Number of podcasts worldwide

The idea that podcasts and homeschooled children are growing at the same rate is either deeply alarming or strangely logical, depending on whether you've listened to a homeschooled child recently. Both, it seems, have opinions they wish to broadcast. Neither is waiting for permission.

Both lines surged in 2020 for the same covid reason. The US homeschool population roughly doubled as parents pulled children from closed schools or refused to return them, while the global podcast count exploded as locked-down would-be broadcasters turned empty commutes into microphone time. Two very different responses to the same closed-building year.

So the correlation is the sound of a year when households started making their own curriculum and their own media. The adults recorded; the children enrolled. Both were, briefly, teachers.