I am a patron of a handful of left-wing / comedy / education podcasts and all I can say is that that "scene" has been steadily growing since I got into it aroun

I am a patron of a handful of left-wing / comedy / education podcasts and all I can say is that that "scene" has been steadily growing since I got into it around 2016. Independent, patron based funding models really works for podcast content. Chapo Trap House, fueled by over 100k $5 dollar donations, is a great example. Not all get to that level, but if you're a 1-3 person podcast making good content for your niche, it only takes a few thousand listeners supporting you with $5 a month to support the whole project. I think those podcasts are going to continue to grow in number for a while as the community grows. There isnt even a need for large scale curative organizational involvement for these kinds of projects. I see the article mentions Slate, and NPR. While those are fine orgs, there is a real appeal to the auteur style of small scale, community driven media. Hosts go on each others shows, the listeners of the various podcasts interact with one another on twitter, and a weird kind of modular audio content network emerges out of the many moving pieces. Theres a place for large-orgs curating podcasts, doing more extensive journalism requiring resources, or providing larger content libraries for the un-initiated, but the botique podcast is something here to stay.