I don't think listening to a podcast is really substantially different to tuning into Walter Cronkite. Both are deliberately recognisable human faces (or voices

I don't think listening to a podcast is really substantially different to tuning into Walter Cronkite. Both are deliberately recognisable human faces (or voices) for the presentation of the media to you. Maybe it gets a bit weird when you start messaging your favourite Youtuber and they reply fast enough that you feel like it's a personal conversation rather than a professional correspondence. Sending a letter to Cronkite would have been far less immediate. Treating media as anything other then virtually entirely read-only has always been what nutters do - they'd be the only ones writing any significant numbers letters to the person if the TV, and the same is probably true of modern media.