Waste of the Day: The “Podcast Tax” Cost $324 Million Since 2020
Topline: The federal government has given $324 million since 2020 to projects that have created a podcast, including some with questionable topics, according to a recent investigation from OpenTheBooks.com.
Key facts: OpenTheBooks’ auditors identified a list of 58 podcasts created with government funds, covering everything from Swedish gender-neutral pronouns to AI-generated erotic literature.
The Regeneration Rising podcast, which received over $446,000 from the Department of Agriculture, has an episode about “building a queer farmer community.”
Another show with almost $200,000 in grant money speaks about the “important role” of Satanists in American religion.
Other podcasts are simply silly. One show with over $556,000 in funding made an episode about “superheroes prepared to help us defeat the coronavirus: Sgt. Socially Distanced, the Masked Mentor, the Testmaster and the Vaxinator!”
The most expensive program used almost $1.2 million to produce a podcast on the history of the Rocky Mountain region. Other government-funded topics included “19th-century male romantic friendships” and transgender people in Zimbabwe.
Background: Not all of the funding was solely for podcasting, but $324 million still went to initiatives that made podcasts as part of their project.
That figure seems even larger when compared to the overall budgets of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, which contributed a significant portion of the funds.
The two agencies had a combined budget of $1.4 billion since 2020, only about four times more than what was spent on projects involving podcasts in the same time frame.
Supporting quote: “As with all NEA grants, these grants are made on the basis of artistic excellence and artistic merit as described on the NEA website and as required by Congress,” a spokeswoman for the agency told the New York Post.
“Panels of arts experts and other individuals from communities across the country, including at least one knowledgeable layperson, made recommendations on all of the Grants for Arts Projects applications. Panel recommendations were reviewed by the National Council on the Arts and then the NEA chair, who makes the final decision on all grant awards.”
Summary: The NEH website says the agency only funds “excellence,” but it’s up for debate whether the 58 podcasts that received federal funding all meet that criteria.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
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