Aristotle Meets Apple: Rhetoric in the Podcast

Abstract

Podcasts such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History and Manoush Zomorodi’s Note to Self, engage with, and extend, the deliberative rhetorical form. Aristotle defined deliberative rhetoric as a persuasive genre that identified problems (typically within the Greek polis) to then recommended policies for change. While the content of these podcasts adhere to this classical deliberative form – detecting issues and proposing solutions within their episodes – the podcast’s form allows for a modern update and extension of this process. Through sound edits, colloquial narration, and music, the podcast encourages new and extended listener participation, where audience members are prompted to solve presented problems themselves. My analysis of Revisionist History and Note to Self will begin with the classical courtroom setting of deliberative rhetoric and then extend into more nonconformist spaces like the Internet, illustrating the new shapes and settings deliberative rhetoric takes on in the podcast, as well as the reach this medium extends to listeners to solve problems on their own.