Is your podcast a Cargo Cult?

When imitation replaces understanding — and progress stalls

It’s early January, that peculiar time of the year when summer holidays fade into the rearview mirror, you’re shopping for school uniforms the children have outgrown, and we’re all pretending that a new calendar year automatically resets our habits.

Resolutions abound… more gym, less wine, kale smoothies for breakfast, finally sorting that garage. We perform these rituals (download habit-tracking apps, announce bold goals on LinkedIn) as if the mere act of declaration will conjure results.

But we know better.

Magic doesn’t come from performative behaviour tied to a date; it comes from understanding what actually works and putting in the consistent, deliberate effort.

Which segues us neatly to Cargo Cults. Those fascinating post-WWII phenomena in the Pacific Islands. When Allied planes dropped supplies on makeshift airstrips, the locals witnessed what looked like ritual magic: clear a jungle strip, build a tower, wave some signals, and treasures rained from the sky. After the war, with no more planes, some communities faithfully recreated the forms… bamboo runways, coconut-shell headphones, wooden “control towers”, hoping to summon the cargo back.

All imitation, zero understanding of radar, engines, or global supply chains.
Pure performative mimicry chasing an outcome they didn’t grasp.

The Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman (a permanent fixture on my “fantasy dinner party” list - if you haven’t yet read “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!” you’re in for a treat) famously borrowed the idea in his 1974 Caltech commencement address to describe “Cargo Cult Science” - following all the outward forms of rigorous work, but missing the essential integrity that makes the planes actually land.

And the Cargo Cult idea didn’t stay in the Pacific! It migrated straight into tech. While Feynman popularised “cargo cult science,” programmers took it further with “cargo cult programming”: blindly copying code patterns, rituals, and tools without understanding why they work. Today we see the same vibe in the rush to “just add AI.” Teams bolt ChatGPT wrappers onto everything because the big players do it, sprinkle some prompt engineering magic, and hope the cargo arrives, without grasping the underlying models, data quality, or failure modes. Real-world disasters follow fast: remember the lawyer who cited hallucinated cases generated by AI, or companies that shipped biased hiring tools because they copied the trendy stack without questioning the training data? It’s bamboo runways all over again. (But that’s a rabbit hole for another day.)

Does this sound familiar in the podcast world for you too? Too many podcasts are modern Cargo Cults. People see Rogan or Diary of a CEO racking up millions of views and think: “We need video! Fancy studios! Celebrity guests! Viral clips!” So they invest heavily in cameras, lights, and YouTube optimisation, because that’s what the big players do. Meanwhile, their actual audience (busy executives, decision-makers in B2B spaces) prefers audio they can consume in the car, on a run, or during a flight. Blocking out time to watch video? Not happening! Yet the push for video persists, largely because it feeds platform algorithms on YouTube and Spotify. Convenient for them, not necessarily for you.

Then there’s the metrics obsession: chasing download numbers like they’re the cargo itself. But if your goal is building thought leadership, nurturing leads, or converting listeners into clients, raw downloads are a vanity metric.

They tell you nothing about who listened, what resonated, or whether anyone acted. It’s bamboo runway building! Looks busy, delivers nothing.

To drive the point home, think of famous authors who persisted through rejection. J.K. Rowling sent Harry Potter to twelve publishers before Bloomsbury said yes. Another classic: Chicken Soup for the Soul was rejected 144 times before finding a home and selling over 500 million copies worldwide. Was success due to the ritual of sending manuscripts? No! The magic was in the exceptional storytelling, the emotional connection, the substance that made readers care. The rejections were mechanics; the hits came from deep understanding of what moves people.

Or consider the “dropout myth.” Everyone cites Gates, Zuckerberg, or Jobs quitting college to “follow their dream.” But here’s the thing… they dropped out of Harvard! (or elite equivalents) - places that already validated their brilliance and opened doors. Dropping out of a less selective institution without that foundation? Rarely the same rocket fuel. It’s confusing the visible behaviour with the underlying substance.

So, is your podcast a Cargo Cult? Endless imitation of “successful” forms without grasping what truly delivers for your audience? Or is it built on real understanding: audio-first content that fits busy professional lives, stories that build genuine trust, and metrics tied to business outcomes like inquiries or conversions?

At Solid Gold Podcasts, we help corporates cut through the mimicry to create podcasts with actual impact - no bamboo required!

Ditch the coconut headphones this year!
Let’s build a podcast that truly adds value to your organisation.

Have an awesome year ahead, kale and all.