‘We All Need a Break from Politics Once in A While’: CNN’s Harry Enten Dishes on the ‘Human Experience’ Focus of His Podcast’s New Season
CNN Digital Expansion 2018 Harry Enten
The second season of Harry Enten’s CNN Audio podcast, Margins of Error, launched earlier this month and he chatted with Mediaite about the stories he’s hoping to tell, the importance of the “human experience,” and how “we all need a break from politics once in awhile.”
Due in part to pandemic restrictions inhibiting travel and in-person interviews and experiences, the first season of the podcast was “more specific in niche,” Enten told Mediaite in a phone interview, and focused on topics he personally found interesting and could be researched remotely.
One such episode covered the generational divide regarding hostility to making and receiving phone calls. Enten readily acknowledges, like many Millennials, he doesn’t like talking on the phone very much — and admitted it was ironic, since this interview was by phone — but he wanted to examine the root causes behind that and what tradeoffs we were making by communicating by text and emojis instead of human voice.
Other first season shows examined why “Election Night” results now usually took about a week, what experts say about Daylight Saving Time, plus a deep dive into what makes a pop music hit (Enten’s uncle is the prolific singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka, and the episode examines whether his decades-spanning success would even be possible in today’s music market).
“On a broader level, the podcast is the same” this season, said Enten, and he wanted to focus on the stories that were “not on the front page of the news cycle every day, but still impact people’s lives,” the topics that apply “much more broadly to society.”
The two episodes already released for season two include how regional American accents seem to be fading (including specifically examining the iconic cadence of Texans and New Yorkers) and asking how often we really need to bathe. For that last one, Enten went as far back as ancient Rome to look at historic practices and even went without deodorant for a week.
Did I go a week with no deodorant for this episode of Margins of Error? Yes! Did anyone notice? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I can already hear you saying, “Ewww, gross,” or whatever. But listen to the podcast! It may change your mind on how much we should be bathing.https://t.co/1KaVpngO3u pic.twitter.com/vcghzrBw9r
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) May 10, 2022
Upcoming shows include looking at why America refuses to switch to the metric system (“We’re America, you know, we’re not going to go the way the rest of the world wants to go.”), if wearing glasses really does make you look smarter (Enten certainly thinks they do, and said he was “jealous” of those who wear them), and questioning whether love is dead considering recent studies showing significant decreases in the number of people getting married, cohabiting, or having sex.
Asked about his TV appearances, in which he would conduct a “rapid fire, numerical breakdown” of a current news story, Enten replied that often “numbers tell the story better than almost anything else,” but “the numbers are not the complete story, and there’s a story behind the numbers, there are people behind the numbers.”
The podcast, he continued, allowed him the time to get more into those deeper stories. “You’re allowed to allow a conversation to breathe,” he said, and the “foundation” was still the numbers, but he was hoping that he and the listener “are learning something together as we go along this journey.”
Many of Enten’s CNN television hits and articles have been politics-focused — polling, election results, partisan divisions, and so on. He affirmed that the podcast’s broader focus outside of politics was “intentional.”
“I think we all need a break from politics once in a while,” said Enten, noting that the daily news could often be “depressing.” He described how he wanted to look into “people’s day-to-day lives,” and the things they ponder when they’re commuting or in the shower — “Oh, I wonder if that’s true?” — “the questions that really interest people.”
Reflecting the pandemic weariness that many Americans are feeling, Enten said the show had “very little” about Covid-19 related topics, and also sought to take advantage of the re-emerging ability to attend events in person. Communicating by text or over Zoom, Enten noted, “definitely limits our ability to relate to each other,” when we only have a part of that “human experience,” that can mean we only get a “partial read” on what’s really going on.
He and the show attended The Bridgerton Experience, an interactive event inspired by the Regency-era Netflix hit series, and interviewed employees at a popular dating app for an upcoming episode. Another future episode will look at the correlation between money and happiness, specifically the idea that experiences bring more joy than material things, so Enten took trapeze lessons. “My arms were certainly worse for wear because of it,” said Enten, “but it’s actually putting what I’ve learned into practice.”
Sometimes reporting takes you interesting places…like to a trapeze lesson. Swing into the new season of my podcast Margins of Error — coming May 3.
Listen to the trailer now. https://t.co/x3vQDIlJ8l pic.twitter.com/jdJmWhVc6y
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) April 27, 2022
In the end, Enten hopes that the takeaway from his podcast is that it’s mean to be “fun” and also allow the listener to “learn something.”
“It’s an ability to get away from the everyday news cycle,” he concluded. “If you’re looking for a podcast that is directly on the news and perhaps some of the more depressing topics, this is not the podcast for you. If you are interested in learning something and having a good time, perhaps laughing at me but hopefully more laughing with me along the way, and this is much more of your podcast. It’s someone who does news in his daytime job, but at night we go out and we have a little bit of fun.”
