When podcasts come up in political conversation, it’s usually the same set of podcasters that come up, like Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate or the many others inspired by them. It often leads to the impression that podcasting is primarily a right-wing space or has been co-opted by right-wing folks. But when you look at the stats, that just isn’t true.
So why does it seem that way? Emblematic of the Democratic party as a whole, the left does not have cohesive messaging or strategy around media, which is exemplified through podcasts.
While “The Joe Rogan Experience” may have a seemingly unbreakable monopoly on the top of podcast charts, and many similar figures are often not far away, that is not the full picture. In 2025, only two of the year’s top 10 most-listened to podcasts, “The Joe Rogan Experience” and “The Tucker Carlson Show,” are significantly right-leaning. Most are either apolitical, like “Crime Junkie,” or left-leaning, like “The Shawn Ryan Show.” This stretches across podcast categories, with the majority across all categories being left-leaning or politically neutral.
The difference is that the left-leaning and right-leaning podcasting ecosystems are vastly different in its interactions with politics. Right-leaning podcasts, particularly the aforementioned Rogan and Carlson, frequently host Republican elected officials, even including President Donald Trump. While Democrats may occasionally appear on podcasts, it is not to nearly the same frequency and not on the same number of different podcasts. There have even been quite a few times where Democrats, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have appeared on right-leaning podcasts or invited right-leaning figures like Charlie Kirk onto their podcasts, which does not tend to happen the other way around.
Having political figures on podcasts tends to boost the exposure and interest that a podcast has, as people are interested in hearing their thoughts in a relatively raw and unconventional format. Those appearances often also generate quotable moments which themselves can go viral, and if a podcast consistently tends to host figures of one ideology or another, people who subscribe to that ideology will be more likely to follow it. It’s simple brand building.
So why don’t left-leaning figures go on podcasts? To a significant extent, it may be a feedback loop. Podcasts seem like a less effective media strategy for left-leaning political figures, so then those figures don’t go onto podcasts, leading to them seeming even less effective, and the cycle repeats.
It also does not help that the left-leaning podcast space is relatively fractured. Unlike right-leaning podcasts, there is a significant split between podcasts created by legacy newspapers and news media sources, like the New York Times or NPR, and independent podcasts.
This split has two effects: It leads to an ideological split between those who are more beholden to corporate interests and those who are not. This then dilutes the ability for an individual podcast or a set of podcasts to take hold. People will stick to their own niches for whatever they want to get from podcasts, and unlike on the right, there is not as much of an overarching podcast like “The Joe Rogan Experience” that touches on a wide variety of subjects, or as much of a common ideological unity, like “The Tucker Carlson Show.”
These issues can be overcome to a large extent. They’re all present on the right, even if to a lesser extent. So why can’t the left fix this? Similar to many things at the federal level in the United States, the Democratic party has a problem with keeping a consistent media strategy and political position.
California Gov. Newsom hosting Kirk on the first episode of his podcast is the epitome of this. It showed exactly why political figures on the left are not invited onto right-leaning podcasts usually: At best inviting the other side in will push away those who support you, while giving those same people more attention.
It is not as if Kirk was someone whose political views were hard to tell, his career was based on expressing them to a variety of audiences through “debate.” There is no reason why someone affiliated with the Democratic party, much the less one of its figureheads, is inviting someone like that. It’s simply a sign of poor discipline.
The difficulty in fixing this is that it isn’t something that an individual podcast can fix. In fact, it’s not something just podcasts can fix. It is an issue with the Democratic party as a whole in communications, something which democrats and the left have struggled with consistently. Unfortunately, unlike many needed changes in the Democratic party, it seems to be highly unlikely that it will be fixed.
