Podcasting giant and political enigma Dan Carlin expressed some camaraderie with Tea Party darling and Libertarian outsider Rand Paul after an exchange with a listener about the Republican Senator.
At first glance, the two make strange bedfellows. Dan Carlin is hardly a friend of the Republican party.However, when it comes to issues that make the political establishment worried, the popular podcaster pointed out, neither is Rand Paul.
The exchange happened after Dan Carlin retweeted a tweet by Paul about the administration’s reluctance to release memos Appeals Court Judge nominee David Barron wrote regarding the assassination of U.S. citizens overseas using drones. The Twitter user asked if this meant Carlin was a fan of Paul. Dan explained that his like of radicals that ruffle the feathers of the establishment crossed to both sides of the aisle, expressing an admiration for Elizabeth Warren as well.
Carlin then took the conversation across mediums, bringing the Twitter exchange up on his Podcast and giving a more nuanced view of the situation. While it is impossible to summarize the entirety of Carlin’s over an hour long podcast in the small amount of space allotted here, that part of the podcast focused on both Paul’s and Warren’s penchant for saying things that Washington “insiders” don’t like. He also stated that even if they, as some of the more skeptical have insinuated, are only saying these things to make political hay, the mere mention of the issue is a positive development in Carlin’s mind.
What is interesting here from a social media perspective is the increasing use of sites like Twitter by podcasters to interact with their audience. As Podcasters’ listener numbers begin to rival and in some cases surpass AM talk radio audiences, both audiences and podcasters have looked for ways to interact. While messageboards have always been a reliable standby, social media gives an opportunity to interact in a public way, somewhat like the listener phone calls of traditional, terrestrial radio shows, so it is only natural that the pairing would be a perfect match.
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts are among the web’s most popular independent podcasts in their respective categories.
[Photo Credit: Steven Lopez]
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