Podcast Talk: Knowledge-Making Through Voice, Circulation, and Listening

Abstract

This article argues that podcasting should be understood not merely as a means of disseminating knowledge, but as a knowledge-making practice in its own right. Drawing on theories of broadcast talk, mediated address, and communication as dissemination, it develops the concept of podcast talk to examine how podcasts organise knowledge through voice, sequence, intimacy, circulation, and listening. Rather than presenting a bounded empirical case study, the article synthesises existing podcast scholarship on narrative nonfiction, independent podcasting, journalism, counterpublics, intimacy, host authority, and listening contexts. It identifies three ways podcasting produces knowledge. First, by circulating voices and accounts through platforms and publics. Second, by reshaping expertise and authority through vocal presence, lived experience, and relational trust. Third, by making knowledge meaningful through embodied, affective listening encounters. At the same time, the article treats podcasting as an ambivalent epistemic form, whose intimacy and authority can also intensify misplaced trust, misinformation, and unequal visibility. Podcasting moves knowledge off the page by making communicative form central to knowledge-making practice.