Number of podcasts worldwide

There is a faintly suspicious elegance to the observation that humanity created more podcasts exactly as it slurped more instant noodles, as though the two were somehow metabolically linked. Perhaps the steam rising from each bowl carries with it the creative urge to share one's opinions about true crime. Or perhaps it's simpler than that.

Both curves bend sharply in 2020, and both bends trace back to the same spring. The first covid lockdowns triggered global stockpiling of shelf-stable food — instant ramen production jumped about 9% in a single year, the biggest leap in decades — while housebound would-be broadcasters turned silent commutes into podcasts, and the worldwide catalogue pushed past two million. Same lockdown, different appetites.

The result is a period portrait of a planet at home: noodles in the bowl, microphone on the desk, nobody to talk to in person anyway. Neither line explains the other. The kettle boiled while the tape rolled.