Mic Check: Podcasters are furious at Dave Chappelle, and still nostalgic for him

Last weekend, footage from Dave Chappelle's sold-out show at Madison Square Garden got out. In it, he talks about Charlie Kirk's killing and says: "And I shouldn't say this publicly, but I feel better." Dave Chappelle, as replayed on David Vance Podcast ·
► Listen

Over the next five days, 461 podcasts talked about it across 633 episodes. This is the first issue of Mic Check, where we pick a news story and look at what podcasts are saying about it.

1. How big it got, and how fast

From November 7 through November 11, there were 3,029 mentions on 461 shows, compared with 290 mentions on 148 shows in the five days before. And 184 of this week's shows hadn't said his name once in the previous three months, so the story traveled well past the people who usually talk about him.

2. How the tone shifted

The coverage got a lot harsher, too.

For the six weeks before the show, negative comments never got above 8.1%. This week they're at 17.0%, and positive comments have dropped to about half their usual share. Most of what people said was neutral, mainly hosts walking listeners through what happened.

3. "One of the great comics of our time," in the past tense

Plenty of this week's positive comments about Chappelle came from his critics, who kept bringing up his older work.

Both of those are Tim Pool on Timcast News, on the same day (► first clip, ► second clip). Rita Panahi did the same thing within one episode. She called him "one of the great comics of our time" a few minutes after saying this: "Dave Chappelle has really fallen from a great height." Rita Panahi, The Rita Panahi Show · ► Listen

The anger is mostly about last weekend. A lot of the same people still talk about the Chappelle of 2019 with real affection, and you can see it when you sort the comments by whether they're about his past or his present.

4. Guests vs. hosts, and who sounds sure

Hosts did most of the talking, 2,606 of 3,026 mentions. Among the guests brought on to react, the critics didn't all sound equally sure of themselves.

Brandi Kruse's "I guess" (► Listen) and Bridget Phetasy's "We all know" (► Listen) are both criticism, but they land very differently. Dre Baldwin falls somewhere between them (► Listen). Michael Loftus on TMZ Live was on the hedging end, still turning the joke over: "Yeah, again, even if that's what it was, even if this is we're all part of Dave Chappelle's little comedy thought experiment, it doesn't work as a joke." Michael Loftus (guest), TMZ Live · ► Listen

5. What happens next, according to podcasts

A lot of people made predictions, and they don't agree with each other.

Listen to them here: ► James Taylor, ► Greg Stocker, ► Ruslan KD.

How we put this together

Everything above comes from Particle Podcast Intelligence. We transcribe the podcasts we track and tag every mention with who said it, its tone, how sure the speaker sounds, and whether it’s about the past, present, or future.

The same approach works for any name, not just celebrities. If you work in PR or communications, you can follow how podcasts are talking about your clients or executives. If you’re in marketing, you can do the same for your brand and your competitors.

You don’t need to be technical to use it. In Radar, you can ask Ray (our research assistant) questions, and Ray cites the exact moment in each episode. A couple we asked for this issue:

• “Which podcast guests criticized Dave Chappelle’s Charlie Kirk joke, and which defended him?”

• “What are podcasters predicting will happen to Dave Chappelle after the Charlie Kirk joke?”

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