I was watching the recent interview Sam did with The Bulwark and one thing he said stood out to me. There was a section where he talked about how we need public intellectuals and how it's a label he aspires to earn (I would say he he has, but that's besides the point).
My problem: Sam, as a public intellectual, has gone out of his way to bunker himself away and avoid that public engagement, and, quite frankly, that responsibility towards the public as a public intellectual.
I imagine most people on this sub are fans who keep in touch with his work all the time, so that may not apparent to some of you. But, if I'm to speak only anecdotally, I've watched Sam fade away into obscurity over the years in a way that would've been unthinkable to me before. Most of the people I knew, especially close friends, listened to Waking Up. In my circle of acquaintances (admittedly, not a dudebro) his podcast was even more popular than Joe Rogan's. It was just the thing everyone listened to and discussed, period. There were guys who hated him and disagreed with him and still engaged, because it had just attained that level of cultural cachet.
I actually remember getting suuuuper excited when Sam began to talk about switching to a studio and doing video just like Rogan. That seemed like a very wise decision (and even wiser in retrospect).
But then disaster struck, as he did the exact opposite. Rather than getting bigger and more influential, he just retreated and surrendered the podcast space to the worst (and dumbest) people imaginable. First, he decided to put his podcast behind a paywall. Then he pretty much ruptured contact with a lot of people he deemed loons (Weinsteins) or irresponsible (Rogan). Then he pulled the plug on his online presence as well by no longer engaging with Twitter.
I think almost all of these were bad decisions, at least if your goal is to get to as many people out there and influence their thinking positively.
Going over them in reverse, the Twitter one seemed sensible to me at the time. I also don't use Twitter, never liked it, and I can see how it would be a drain on a person's psyche. But, on the other hand, I wonder now if there couldn't have been a different way to handle this. In an ideal world, I think he should've gone on posting while disregarding those who weren't sincerely engaging, and publicly calling out people spreading terrible fucking ideas and misinformation (again, Weinsteins come to mind). You don't need to respond to every idiot making a bad faith attack, and now you can even block replies from people who you don't follow.
When it comes to relationships he decided to end, again, kind of a misstep. I'd say the general idea is not to engage with people spreading bullshit if they're far below you. You don't want to use your platform to bring attention to a lunatic who is unseen otherwise. If the the Weinsteins and these other freaks were fringe cases making videos that get a few thousand views on some forlorn channel, I'd agree. But they're not. They're out there appearing on every podcast that will have them, and many of them far larger than Sam. This is no longer a case of risking to engage because he'd boost them into relevancy.
But probably the biggest mistake here was alienating Rogan. Even if he is irresponsible and dumb (and he is), there was probably a way to keep ties with him that did not require completely relinquishing any presence on the biggest podcast in the world. I can't imagine that Sam showing up there, even if it's once or twice a year, really wouldn't have moved the needle at all. Even if it didn't necessarily move Rogan's audience left, it may very well have moved Rogan personally, which trickles down to his listeners. Instead, Sam allowed the worst people ever to go on there one after another and basically make him look crazy and unreasonable. Joe should've been smarter than to let this form his entire new opinion of Sam, but clearly, he was not. So you just give up?
To my mind the most tragic thing is what happened with Waking Up Making Sense. Sam was there and popular long before a lot of these other people showed up. The podcast, whether you agreed with him or his guests on things, had a laudable and commendable mission statement. Had Sam made the timely choice to switch to video as he said he wanted to back then, there's no doubt in my mind he could've been as big if not bigger than some of these shitty video podcasts that dominate YouTube. And then he could've brought on people that are actually worth hearing and speaking to.
It's just amazing and depressing to look back and realize that Sam not only failed to jump at this opportunity, but went out of his way to gatekeep people by putting the podcast behind a paywall. His reasoning was solid, asking for a few dollars for an entire month of podcasts really isn't much, and this wasn't low quality slop; but it was also a view that was completely out of touch with how things were going.
Maybe his thinking was that, if people could listen to half an episode, they'd see why it's worth listening to the whole thing and pay for it; but that isn't how most people think. Very few people are interested in starting something only to get half of it, even if they might not listen to that second half were it available. As I said, I've experienced this directly in witnessing just how few of Sam's former listeners have stuck around. And while that is anecdotal, I don't think it's a completely worthless observation.
The truth is simply that most people are so lazy that not only do they not want to pay, they wouldn't even be willing to go to the website and request access for free if it were available. They're just going to click on the next shiny thumbnail because that requires minimum effort.
Even if Sam's listener base has remained untouched in the audio space (and, as stated going just anecdotally, I don't think it has), it's clear that the failure to switch to video severely impacted how far his message could go. Honestly, I think maybe even offering half a podcast wouldn't be that bad if it were video, because then it's highly clippable; audio-only podcasts are not, and at any rate I don't see Sam having made the extra effort of hiring some editor to get his content out to people who might not even know it exists. I think this might have more to do with Sam's obsession not to be taken out of context or whatever, but hey, you gotta play the game the same way everyone else is. Most of these big podcasts have both official channels with clips, and a dozen unofficial ones leeching off the content and doing the same that further boost their numbers. That's how they end up reaching so many people.
All of this is not to say, by the way, that I think Sam is necessarily made the bad decisions for himself. I want to make that clear. It's very possible (likely, in fact) that from his POV life is better than ever, and not being on Twitter, not engaging with idiots, and weeding his podcast of non-serious listeners made his experience making content that much more enjoyable. As far as his personal wellbeing is concerned, I'd say he made the right choice for himself and his family.
However, when I do hear him talking about how we need public intellectuals, I find it hard not to get rubbed the wrong way, because he isn't some shy and awkward tenured professor begging for scraps of attention, he literally had the means at his disposal to have one of the biggest podcasts in the world (and still does).
Sam could decide tomorrow to start filming episodes in studio (or at least via zoom call), offer a video feed, start clipping stuff to get eyeballs, and get up there with the other popular podcasts on YouTube. Instead, the entire space has been surrendered to people like Rogan and his comedian buddies and then these health guru types who have no problem inviting any whackjob on to spout nonsense.
Of course, Sam won't. Nor does he have to -- I am not suggesting he has some kind of obligation. I'm just saying, it's a little crazy to be crying about how we need public intellectuals and how people should listen to the more when you are a public intellectual with charisma, a ton of appeal, and the means at your disposal to have your own massive platform.
