The Thing About Podcast to Book Pipelines

I'm reading a book about cults, and it is a direct adaptation of a Parcast podcast on the subject.

The plus side for the reader is that each cult had to be explored enough for a podcast episode. The minus side is that podcasts are prone to padding.

Think about it: podcasts aren't subject to scheduling in the way that a TV episode is. 'In Research Of' doesn't have to get off the air in time for the next show. I'm also under the impression that there isn't any financial incentive to keep things short- a half-hour show costs about as much as an hour-and-a-half. (I could be wrong, but I can't imagine a big difference.)

There is often, depending on the show, an audience preference for tangents. That's even promised as part of bonus material for patrons. The breezy, friendly tone or wild connections are part of what people tune in for.

There's a tendency to add speculation and such, especially in sensational subjects like true crime and cults, to get out an episode a week that feels informative enough when the research was perhaps not as deep as it could be.

What I am getting at is that 'Cults: Inside the World's Most Notorious Groups and Understanding the People Who Joined Them' has a 'this could have been a blog post' vibe. It's repetitive and has an odd tendency to backtrack. There is some handy context, like the historical moments that the cults were founded in, but you can tell that they are taking that information from when they broadcast the episode on that particular cult.

I don't need to be told that these guys just took the transcripts of their episodes and made them into sections of the books with a little bit of commentary- each section even has an introductory overview before starting the in the childhood of the cult leader.

And, as a thought, can we talk about cults in a way that doesn't start and end with 'dear leader?' I realize one salient trait of these groups is their leader/founder, but if you're going to talk about their effect and who joins them, shouldn't the focus start with the founding of the group and its bylaws? The best part of this book is when they are discussing NXIM (or however you spell that) and the focus is more on each of the participants as they enter the cult and come to leave it. The women who brought the cult down are way more interesting than the jerk who ran it. Frankly, the description of him reminded me of what I call the 'baby genius.' He is convinced he is way smarter than he actually is, cannot do basic adult tasks, and is generally high on his own farts.

All of this is to say, podcasts are not books. The translation from one medium to another takes care to avoid repetition.