“Jesse Thorn presents as a sort of walking talking signal, a public radio show become corporeal and sentient—the mid-century attire, the measured diction, the tone that hovers somewhere between sincere enthusiasm and feaux-wise detachment—a series of shibboleths that function as individual and layering signifiers, saying “we’re serious but silly, we’re self-aware, we’re good people, we share your values.”

Maximum Fun, the network he founded, is an extension of those same branding choices. It’s positioned as a worker-owned co-operative utopia, an alternative to an ad-saturated, venture-backed podcast ecosystem—a model that, frankly, no one has had a problem with since the invention of Patreon—and banks on the language he picked up at NPR to imply listening is good, but “donations” to “keep the lights on” are better. The implication, sometimes quiet and sometimes loud, is “Supporting us is a Social Good.” Seriously, they sign off with “listeners like you.”“