About Celebrity Podcasts

Whether it's due to a flawed memory or a subconscious act of radical self-care, I don't remember much about junior high school. But what I do recall with great clarity is the feeling of being left out, of wishing I could, for just a moment, be privy to the inner lives of the cool kids — their jokes and gossip, their shorthand, their ostensible existence above it all.

I was reminded of this while I was cooking dinner a couple weeks ago. Not because of any madeleine-like power on the part of the food, but because I was listening to Amy Poehler interview Gwyneth Paltrow on her Good Hang podcast. If you're not familiar with the podcast, its premise is exactly what it sounds like: Amy Poehler hangs out with her friends, and the rest of us get to listen.

I had listened to Poehler's interviews with Regina Hall, Rachel Dratch, and Kate McKinnon, among others. I'd enjoyed them in the the same way I enjoy videos about interspecies animal friendships — they're like a cute bubble bath for the brain. So maybe it was the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow remains Gwyneth Paltrow. Or maybe it was Poehler telling Paltrow that "so much has been projected" onto her. But there I was, with the uncanny feeling that I was once again listening to the popular girls and that they were somehow doing me a favor by allowing me — us — to follow along.

This isn't a gendered thing: I used to feel the same way when I tried to listen to Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast. That was like listening to the most undeservedly confident boy in junior high school conduct an investigation of his navel, emerging sporadically to show the contents to whatever friends happened to be nearby. Back then, I'd thought the problem was just Dax Shepard, but now, I think it's more an issue of celebrities interviewing other celebrities. Celebrities get access to things that most of us don't, i.e. other celebrities. That access has a way of erasing the tension and texture that underscores everyday life, and, I'd argue, a great interview.

Because so much of what (to me, at least) makes a great interview is the inherent imbalance between subject and inquisitor, the unspoken knowledge that this is a transactional arrangement made only for the benefit of the involved parties. Every interview I've ever done has felt like a first date, for better or worse, and this is as it should be.

That said, I realize that no one is pretending these interviews are journalism. They're not even interviews; they're conversations. As such, they, like celebrities, adhere to their own set of rules. Also, yes, I realize that complaining about celebrity podcasts at this point in history is like complaining about window treatments when a house is burning down. There are bigger problems, who cares?

I get it, and yet, and yet: is it wrong to wish for a world in which the Golden Globes didn't use its first-ever Best Podcast category to pretend that Good Hang (which won) is remotely the same thing as NPR's Up First, or that narrative podcasting doesn't exist? Is it wrong to wish that Poehler, with all of her access, had used her conversation with Aziz Ansari to ask a thoughtful question about that spot of trouble he had a few years back? I don't know, maybe it is. As any of the popular kids I went to school with could tell you, they like to stick together.