With Hard Fork, The New York Times Steps Out of Its Comfort Zone
Podcasting For Humans' #3 podcast of the year is Hard Fork.
Happy 2025! For the next several days I’ll be counting down my ten favorite podcasts of 2024, what podcasters can learn from them, as well as my thoughts on trends around podcasting for the year.
My #3 favorite podcast of 2024 is Hard Fork, the New York Times technology podcast.
Podcasts at the New York Times could have gone so very wrong.
So many of the values the Times is known for - formality, objectivity, and impartiality - can be a hindrance to creating a great podcast if they’re overly prioritized. Imagine podcast hosts who maintain a certain emotional distance, who refrain from sharing their own perspectives, and who bend over backward to provide every possible viewpoint on a given issue without putting their finger on the scale.
That’s the alternate timeline that never happened, because the Times’ approach to podcasting has instead been fundamentally informed by what works best in podcasting. Trusting thoughtful experts to be thoughtful experts while also being themselves.
That’s what I love so much about Hard Fork. The hosts of Hard Fork are extremely knowledgeable. You can tell they eat, sleep, and breathe technology. And let’s be real: people who are that invested in technology are inevitably going to have opinions. And those opinions are front and center in this podcast, along with the hosts’ own friendship, their personal lives, and their slightly manic (and yes, sometimes annoying) sense of humor.
All of these personal factors, even the somewhat grating ones, add up to a podcast that feels like a visit with friends. For that reason, I tend to listen every single week, even when the subject matter doesn’t initially grab me. That’s the sign of a truly great podcast.
-Richard