“The number of podcasts … ballooned, filling voids in the professional lives of the hosts and the social lives of the listeners, and in some cases replacing both. There were periods during lockdown where I was hearing more from certain podcasters than anyone else on Earth – even the people I was sharing a home with. But believing that people you encounter through the media are your friends is not a new phenomenon. It is called parasocial interaction, a term coined by sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956.” – The Guardian
