How to podcast for the internet

“Internet culture now means everything,” Candice Lim says.

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

How did rawdogging become word of the year? And why does it feel like there are 800 words of the year, every year? Today’s episode of ICYMI features an interview with a linguist who was present at the American Dialect Society’s annual words-of-the-year vote, and dives into the history of this tradition and how we can predict which words might stick.

—Kate

---

Podcasting is a brand new medium for me. Aside from occasional guest appearances— and a short-lived attempt at my own podcast in 2020—I’m essentially a complete beginner. Any success on ICYMI is almost entirely thanks to patient producers who edit out my mistakes, when I say sorry for my mistakes, and then when I say sorry for saying sorry for my mistakes. But I truly would be nowhere if there wasn’t an experienced podcaster on the other side of the microphone: Candice Lim, my ICYMI cohost.

Since my first episode was my introduction to the ICYMI audience, I thought it only made sense to introduce Candice to you all. Unlike me, she’s spent her entire career in podcasting, namely as a producer at NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. We talked about how she pivoted from traditional journalism to audio, her thoughts on the relationship between internet culture and podcasting, and how she’s approaching this new era of ICYMI.

How'd you get started in podcasting?

I went into school to be a magazine journalist. My dream was to be the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue and Seventeen. And I thought I was gonna do magazine journalism, celebrities on the red carpet/film/tv journalism. I really felt that way. And then when I was in college, I interned at The Hollywood Reporter and I kind of realized this is not the place that I wanna be at. Weird vibes. And I was actually very resistant to radio as a concept. I was like, radio won't exist in the next two years. It's a dead industry. I don't need it. And then one day I was walking down the street of my college and I was listening to an episode of this podcast called How I Built This. And I was kind of like, oh, this episode was cool. I don't know what this is, but I would like to work here. I would like to do that. This could be fun.

And so I went abroad to London, and [my school] pairs you up with an internship. And the first thing they paired me up with was a really small radio station. I remember the coordinator was like, you gotta just try it. I think you need to have more faith in me. And she was right. It was one of the most self-affirming times in my life when I felt like I'm in a city that I have no actual connection to, but I feel like I should have been here years ago. And I'm doing something that I closed myself off from for so long. And now that I'm exposed to it, I'm addicted.

Whenever I'm writing something, especially when I was at Refinery29, the saying was always "three is a trend." But then for internet culture specifically, I started to be like, "two is a trend" because by the time you start writing, a third one will have popped up. Do you have any similar rules of thumb you always rely on when it comes to podcasting?

I have so many, but the one I will share is that the producer is always right.

I like that you're saying that with reluctance.

Half of it is defeat, but the other half of it is like, I've been on both sides. I'm telling you the producer is always right because I know what it's like to be wrong. And trust me, I was wrong.

When did you become interested in internet culture?

I'm gonna give it up to 2015 blue-black/white-gold dress. I just remember that becoming like CBS Morning National News. I thought the story was so cute. They put it on Tumblr and it got kind of successful, and then Buzzfeed was the one who catapulted it into the national conversation. That's when the dreaded words "I wanna work at Buzzfeed" started entering my mind.

You're such a pop culture fan—what made you pick internet culture over traditional entertainment?

I think it's just because it's innate as a digitally native person. I got my first laptop when I was eight years old and that was because my school gave it to me. I always find it so interesting when journalists pick beats that they just didn't grow up naturally interested in or they just kind of had to pigeonhole themselves into. A good example is when I worked on How I Built This, it was actually quite hard for me to care about business because I was like, this is not my world. It's really hard to wake up on the day-to-day and care. And then when I worked on Pop Culture Happy Hour, that was so easy. I've always cared about film and TV, so I'm walking into Zoom conversations that I would've had with my friends anyway. And I think with internet culture, by the time I started covering it, we were past the "this means nothing" [phase]. Internet culture now means everything. We're past "fanfiction is weird." Fanfiction is literally monoculture in a way. I've always liked internet culture. It's easy for me to care about this.

We're confined to two episodes a week, but internet culture changes so quickly. How do you approach that?

I think you and me trying to cover the TikTok ban is a great example of this. In the middle of our taping, there's already breaking news about, "Oh this is actually what it's gonna look like." And like I understand that there are reporters in the field who are thrilled by stuff like that, but I'm so not that person. My cholesterol cannot take it. And so that's why if you look into the archive of our show for the last year, you'll notice that I tend to pick stories that are two weeks removed or I'm trying to find the bigger picture on something.

I think what it does allow for is to like be able to be like, okay, there are people covering the day-to-day stuff that's happening with internet culture, and we can see our time constraint as an advantage because we're gonna pick what really matters or what the what the bigger story is as a result of those day-to-day events.

The other thing too is that internet culture is one of those beats that is undefined by time zones. You just never know when things are gonna change. And once again, there's a reason I'm not a reporter. There's a reason, and it's because I like to stay inside.

What makes a good podcast episode, in your opinion?

Good vibes is such a horrible answer, but I do think chemistry, especially in a post in a post-covid Zoom environment, it's actually harder to bridge chemistry with someone than people think. I think a good podcast host slash guest, a defining tenet of whether or not they're good or bad is how they feel about small talk. It's like butter on bread. There's just something about it where it can really melt the senses a little bit, and it kind of disarms people's walls a little bit.

What are your go-to podcasts that you listen to?

Here we go: Las Culturistas, The Big Picture, Waste or Taste, Couples Therapy hosted by Naomi Ekperigin and Andy Beckerman, Bad Dates, Mess with Sydnee Washington and Marie Faustin. That show is such a treasure.

You asked me this in our first episode together, and I'd love to end by throwing it back to you. What are your hopes and dreams for this new era of ICYMI?

This is the hardest question for me to answer so I'm coming off the cuff and let's see what I come up with. I think that this year is gonna be hard. I think this year is gonna be hard because of who is gonna run our country, because of how horrible and devastating the wildfires have been. The first month is not even over and everything just seems so down bad. And at first I remember being like, "Well, I don't cover politics and I don't cover climate change. How could I possibly be upset? Work will be fine." But the thing is internet culture is all of those things. Internet culture is one of the beats that covers every beat. But I think the thing I'm looking forward to this year is that you are here. I have a co-host who is on my level who can match me and go band for band when we step into those tapings. And I think what's nice about that is I don't have to reset every time. We are a relationship that's only gonna grow.

---

Welcome to the new weekly scroll, a roundup of articles, links, and other thoughts from being on the internet this week! Below: Media gossip, the NYU Tisch girl ruining Barron’s life, and a (probably AI) therapist who’s been quoted across a number of reputable outlets.

What I’m consuming…