Dr. Laura Is Debuting a New Podcast

After dropping one "live" program a week (usually Fridays), Dr. Laura is debuting a new podcast, "Deep Dive."

As I write this, I haven't heard it as it is scheduled to debut tomorrow. When she announced this, I expected it to be new content, as opposed to her main podcast, which is her "live" program of that day (usually... sometimes it is a past program) posted with the breaks removed, and her popular "Call of the Day" podcast, which features one call from her program. However, upon thinking about it more, I would not be surprised if at least some of the episodes will be monologues she did during her program.

But even if it is all new, the question becomes "Why drop down from five to four live programs per week, only to end up doing a new podcast?"

There are many possible reasons.

The live program relies heavily on phone callers, and that is becoming a problem for many programs as fewer people are willing to make actual phone calls. A podcast doesn't need any callers. The live program, if done live for all three hours, requires at least three hours of work, whereas a podcast can be much shorter, even something like 15 or 20 minutes, and even if Dr. Laura does research for an episode, the total time can be much less than three hours. But she doesn't necessarily need to read or watch anything new. She can speak well on a topic for 20 minutes easily. By her own statements, she doesn't argue or debate. So with a podcast, she can speak her mind about a topic and her call screeners won't have to deal with anyone wanting to argue (although some might people might try to call the live program to argue after hearing the Deep Dive podcast).

My guess is the podcast will be much like the monologues she does on her her live programs, and whenever she says "I want to talk about the last call some more" and goes on for ten minutes. For example, she's almost certainly going to talk about why she advises against daycare, casual sex, living together without a state marriage license, and marrying when you have minor children with someone else. There will be lectures on how to have a good life after a bad childhood. Things like that.

We'll see.

Listeners should definitely expect advertisements, since the podcast is being offered for free. There will probably be ads/mentions of sponsors at the start and end of the podcast as well as in the middle of it.

The podcast will certainly be used to try to get people to listen to her main program, which they can do by paying for SiriusXM or the podcast of that program (through her website). The frustrating thing about that for many people will be their desire to argue about something said on Deep Dive, but not being able to do so because it won't be allowed on the live program. The best they can do is either blog (like me) or post their responses on social media, email Dr. Laura, or call up the live program with a request for "clarification" and then sneak in their argument as part of their question. But with that last method, Dr. Laura will hang up on them and talk about five minutes asserting that "all the research" supports her position.