Podcasts flow naturally and pleasantly into a listener’s day to day, advertisements flow naturally and pleasantly in and out of podcasts, and persuasion ceases to register as persuasion, becoming instead a benevolent suggestion from a trusted friend, an invitation to a communal experience, an opportunity to affirm that you are loyal to the community, that you “get it,” that you belong. The danger of this is that ads, host-read or not, are profit-driven, and they deserve more skepticism than a friend’s words would warrant. Advertisements are not our friends — even if they seem to spoken by them.

the intimacy of audio is one of the affordances of podcasts. This is the cloud from that silver lining.