> In particular, I find independent podcasts like Sam Harris or Dan Carlin to be FANTASTIC, and that content is free for all to download in multiple ways. So, I'm not worried in the slightest.
This. Dan Carlin is fantastic and I enjoy supporting him because of the quality. No Agenda and Congressional Dish are two more listener supported/value-for-value podcasts which do an outstanding job. No Agenda, in particular, raised the bar extremely high for production value, and they do it all live to tape! No back office. Little-to-no post production. Those guys are proof you don’t need a studio, enployees, or advertisers to make a living out of podcasting.
I love how Carlin paywalls his old shows but then mentions in the podcast that they're easy to find on pirate sites if you can't afford to pay him. The paywall is thus implicitly recognised as a minor nuisance meant to make you consider donating. His is the only podcast I've ever given money to, and while I'd like to believe that this has more to do with supporting his quality content than the minor nuisance of pirating his old shows it was actually the act of looking for an old show and finding it paywalled that made me stop and punch in my credit card number. I had intended to support him for a while before that, but never taken the time.
Edit: removed "ad-free" as a descriptor of Carlin's shows, since I recall him having Audible ads.
It's not really fair to call them "hard right" - overall I find they still exercise a very balanced centrist opinion set. Moreso what happened is that the media became even more focused on a strict left-wing narrative that merits serious deconstruction.
This. Dan Carlin is fantastic and I enjoy supporting him because of the quality. No Agenda and Congressional Dish are two more listener supported/value-for-value podcasts which do an outstanding job. No Agenda, in particular, raised the bar extremely high for production value, and they do it all live to tape! No back office. Little-to-no post production. Those guys are proof you don’t need a studio, enployees, or advertisers to make a living out of podcasting.