissed by friends, family, and co-workers.
“I just wish that people would help me help them by taking my podcast picks seriously,” said Griff while struggling to open a bottle of Soylent.
“It’s a known fact that Sarah Koening single-handedly invented podcasts when she released Serial in 2014, and since then I haven’t stopped listening,” remarked Griff, “Unfortunately, my friends and family refuse to heed any my advice on which shows are worth listening to. It’s like they believe in ‘subjective’ tastes, idiots!”
“I get to make a cuckold of myself while diving into 3 hour long conversations I don’t get to contribute to! It feels like they’re just speaking to me, and their 60 million other downloads.” He further proclaimed, “You can ask me anything about the Federal Reserve, I’ve listened to Planet Money so I’m basically an expert.”
Griff is currently rotating through 29 improvisational podcasts, 52 true crime podcasts, 87 confessional comedian-interviews-comedian podcasts, 146 nostalgic TV episode review podcasts, 361 economic storytelling podcasts, and the entire NPR back catalogue.
“Honestly, you’d have to be pretty dumb not to be able to add hours-long audio programming into your life. Just listen to them on your commute, at the gym, while you clean, while you sleep, when engaging with loved ones. It’s like you’re actively trying not to maximize your life!”
To Griff, who has amassed debt paying for online stamps, subscription boxes of all-natural snacks, and mattresses delivered in boxes, he asserts the best part about podcasts are that they’re free.
“It’s so refreshing to have my worldview echoed back to me is so many creative ways. I came for the X-File facts, and stayed for the grounding existential affirmation that my beliefs are the right beliefs,” he claims.
Griff, who works as a tech consultant for Squarespace, is excited to launch his own podcast which exists solely to promote other podcasts he deems worth listening to. He hopes that by podcasting his recommendations, they won’t fall on deaf ears.
“Hey, you like Freakonomics right?” Griff shouted loudly. “Well just imagine Freakonomics where instead it’s this woman who asks the person she just slept with if they believe in God! That’s the sort of underground ‘medium is the message’ shit I’m talking about! All you need is one hit to hook you!”
