I listen to a lot of podcasts. I love them. Many of them are dedicated or adjacent to American politics, even though I live in Canada. Among these are The NPR Politics Podcast, Pod Save America & Lovett or Leave It, and The Ezra Klein Show.

While all Canadians live in the long shadow of American politics, we have no direct influence on the US political system. It is against US law for me to contribute to US campaigns. Occasionally, I’ll get outraged to the point of being driven to make some kind of small action or donation locally.

A recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show spoke to my situation. In the episode, Are you a “political hobbyist”? If so, you may be the problem., Klein interviews Political scientist Eitan Hersh about their book, Politics Is for Power (which I haven’t read). They discuss the concept of the political hobbyist.

Paraphrasing Hersh, a political hobbyist is a person who follows politics, knows a fair bit about it, but doesn’t contribute meaningfully to it, and the interest is mostly self-serving. This is me.

The concept and discussion rattled me. I know my relationship to ‘current affairs’ can be a bit like eating junk food. It’s more than that though — it’s like eating something you think is good for you, but isn’t. It’s like those granola bars that are just candy-bars in healthy-looking eco-packaging.

I haven’t made any real changes yet, and I’m not even sure I will. It continues to rattle around in my head though.

On a more positive note, I do find some real joy in podcasts. When I look at most of the podcasts I enjoy, political or not, they tend to share a common trait. They’re built around a person or small group talking about something about which they care deeply. I don’t even have to care about the thing — what matters is that they care and that makes me care too. It can be politics, movies, running a digital agency, or front-end Web development. The key is that the host love what they’re talking about.