Why a politician might ask to go on your indie podcast (and what to do if that happens).
Vol. 63 - A Canadian Field Guide to hosting politicians on your podcast, with Jordan Heath-Rawlings, Rachael Segal, and Jesse Brown.
Hihi!! Happy Pod the North Tuesday!
In this issue:
A Canadian Field Guide to hosting politicians on your podcast.
Canadian Indie: The Sunday Night Army
True North Podcast Feature: Culture Bytes Podcast
Unrigged PROGRESSIVE PUBLICS conference returns next week with a stellar line-up: Paris Marx, Desmond Cole, Rachel Gilmore, and more.
BTW:
As of February 8 2025, there are currently 33 long-term drinking water advisories in effect in 31 First Nations communities across Canada.
Why a politician might ask to be on your indie podcast (and what to do if that happens).
A Canadian Field Guide to hosting politicians on your podcast.
Last year I started spotting some interesting movement in Canadian politics and podcasting. In May 2024, I wrote about what I called #TrudeausPodcastTour2024 after catching Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on about 10 different Canadian podcasts, all with a variety of audience sizes and rage of publishers. Since then, in what was essentially a 100 minute edorsement, Pierre Poilievre made the podcasting rounds, with a significant appearance this January on The Jordan B Peterson Podcast.
The most notable thing now when it comes to podcasts and politicians, is the significance of last year’s “Podcast Election” south of the border. Pivot’s Scott Galloway referred to “The Podcast Election” in a recent blog, saying that “when Trump went on Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and This Past Weekend w/Theo Von, he was embracing the manosphere and riding a tectonic shift in media: The most efficient way to reach the largest and most persuadable audience (i.e., young men) is via podcast.” The phenomenon was said to have ultimately secured Trump’s second presidency, and during a victory speech on inauguration day, UFC CEO Dana White actually thanked Rogan, Von and a number of other podcasters.
So are we due to see the same sort of thing come to Canada? I reached out to some folks in Canadian political podcasting to get their insights on what’s next, and how Canadian podcasters can prepare.
Why would a Canadian politician go on an indie podcast?
“I see the value that podcasts are able to attract,” Rachael Segal told me when I spoke to her. Rachael is a longtime political staffer, a political commentator at CBC, and the co-host of the Beyond A Ballot podcast, a show aimed at educating Canadian women about politics. She says podcasts are great for politics because they’re “free to listen to primarily. They are long form. You really have the opportunity to get a message across, and get it across multiple times instead of just once in a really quick interview. It's so rare that you, as a politician, would have the ability to explain a policy and have that forum. Even traditional debates during campaigns, everything's so quick. On podcasts, they're able to sit down in a more relaxed state. They're able to do a deeper dive on some of the policy issues that they're excited about. You couldn't ask for a better forum for politicians.”
“If you want to expand your base or change anyone's mind, now you can micro-target,” says Jesse Brown, Publisher at Canadaland and host of its flagship podcast. “We saw this with Pierre Poilievre going on the crypto show. It’s not explicitly political. It's not explicitly conservative. It's not even explicitly Canadian. But it was a savvy move because there's a basket of issues that go along with crypto that have to do with deregulation, centralized banking, tech bros. If you're in that environment, even if you're not political yet, you're around people who are. And so that's a way to reach people who might not have voted otherwise. And, no one's going to ask tough questions about policy in a forum [where] people feel like you're hanging out with your favorite podcast hosts. So if Pierre Poilievre is now one of the guys hanging out with your favorite podcast hosts, that really does a lot.”
“Politicians are always going to look for ways to reach the highest number of people with the lowest level of liability,” says Jesse. He says that podcasts might be the best medium for politicians ever since Canadian media got “blown apart into a million pieces”.
For a long time, traditional media like the evening news and print journalism were the only way to get a message out to a larger constituency, and those outlets had pretty high standards. Now, the accessibility and vast swath of podcasts of there has seemingly made it easier for political campaigns to dodge the hard stuff. “The price [politicians] had to pay to reach an audience, that's done. They can reach audiences without having to answer tough questions,” says Jesse, “Poilievre and Peterson, there is no editorial interview at the Globe and Mail that comes close [to] the influence that he was able to achieve with Peterson, which was an ideal circumstance for Poilievre because it was the most softball exchange. There was not even the conceit that this was about challenging him, holding him to account. And the interview was presented to a massive audience with Peterson saying, ‘here he is, hopefully the next Prime Minister of Canada’. What this really was was a very alarming message to anyone in journalism or legacy media that the game has changed pretty much.”
“[Politicians] have really flipped the power dynamic. The clip that's going around this week of Pierre Poilievre; he looks like the one who's interrogating the journalist. They've successfully cast [journalists] in some either idiot or villain role. Now I actually think that he does those interviews in order to create those viral clips. I don't think he's there for CTV's audience or to answer tough questions. I think he's there to dunk on the liberal media and share that with his supporters.”
But Jordan Heath-Rawlings, former Executive Producer at Frequency Podcast Network and host of The Big Story, says going on a podcast doesn’t still come with some level of risk for politicians. ”There are lots of podcasts that politicians can go on that are not so different from sitting down for an interview with a news anchor for a more long form interview.” This is something that Rachael says she’s experience with her show Beyond a Ballot; “we've had politicians say to us, ‘we love you, we want to do your podcast. We can't do it during a political campaign because it's just too long. There's too many ways for this to go sideways or for something to come out of it that we don't want.’ They have to put that political sense first. ”
Jordan also says that podcasts were bound to be natural breeding grounds for politician campaigns. “As politicians, advisors, and campaign teams get younger and smarter and more interested in finding new spaces, they will naturally flock there. There's lots of things about podcasts that suit politicians well, but I'm not sure that it's so much different from teams getting their politicians on TikTok, or BlueSky, or whatever the next thing that is seeming to hold people's attention is. I think they're just doing their jobs by trying to put them where the audience goes.”
What you’re likely to get from politicians on Canadian podcasts.
For me, in an ideal world a Politician is going onto a podcast ready to face the music and be totally transparent. Truly, I want to believe that podcasting is the new medium that gets at the root of community, cooperation, and collective humanity. So could we expect politicians to show up on podcasts of opposite politics and, idunno… seek peace and understanding?
Jordan says that while that’d be great to listen to, “the chances are higher that they will up and say something that they probably shouldn't,” and for that reason, he probably wouldn’t expect that anytime soon. Not while there’s so much at stake.
But however rare it might me, it is possible. “Amanda and I have politicians on all the time that don't align with us politically,” Rachael explained to me. “It's better, healthier for democracy. It's better for the podcasting community to show that a podcast is an effective communications tool.” But Rachael also says it a “big risk” for politicians. “You're really going in to have a very frank conversation [and] there's a lot of liability in what that person could ask, regardless of their political leanings. Sometimes it's worth it to take that chance because it's worth it to have their audience and change some minds. Typically if somebody is not aligned to you, their audience is not aligned to you. When we talk about things like door knocking during a campaign, if somebody is not a voter or not a supporter, we tell politicians to move on. Don't knock on their door. It's a waste of time, and it's the same with podcasts. Kamala did not go on Joe Rogan. We haven't really seen many situations where politicians are sitting down and having these lengthy interviews with people that are not aligned to what they're trying to do.”
“It's much harder to convince a conservative politician to sit down with Nora and Sandy, or to convince a politician to convince Justin Trudeau to sit down with Jordan Peterson. That's not a safe space for them,” says Jordan. “Pierre Poilievre is not going to let a left wing podcaster come prepared with facts and questions and just ring him out for an hour, and Trudeau wouldn't do that to Peterson either. There's not been this big trend of politicians opening themselves up to probing questions from podcasters on the other side of the ideological spectrum. If Kamala had gone on Joe Rogan, then we would have seen what that was worth.”
Jordan says that simply appearing on a podcast can also hold weight for political campaigns. “Joe Rogan is obviously the most prominent example where going on that podcast in itself says something about where you stand as a politician, and signals something to that audience, and also to the audience that doesn't listen to or doesn't like that podcast. The same way all sorts of other things that politicians do are intended to signify virtue or vice to various audiences. But there are certain ones that it really matters if you go on them, maybe because of what you say, but also because it just matters that you were willing to go on there. Trump could have done five minutes on Joe Rogan and it would have accomplished largely the same thing.”
How to host a politician on your podcast.
Your Provincial Premier wants to come on your indie podcast. What do you do next?
Understand that their priority is to share a message.
“They reach out when they think it would be advantageous to them,” says Jordan. “Often they're reaching out with a very specific goal for the interview in mind. I'm sure that in early December, there were lots of politicians reaching out in Canada about [the] GST/HST holiday break and what it'll mean for helping Canadians afford Christmas. Philippe Champagne, he wants to talk about US/Canada relations ahead of Donald Trump moving into office. I saw him on a number of podcasts, and I'm sure that dozens of people got those invitations.”
For Jesse, this means understanding if your show is being “co opted”, and if you’re okay with that. “No matter what my show is about, I would resent the idea that they figure, ‘we're gonna go on this guy's show, we'll have a chance to do this, we'll make sure they don't ask us that, and we'll come out smelling like roses, and there'll be an interesting sound clip.’ Just to be manipulated in that way, and used in that way, would bother me no matter what my show is about.”
Decide if this is the right content for your audience.
Jordan says that first and foremost, “focus on your audience, what they come to you for, and how this will further that. If a powerful person wants to come on your show, it is flattering, but the question I think every podcaster, indie or not, should ask themselves is, ‘how does this serve the goals of my podcast and serve what I've promised my audience?’”
Rachael says it’s the same way any good podcaster should triage their guests, and that at the end of the day it’s your show, your airtime. “You have the ability to say,’ this works for me, this doesn't work for me’. That's the value: your audience and your airtime. We have said no to a lot of politicians just because we don't have the right spot for them. We always try and have a purpose for having that conversation.”
It means that every podcaster holds a responsibility to their audience, and serves as the voice to an engaged community. It’s up to you to know what your audience wants and how to deliver on that. “Are you gonna have the Minister of Infrastructure on a podcast that's about entertainment and pop culture? Probably not,” says Jordan. “It should be an organic fit. You shouldn't have to think about it that hard. It should be ‘this totally makes sense and our audience would be really interested to hear from this person.’
“If you're making a comedy podcast, I think your responsibility is to be funny,” says Jesse. “If you're making a journalism podcast, it's gotta be real. You've gotta take some level of responsibility for what the politician says if they lie their ass off. There's different rules depending on different formats. But podcasting itself is a free-for-all.”
“Ask the questions your audience wants answered. That's your only responsibility,” Jordan says. “They don't get a chance to question those people in power, so ask what they want. If you have time, and the politician will let you advertise in advance that you're doing this interview, ask [your audience] what they want you to ask. Don't be afraid to get unfriendly. Imagine that was that listener's question and you asked it, and this guy's kind of BSing you, or talking about something else. How would you feel if you were that person and then the host went like, ‘okay, cool. Anyway, moving on’. Don't be afraid to get uncomfortable with them. They're used to it and it's part of the job. Press when you feel like your audience or your show needs you to press.”
Jordan says podcasters can go “as far as is necessary to get to the answer that you're after.” The way to do that is to work up to it progressively in your interview. “Save the [questions] that they're most likely to hang up on you for last,” Jordan says. “Unless a politician's team has been like, ‘we'll go on this show as long but we're not addressing questions on issue X at this time,’ [and] that's a firm line that they're giving you, it's up to you if you want to accept that or not. Once you accept that, you should abide by it, but I don't think there's any reason not to press them. The whole point of them talking to the public is to be accountable.”
Rachael says that many podcasters are likely more political that they realize, and there is a responsibility in understanding this. “You are a voter. You are somebody that this person wants to talk to. The responsibility of the podcaster is to have an authentic conversation that is well researched, that is respectful. Ensuring that you are respectful of the message they're trying to get across, of course, push them.”
Use your time wisely — make it good!
In his post, Scott Galloway sites Joe Rogan as having 16 million Spotify subscribers. “In just three days after the live podcast, his three-hour-long conversation with Trump was viewed 40 million times on YouTube. The audio downloads likely exceeded 15 million.” Right now, there’s no Canadian podcast that comes close to those numbers.
Jesse says that since Canadian shows don’t have the same audience sizes, it’s crucial that Canadian podcasters to make a political conversation good. “I felt like Trudeau was either experimenting when he went on a bunch of smaller shows, or the point was not to reach that podcast's audience [and] maybe to generate clips or have people write about the fact that you were on that podcast. There's different strategies going on. But we're in a different ecosystem in Canadian podcasting.”
“It's not that interesting that our politicians are on a small Canadian podcast. What's interesting is what happens on that podcast. I don't think you have to be a journalist to ask ‘how can I make this surprising and unique and revealing?’ The challenge to anybody who's trying to entertain their audience, would be ‘what scenario, situation, conversation can I bring to this that is going to make something unexpected happen or something real happen?’ This doesn't need to be a gotcha or an expose of a scandal–though I love a good expose of a scandal. Whether it's a baking show or whatever, what's going to create the moment that is going to get clipped and shared, and that people who are following politics are going to have to come listen to your show in order to experience?”
Jordan’s advice for a compelling conversation with a politician is no surprise: go off script, early and often. “You’re never going to be the first person they've talked to that day. You need to get them into a space where they feel like they're actually having a conversation with you. I'm not saying ask wild questions out of left field, but make it clear that you're willing to respond to things they say, rather than it feel like you're moving down a checklist. If you want them to relax, you've got to do your part by engaging with what they seem to find interesting in the flow of conversation. We interviewed Olivia Chow the winter after she became mayor [of Toronto]. It was set up through her staff; ‘we're going to be here at this time, we're going to have 30 minutes. These are the issues that we want to discuss’, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, she got in and I told her that she was actually the very first politician that I ever interviewed as a student journalist when she was a city councillor who attended a rally to save the El Macombo, the legendary venue. She was like, ‘I remember!’ and you could see her visibly be like, ‘oh, this is a person,’ and that really helped the rest of the interview.”
Making an interesting podcast always comes down to taking the time to prepare, and Rachael says it can as simple as understanding a politicians life before politics. “That's going to change your conversation. The way that people govern, the way that people think about policy, it's a lot of their lived experience. Doing a deep dive on who the person is in front of you, not so much the politician: ‘why did you get into this? Was your family political? What was your upbringing like? How does that play into your everyday life now?’ We always find that it's the person beyond the politician that's the most compelling and that often plays into that policy discussion.”
Will more Canadian indie podcasts get booked in 2025?
Over and over again, we see that the majority of the podcasts hitting Apple’s Canadian podcast charts aren’t Canadian themselves. The audience sizes for Canadian podcasts are still quite small, and the value of a 30-60 minute sitdown interview is under review. “I'm not discounting the value of going on podcasts”, says Jordan, “but if I am a politician's handler and I am breaking down the value per minute of their time in terms of how many potential voters they are reaching during the time that they are spending, I would imagine most podcasts, with the exception of Joe Rogan, rank fairly low on that – especially the indie podcasts that some of these politicians like to go on. I'm looking at half an hour or 45 minutes of my guy's time, or I could give a national newscast 15 minutes, or I can give 15 minutes to a journalist from MacLean's or the Globe and Mail. There's not many places where you can beat Joe Rogan for the number of people reached and the level of engagement.”
Jordan says that whatever is next for politicians in Canada’s podcast ecosystem depends on what happens in the upcoming Federal and Ontario elections. “We're about to see whether the big podcast election in the United States has moved the needle for using this medium in a campaign in Canada. If you made me pick, I would say it probably hasn't that much because we don't have many podcasts with that type of reach that can be considered those ideological spaces for those folks. As we speak, both the federal Conservatives and the [Ontario] provincial Conservatives have large enough leads that there is no need to risk the downside of sitting down with someone for an hour and maybe saying things that might cause a stir. That's why Trudeau did it when he was way down in the polls. [He] didn't have a lot to lose at that point. Take some shots, meet some new people, sell yourself, etc. I guarantee you that if the Liberals were up 15 points in the polls, he wouldn't be going on indie podcasts out in Alberta to just sit down and chat.”
Rachael says that regardless of audience size, podcasting is “somewhere that politicians want to be” and that it’s a great time for Canadian podcasters. “What a privilege to be able to live in this age where we can have long form conversations with politicians.”
“Remember, in 1867, they were having bar fights over policy, not talking for half an hour with the Prime Minister.”
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You oughta know…
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Signal Hill Insights has reported a dip in French-language podcasting in 2024. On the blog, Matt Hird says “A lack of homegrown content is seen as one of the reasons French Canadians have been slower to get into a habit of podcast listening compared to their English-speaking counterparts. Unlike English-speakers, they don’t benefit in the same way from the massive selection of English podcasts in the US, and despite sharing a language, listen to very few podcasts from France. In fact, Canadian Francophones consumed more than twice as many podcasts from the US last year than from France.” Read more!
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Wish social media comments on your podcast episodes were curated on one landing page? Transistor.fm has launched a new feature that auto-posts your podcast episodes to Bluesky, syncs comments from the platform to your podcast episode’s landing page. Check out what that looks like here.
PodSummit YYC 2025 is looking for speaker submissions! On March 3rd, the team is opening up a limited number of speaker slots for application, looking for valuable insights, unique ideas, or captivating stories in areas like podcast growth, storytelling, video, and technology. No live podcast shows. Applications close on Friday March 21st. Stay tuned for more coming early next month.
Don’t miss your chance to entre the upcoming Audio Flux Circuit 05 competition! Audio Flux is a home for short-form, innovative audio and bold storytelling, inviting people far and wide to create three-minute “fluxworks” in response to a set of prompts. This year’s theme is “In 3D” . Submissions are open until April 1st.
Entries for the 2025 International Women's Podcast Awards are now open! This is my favourite of all the awards out there, with a wondering judging process and some great categories! Don’t miss your chance to enter!
Events:
Feb 20, 2025 — [TORONTO] Dain Miller and Niall Spain (F*ck Buddies, No Quest For the Wicked) have returned with their live podcast “Friends With Benefits” at Black Sheep Irish Cocktail Bar. With a VIP ticket, enjoy a special food and drinks menu at Black Sheep, along with complimentary Rose Bubbles. Tickets here.
Feb 21, 2025 — [TORONTO] PodCamp Toronto returns this weekend, the largest, longest-running event in Canada for Podcasters.
Feb 23, 2025 — [VIRTUAL] How to set up your first home studio. Editor and producer Shawn Allee walks you through how to find and treat your most important recording gear – a home recording space.
Feb 28-Mar 1, 2025 — [MONTREAL] Unrigged is hosting its second PROGRESSIVE PUBLICS conference, which connects independent media and scholarship in Montreal. Connect with folks like Paris Marx, Desmond Cole, Rachel Gilmore, along with The Breach, Pivot, and more. RSVP to this free event here.
April 13, 2025 — [VIRTUAL] Don’t miss the Hot and Bothered virtual live show! Join Vanessa, Hannah and Ariana as they cover the coming of age rom com, 13 Going On 30 and ask '“what does this movie believe about love?”. Get your tickets now!
Good Reads:
Eric Nuzum | The Future is Not Zero
Just Joe (wishing you a wonderful week)…
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