Podcast Hats

A podcast habit is two hobbies in one. There is the listener, who may build a 100-hour-plus playlist just to catch up on a show's back catalog, as one BuzzFeed interviewee put it, and there is the person who has started a podcast, is about to, or has named one without a topic. These hats are for both. The listener side runs on the odd intimacy of the format. Real Life magazine describes how listeners are urged to use promo codes to "help out the podcast," and how the host becomes a "friend" in the absence of any direct channel, which is exactly the joke behind the hat for people whose best friends are hosts who do not know them. The maker side runs on small humiliations: a new co-host admitting to KSL that their mothers were the only ones who listen, a commenter who recorded one episode before the partner ghosted, and a general feeling, enough that NPR launched a show called Everyone & Their Mom, that everyone has a podcast. Badges name the role, and the sentence designs carry the bits: the show with a name and no topic, the single listener who is Mom, the backlog you have made peace with, and the closing line of a long-time listener finally calling in. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Wear one to the next episode you are 400 behind on, or give one to the friend who keeps saying they should start a podcast.