Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon.The Daily Beast/Getty
The 2022 “Podcast Movement” (PM22) convention recently took place in Dallas. Basically, it’s a big industry gathering for podcasters. Mark Cuban was there, doing a session that The Dallas Morning News said “amounted to a 45-minute infomercial” for his podcasting platform, Fireside. The popular true crime podcaster Phoebe Judge was there too.
And, very briefly, so was the massively popular conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro. He didn’t speak on any panels, but The Daily Wire (the right-wing media company he helped popularize) had a booth at the event, and Shapiro showed up to mingle a bit and pose with a few people who asked for a picture with him.
On the face of it, there’s nothing surprising or even interesting about that. The Daily Wire produces some very successful podcasts. They have close to 900,000 paid subscribers, and Ben Shapiro’s own show was as of last month the fifth-most popular podcast in the United States. The Daily Wire buying a booth at a big podcasting convention—and its main celebrity showing up to shake a few hands—is about as shocking as the latest mediocre forgettable Marvel movie getting a big push at the next Comic-Con in San Diego.