Despite the fact that it’s considered to be one of the most influential media platforms in the world today, I’ve never listened to The Joe Rogan Experience. Nor have I caught an instalment of On Purpose With Jay Shetty, The Meidastouch, Crime Junkie, or anything by Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson, and neither have I clicked on podcasts offered by PBS, the CBC, or the BBC. I generally use YouTube to watch vintage classic rock performances, rather than any recurring video series that could be categorized as news or opinion. Yet the proliferation of podcasts and their variants – freely accessible recordings of individuals speaking to their audience, or to others, on everything from history and current events to sports and gardening – makes me wonder about the direction of public discourse, and human knowledge.

Podcasts, of course, descend from the familiar formats of television panel shows or radio interview and phone-in programs, except podcasts can be found online at any time, unlike the older mediums, which were only available at scheduled intervals via airwaves or cable networks. But podcasts (like blogs) also have an improvised quality that distinguishes them from legacy publishing or broadcasting – no editorial or commercial vetting, no responsibility to corporate overseers, and no limits on subjects covered or questions asked. Even the podcasts produced by established newspapers or TV channels have the same rambling informality as their indie competitors, whereby the cameras and the microphones are simply trained on one or two people venturing opinions and bouncing unfiltered ideas around in casual monologues or conversations.

It’s that last element that may account for podcasts’ mass appeal. You don’t really need to pay close attention to any one episode; you can play them while driving or doing the dishes and still catch the gist of the topics and the podcasters’ varying reactions to them. It’s like eavesdropping on somebody else’s dialogue with a friend or colleague, and getting lulled along by their overall tone, rather than connecting with any specific point made: Muzak for the mind.

For this reason, though, podcasts and their ilk are (to me, at least) decidedly inferior means of conveying information, compared with printed or onscreen texts. Reading engages deeper parts of the brain than watching or hearing. Whatever the issue, or the perspective taken, written sentences and paragraphs will deliver a clearer description of the matter at hand, using sequential logic, organized evidence, and structured argument, whereas spoken speech or exchange is likely to contain spontaneous digressions, hesitations, qualifications, and other verbal fumbles that cloud the underlying message. At the same time, faulty reasoning or inaccurate data is easier to spot in print than similar failings that can slip by when stated orally. Studies have long shown how TV news clips, transcribed, use fewer words than newspaper accounts of the same event; the sounds and the images supposedly speak for themselves, but the readers will likely come away with a greater retention of the material – more understanding of the key facts, more comprehension of the surrounding ideas – than the viewers. Podcasts merely amplify an identical divide.

Indeed, when I’ve guested on podcasts myself to discuss one of my books, I’ve strained to express out loud what I’ve already made plain in black and white. And I’ve been struck by how many skilful writers of effective essays are lately obligated to produce podcasts or video presentations for their host journals: Ross Douthat for The New York Times, David Frum for The Atlantic, Jonathan Kay for Quillette, and Andrew Coyne for the Globe and Mail. Their articles are among the finest in the craft, usually interesting and a pleasure to read (if not always persuasive), but their podcasts reveal ordinary voices struggling to sort their views into coherence. Smart and eloquent on the page, such talents are surprisingly awkward in the studio. If you’re in a hurry, though, or if you’re cleaning house or have something else going on in the background, you might not notice the difference. Now imagine millions of people in the podcast audience also not noticing, and you have one reason why our collective conversation, and our collective intellect, has deteriorated to the level it has.