Review: This is Propaganda

I am someone who enjoys learning about things from beginning to end. Everything has a contextual outline and I love finding the ways everything ties together. Sometimes we can't see the end or we're so far into things that it's hard to see the beginning. Elements of where we started twist into where we are, and where we are going. Propaganda, I have learned, is no different.

This is Propaganda is a podcast about exactly that. How did the world seemingly turn on its head? How did we get to the here and now of all of this? In some ways, it is all because of propaganda. From Brink Media, a company dedicated to turning the power of marketing into good, this podcast is a primer on how brands went from being something you trusted for quality to something you wore as a badge of your values.

Hosted by marketing and creative professionals, Josh and Malcom, we start at the beginning. What is propaganda, what is personal relations, and what does it all have to do with marketing? We can start with one person, Edward Bernays. From there we draw a straight line from Freud to Bernays, through counterculture and right to 2024. In five short episodes, this podcast had me fascinated, hopeful, and crawling out of my skin. I listened to episodes twice to make sure I was following everything correctly - because I couldn't believe how much sense the story laid out was making. I've checked it out from a variety of corners of research, too. Bernays could be one of the most influential people to have ever existed, and most of us have no idea who he is or why.

These disconcerting and fascinating realities of public relations shaping the world as we know it, are wrapped in some impressively created audio. This story is narrated alongside iconic advertisements that for some will take you back to childhood, and for others will be a window into the past. The audio makes it fun to listen to, never knowing what intriguing bit of marketing history is coming around the corner. Whether it be explaining a campaign or bringing back a jingle, this is one of the most creatively layered podcasts I have ever listened to. It drags you along for a ride that you never know if you want to get off of, or if you want to see what's coming next.

How our relationship with items, things, and the world has changed just because of marketing is astounding. I have found myself, in the past week, turning in and becoming introspective because it felt like this podcast woke me out of a fog and a haze. Everything is propaganda. I hope now that we can start to see that, we can figure out a better way to go from here.

I don't say that podcasts are important lightly. This one? This one I think is one of the most important podcasts I've listened to because it made me rethink everything since I finished it. This is Propaganda has given me not a perspective of empathy, like most of the podcasts I listen to, but a new way of thinking that is making me reconsider and move forward in a way that is not about me. This is about how I interact with everything out there, and what I've been influenced to think and believe. I think I was already halfway there, but this podcast gives a foundational story that we were supposed to miss.

Listen to This Is Propaganda below.

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