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  • that sub is definitely overall a net positive but i dont think anyone there reads theory. back in cth days we would bully people who didnt read theory. deprogram just bullies liberals on twitter

    • deprogram is definitely too relaxed. I've also noticed a marked decrease in quality from hakim since joining as well. They all need to be more strict and teach more theory.

      • It's an entertainment podcast

        People should listen to audiobooks or perhaps college level, organized discussions (David Harvey has lectures and short Q&A about Capital going chapter by chapter, for example) if they want theory (in an audio format)

        But that said, I do sort of agree that they should try harder to at least get people to seek out theory by giving more tastes of it dispersed throughout the podcast. Hakim usually is the best at it. He talks about something then says "Read Whatever by Whoever for more." It just seems like between his "real job" and sort of realizing what people (their audience) want isn't to be told to read books... yeah, he's like "fuck it. Just subscribe, I guess."

        The sad fact is if you had a heavy, heavy theory oriented podcast. Like it's basically just a review and highlighting of main points from a book, chapter by chapter. Very few people are going to listen to it. Some will, for sure. But let's be realistic. I think all you can really do is what Hakim used to do more of which is shoutout books for people to go read. If it piqued someone's interest they will go read. Of course the bottleneck or whatever here is the host(s) have to be incredibly well-read themselves. Hakim can rattle off a billion books because he's clearly a theory nerd and has read, perhaps, too many books. That already places him in like the 0.01% of podcasters by education level (self or otherwise).

        I guess what I'm getting at here is the same cliche. "Podcasts are slop content. Don't expect anything. The best they can do is shame listeners into reading maybe one book."

      • I think that the three of them attracted a much younger audience than they were aiming for, and they've kinda started trying to make things easier for that audience to understand (although that's not exactly an excuse for Hakim who makes very historically-oriented stuff).

      • Hakim's quality definitely went downhill. When was the last time he released a book recommendation video? I also don't like how his newer videos are just him recycling his older videos that he has hidden(?). I feel like the newer recycled videos has less info compared with the original older videos, but I don't have them to compare.

32 comments