The podcast killed the radio star... Or was it the theater star?

Not so long ago, everyone had a blog. Then there was a photolog. Then YouTube and its short videos arrived. Everyone had a channel on the platform. And immediately after, podcasts took over. We had to count the people who didn't have one, more than those who did. But communication in the 21st century moves so fast, and audio podcasts are almost nonexistent. Now, because of the importance of social media, everything is a video podcast. We want to see who's talking to us. We love images and reacting to them. But this, too, has become obsolete. For some time now, the personal experience has been the thing. Podcasts seem to have left the basement, the studio, or the bedroom at home, and what we're looking for is theater and live interaction with the audience. Podcasts haven't killed the radio star, but they seem on the verge of killing the theater star.

In keeping with this need to get closer to our favorite podcasters and see them live, the first edition of Podimo Fest opened on Monday, a festival that brought together three of the Podimo app's star podcasters and attempted to simulate the thrill of a music festival. "Now the fandom is demanding experiences. They want to see and hear more directly, and be surprised," says Isabel Salazar, Podimo's country manager in Spain.

At seven in the evening, the area around the theater was already packed with young people looking to see their favorite podcasters live. A little afternoon snack, a few beers, a food truck, and then they waited for the big event. The group included Martha Caballero , responsible for 'Únete a nosotros'; Esty Quesada , AKA Soy una Pringada, on the fourth season of 'Special People Club'; and Miren Jaume, AKA MimiXXL , and her 'Mimicidios'. Together for the first time, they were going to talk about 'True Crime ' stories, the trendy genre in books, films, series, and, of course, podcasts. "With my skills, it was either working at McDonald's or this, and luckily it was this, or I would have shot myself. On YouTube, I have to be careful because if I say something, they won't upload the video. Here, Podimo gives me complete freedom, and I'm very inclined to say whatever comes to mind, and this is fantastic," says Esty Quesada.

The evening was divided into four parts. In the first, MimiXXL spoke about a disappearance. She told, to the audience's astonished gaze and wide-open mouths, the story of the disappearance of Kairon Richard Jorma , an eight-year-old boy, in Portland, Oregon, in 2010. An engineer father, a bisexual bodybuilder stepmother with an alcohol problem, and a sick and desperate mother, all united in one of those unsolved cases that chill the blood.

Then it was Etsy Quesada's turn, who talked about a crime, one that shook her upside down ever since she became aware of it at age 14. We're talking about the Columbine High School murders. With her characteristic dark humor, the podcaster gave a hilarious profile of the two murderers. "I was at Columbine. I'm obsessed with this story, and I had to see the cafeteria where it all happened. Suddenly, five police vans showed up and they served me with a restraining order. I went to Denver and got it tattooed on my arm. My tattoo artist told me it was the best one she'd done that month," Quesada recalls humorously.

Controversy has accompanied this true whirlwind from the beginning, reminding her not to always take her literally, except when it comes to bullying. "I took insults well if they were directed at me. But when they were done in front of the whole class, or in the middle of the hallway, and you could hear the laughter of others and their complicity, it was horrible. I didn't take public humiliation very well," she says.

Many times she dreamed, like those two boys, that she would take revenge on all those who had humiliated her, or on those who laughed, or on those who simply said nothing, accomplices. "Now it's fashionable to understand the aggressor, to say: but poor thing, he must have his problems at home too. And shit, let's not go there," she says angrily, and with good reason.

With three thousand words per minute , Etsy speaks quickly, speaks well, even has her own vocabulary, full of circuses, and doesn't mind saying what she thinks, now that someone is finally listening to her. "I love this time. That someone like me has a speaker seems revolutionary to me and I also try to find interesting people for my podcast, from Kiko Matamoros talking to me about his cocaine addiction, to Yolanda Ramos or Íñigo Errejón, to be clear before their things became known," Quesada says in statements to ABC.

Finally, it was Martha Caballero's turn. In her case, she had to talk about a conspiracy theory, and she decided to focus on the case of MK Ultra, a 1953 CIA project that sought to create supersoldiers and unconscious assassins through experiments with LSD, MDMA, heroin, and a whole host of drugs. The three left the interaction with each other for last, and this festival closed with the feeling that it will be the first of many. For now, there's already the idea of ​​repeating the experience in Madrid starting in October. "Since the pandemic, audiences demand experiences. That's why music festivals have grown so much. We want to continue with this exclusive idea of ​​Podimo Fest, as well as tour some of our podcasts in theaters," concludes Salazar. Did the podcast kill the theater star? After experiences like Monday's, like the theater not getting its act together...