Within a week of its release earlier this month, Bernie Sanders’ podcast had climbed to the number two slot on iTunes, just behind S-Town. (It’s now sitting at number six, still firmly in the top ten.) Which is to say: The Bernie Sanders Show, the product of a sitting U.S. senator’s Washington press office, is currently competing head-to-head in the same market as the likes of This American Life and TED Radio Hour. I’m not sure what that means, but I think it’s significant—certainly more significant than the show itself, which is almost as intellectually lazy as it is technically incompetent.
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Call me old school, but I think journalists should be interviewing politicians, and not the other way around. That’s what we do in liberal democracy. Anything else is Aló Presidente territory, and please, let’s not give Presidente Trump any ideas about starting a podcast himself.

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I come back to my fundamental bewilderment about the popularity of The Bernie Sanders Show. How is it that a political PR team—noticeably unschooled in the ways of audio production—is presently boxing with the likes of NPR at the top of the iTunes charts? “It’s a testament to how powerful the senator’s message is,” Miller-Lewis told me. “[Listeners] want a bold and progressive message.”

It may also be a testament to how much the current podcast listener demographic overlaps with Sanders’ core demo of educated young people. Or, it may be a testament to how much the iTunes chart algorithm is weighted to reflect new subscriptions, thus making recently-debuted shows appear competitive with established shows that actually get far more downloads (this is a widely-believed guess, Apple keeps its algorithm secret). Those subscribers who swarmed in on Sanders’ name alone might not keep with his show once they actually listen to it. Regardless, I think people who “want a bold and progressive message” should also want a better podcast than The Bernie Sanders Show.