Jo Piazza
Jo Piazza is the host of Committed, Under the Influence, and The Pod Club. Follow her on Twitter here and Instagram here. Follow Committed on Twitter here.
How did you get into the audio space?
I’ve been a journalist since I was 18. That’s more than two decades because I am an old person. For those 20 years I have seen the ground crack beneath journalists. Everything we thought about our industry and our careers has blown the hell up. So I have tried to constantly evolve and find new ways of storytelling across different mediums. I started doing audio about five years ago and just fell in love with it.
You started podcasting before it really blew up. How has it changed?
It’s so funny that you say that since it was only five years ago. But now everything has changed. It does seem like everyone in the world has a podcast these days and I think that makes it harder and harder for the really good content to break through all the noise.
Is it harder to market a show in 2021 than it was in 2018 when you started (I think that’s when you started,) now that there are so many more shows?
There are so many more shows, but also just more content. I genuinely believe there is too much content when you include social media which is where so many people’s eyeballs are for too much of the day.
Why does podcasting excite you?
I think that audio is incredibly intimate and is a great way to get an audience invested in a subject.
How did The Pod Club come about? This is my dream show! (I had a podcast called Podcast Podcast which is a great name but horrible for search.)
It came about from a couple of years of discussion at iHeart honestly about how to help people find the shows that are right for them. I think finding shows is really hard these days, even for people who live and breathe the podcast world like I do. Beyond that I feel like audio recommendations need to come in audio form. I want to hear a little taste of something before I invest the time in listening to it.
Why are you the perfect host for The Pod Club?
I’m a massive podcast junkie. It’s almost a problem how many hours I spend ignoring my children to listen to podcasts. But I am also totally agnostic on genre. I like a true crime just as much as a deep reporting dive just as much as a sci-fi fantasy fiction miniseries.
Thanks, Jo!