All Quests Are Quests About Power
A roundtable discussion on the Inconsequential Quest, “a critique about systems that's masked within a critique of stories.”
Illustration by James T. Green
When James T. Green brought up Caroline Crampton’s Hot Pod essay “The Problem with the Inconsequential Quest” during a morning meeting last week, we all had so many opinions that we decided to set aside some time to talk about it deliberately. Crampton’s essay does what we need so much of in podcast criticism: it explores a trope in the form (coins one, even!), and investigates why it exists — and what its ubiquity says about our industry.
It provided us with plenty of grist for our roundtable discussion: What about the Inconsequential Quest is so delicious to us? Are they symptoms of whiteness and privilege? And how can we make it a more equitable form in podcasting?
James, Jordan Bailey, Alice Wilder, Gretta Cohn, Sara Nics, Dan O’Donnell, Shoshi Schmuluvitz and Alex Sujong Laughlin got together on Google Meet to dig into all of this. What you’re reading here is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Alex: So I guess we could just start by talking about what in the essay really got to us. Why do we feel so many feels about it?
James: There's something I really enjoy whenever there is a critique about something that is critically acclaimed, and then that acclaim is sort of investigated and saying “why is this thing considered good?”
And it seems to be like the type of thing in the industry that is usually funded, piloted, and this is the feedback that always occurs where it's like, this is the type of story that's usually seen as the pinnacle of the type of thing that people always want to mirror. Whenever I'm teaching classes, these are the type of stories that people always want to tell. So it's a good investigation to why people find this thing sort of the pinnacle of the medium, and I thought Caroline did it succinctly.
Jordan: I was also attracted to this question of who gets to go on an Inconsequential Quest. I really enjoy this format of show a lot and it's something I hadn't really stopped to consider before that most, if not all, of these types of shows are by white people. And I also think that I was attracted to this essay because I think anything that smartly explores how privilege plays out in our industry is worth talking about.
Who gets to be paid to try stuff? Who gets to be paid to make something that may or may not work out? I think it's important to explore.
James: At its core, it's a critique about systems that's masked within a critique of stories.
Alice: Jordan, something you said just really made my head explode. I feel like it's about like, who has the freedom to fail? Because the unspoken thing about these projects is that you work on this for an extended period of time and there's a possibility you never figure out the answer. And I think a lot of us, especially as producers, have been in an environment where there's this pressure to prove that you're worth being on the payroll. And that type of mindset does not allow for exploration. Like there has to be some freedom and comfort and stability in order to make a story like that, and I don't think a lot of people in this industry actually have that.
Gretta: I also just want to stop and think about the word failure. I think why this particular kind of Inconsequential Quest as a storytelling device can be so delightful is because, in the way they are produced, there actually is no “failure.”
Alice: I wouldn't even define failure as like ending the story without having an answer. I would define it in terms of the story just not working. Having gone on this quest and then sitting down with an editor and realizing there’s no way to shape this into having an interesting, ambiguous ending. Like sometimes you just have a story and it just doesn't work. And how do you answer for that? As a producer, that’s what's scary to me.
Gretta: But the story can be in the exploration itself and the listener is along for the ride whether or not the quest is fulfilled. And in some cases the story is even shaped around that so-called failure.
“There has to be some freedom and comfort and stability in order to make a story like that, and I don’t think a lot of people in this industry actually have that.”
Alex: What is it about the DNA of an Inconsequential Quest that makes it delicious or addictive?
Sara: To me, these are always essentially character studies. And the kind of deliciousness is, "Oh, they're weird like me," "Oh, they also have funny quirks!" And then there's also a little bit of voyeurism too, right? Like, “Oh, this is the culture you grew up in.,” which actually speaks to how more diverse casting might allow us to get more mileage out of the genre.
Shoshi: I think it's one of the more complex narrative structures that we see in podcasting. And it speaks to the fact that podcasting is still in its infancy. Right now we have "NPR Voice" on the one hand, and then we have the Inconsequential Quests. There are obviously other ways of telling long form serialized narratives, but I think that we don't have too many more structures than that, that we're working with at the moment. I think one of the few, or maybe even one of the only structures in podcasting that has an A-plot and B-plot. Someone mentioned that it's not just about the quest itself, it's always about something larger. So like Dead Eyes: Is it really an inconsequential quest? Like on the surface, it's about Tom Hanks saying Connor Ratliff had dead eyes, but really it's about Ratliff’s plight as an actor and his own ego and how he deals with rejection and how he grows as a character throughout the series. Outside of Inconsequential Quests, there aren't that many other narrative structures that we, as podcasters, have really worked with that manage to reach that level of complexity. I think that's why it's compelling and that's why people want to repeat that structure.
James: I have a theory that this desire for the Inconsequential Quest is rooted within the industry’s reliance on infotainment as a style, which is rooted within podcasting’s reliance on news as a structure. Because in a way it's like the Inconsequential Quest is like one way to make news or information fun.
Shoshi: I mean, what else should it be based on? Like, it’s nonfiction. Basically what we're doing is creative nonfiction.
Gretta: I find myself at the beginning of a project pressing the host like, “What’s the quest? What’s the journey?” And I think that kind of tracks back to this idea about where at all that we haven’t explored all the ways to tell stories. Why are we — or why am I — so reliant on a really particular kind of framing?
Shoshi: Is there a story that’s not a quest?
Alice: I think that like humans have always loved quest stories. It's like a person in a place doing a thing. What do they want? What's stopping them from getting what they want? How are they going to confront that challenge and ultimately get to where they want to go?
There’s something I love about an Inconsequential Quest when it's done by excellent storytellers, I know when I start listening that I'm going to go on a journey with the host and it's going to be surprising and interesting.
James: I feel like this also exposes the issue with the medium being so host-centric and having to be like, the, the voice or lens through which the story has to be told. There’s the argument to be made that in order for these things to exist, you have to convince the listener that this is something that's worth telling or that the host is the right person to take you on the journey.
Shoshi: Well, also, in a story, you need a main character who has some kind of growth.
James: You don't have to have anything.
Shoshi: I like that, James.
Alex: Yeah. I mean, it's funny, like we’re following these agreed-upon rules for narrative and plot and character that govern how we tell stories across mediums, but that’s just one way that we tell stories. Like, we have Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, but there are so many other storytelling traditions that don’t follow this rise and fall climax shape. This also reminds me of the RADIO (R)EJECTS Third Coast session last year that applied Sara Ahmed’s “sweaty concepts” to radio.
Jordan: I'm reading Homegoing right now, and one of the chapters I just read, there was a lot of blending of myth and reality. And like, you can't always tell when a character is dreaming or when something is happening in real life. Characters will often refer to myths or folklore as if it's fact and the line between what is "true" and "not true" is blurry. There hasn't been a ton of exploration of that in the podcasting industry that I’ve heard, but I think that is such an interesting path to take.
Alice: That’s something that I think is really lovely about Kaitlin Prest’s work is that it doesn't really matter what is fact and fiction. You have to set aside the part of your brain that has been trained to try to figure out if something is true or false. It's like this binary and something I appreciate about that work is that it doesn't do that.
“The question that it raises for me is like, inconsequential to whom? Who gets to define what a consequence is or what is a hefty enough consequence?”
Alex: Can you think of any Inconsequential Quests that don’t center white people?
Jordan: One reference that Gretta and I have talked about a little bit is Lovebirds, the Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani movie on Netflix. It has that absurdist mystery, but the quest is definitely not inconsequential because they're trying not to go to jail for a crime that they did not commit. It's interesting because I'd put it in the same buddy comedy quest genre as like a Superbad or 21 Jump Street, but these characters don't get to worry about something like whether they'll make it to a big party or not. Instead it's about not ending up with a lifetime prison sentence.
James: Are all Inconsequential Quests white people problems? There was a satire YouTube from this artist called Hennessy Youngman where he was talking about painting and particularly abstract painting, and he was discussing how abstract painting has essentially no meaning, and essentially you are just thinking about the structure of the piece. But then once you find out that a Black person or a person of color or a woman made the piece, that identity is projected onto the abstract works. And therefore it is impossible for someone who is lacking in privilege to create a work that is essentially like a blank slate.
So I keep thinking about like, stories like this, and it's like, is it essentially impossible to have an Inconsequential Quest literally because of the consequences of lacking privileges from an American standpoint.
Alice: There was an episode of Nancy that was just like all little investigations. And it was like maybe three or four of them, but Zakiya Gibbons did one on glory holes and it was just like … it was so fun. And I just remembered one other Inconsequential Quest, and it’s also from Nancy, which I don't think it's a mistake that it was hosted and created by majority people of color.
There's also this episode called Punks that was so freaking fun. Kai Wright went on a quest to find this movie that he loved as a young person. And then it disappeared and he was tracking it down. It was a really satisfying episode.
James: I want to playfully push back on that because I listened to that Punks episode and it makes me think a lot about Sandhya Dirks and Chenjerai Kumanyika’s Third Coast session “All Stories Are Stories About Power.” That story about Punks ends up being a larger story about power, just due to the racial implications about who owns the rights to these things who can sell this movie? Who can show this movie?
Also, I'm curious: I'm thinking about the show Atlanta, and I'm curious if y'all think if that is considered inconsequential or not, because that I remember hearing a lot of critiques and thoughts about that show comparing it to Seinfeld, which is, I guess the ultimate Inconsequential Show.
Dan: The question that it raises for me is like, inconsequential to whom? Who gets to define what a consequence is or what is a hefty enough consequence? I think that maybe just having fun in a medium is consequential enough, depending on who you are and who it is you're trying to serve. I mean, really stupid art can be deeply consequential.
So you can start to pull this conversation so far apart that it no longer makes any sense, which I'm really good at doing, but I do wonder: who do we make things for?
Alex: I’m trying to figure out where we're threading the needle between the implied politics of any type of like inconsequential story and the like acted or the intended politics of it. Like, I think that there's something inherently radical about a black queer woman taking up space by telling a joyful and fun story — without having to spell out why that’s radical. And that feels different from Lovebirds where it's this fun, weird, funny story that has the sort of lurking consequence in the background.
Sara: I think the question of who we make work for is a really interesting one. And who is being treated as a novelty? Along which vectors does that become complicated? At what point, when are we are on an Inconsequential Quest, do we trip into voyeurism?
Alice: Yeah. And I think that like so much of journalism relies on having this feeling of voyeurism, right? The entire true crime genre has that reality TV-like feel that I don't think is inherently bad. But the question is who is being treated as a novelty here? I think there's a difference between just general voyeurism of wanting to hear people's drama and also wanting to inhabit someone else's life and experience and culture. And I think that's where it's a gnarly question.
Sara: Right. And I think that we are interested in story, because we are interested in other humans. I mean, this is a big part of what compels us; what is the human experience and how do we learn about it? How do we communicate it to one another?
James: What do y’all think about the Inconsequential Quest as an example of conspicuous consumption? It's the audio version of a flex, like if you can spend five years and $200,000 budget to find this thing that “doesn't matter”, quote, unquote matter exists within a system of people that are trying to do either equal stories or stories that are of “more” importance than essentially it is like going to a fundraiser with like a Goyard bag.
Shoshi: I keep thinking of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and I think the Inconsequential Quest occupies the very top of the pyramid. Can you really make a story like that if you're living in a refugee camp? You'd have much more important quests that you'd need to go on.
Alex: So how can the Inconsequential Quest be more equitable? Or, what is the version of this we want to see more of in the future?
Jordan: I would love to see the Inconsequential Quests get smaller and more specific.
I think that something that is delightful and funny and humorous and joyful can be consequence enough. What's kind of been at the root of this whole conversation is like, who gets the opportunity to make that show that's just funny and goofy and silly? What I would like to see is more people of color getting the opportunity to make that kind of show.
Alex: Something I loved about Mystery Show was that the show created universes of complexity around people who would otherwise have been side characters. And it hints up the sort of larger potential like, “Oh, wow. There’s like one billion protagonists walking around me right now. We're all protagonists.” And that has always delighted me about Mystery Show.
James: Well, that actually goes into like, I guess my hopes for them, for the inconsequential costs thing here and like the idea of the inconsequential, like it did in irony. Ability to be removed from a subject to almost be like a, Oh, gee whiz.
Like I'm kind of going into this thing, like structure drug, like a very, almost like early aughts approach to irony. Um, very white focused irony. So at least like what I feel.
I would love if the person taking you on this journey wasn’t necessarily this quirky, fish-out-of-water, Wes Anderson type of person. Because that implies this blank slate, “I'm just like you.” But when I meet people like that, I don't feel like they’re a stand-in for me. So that’s what I would like: Less forced quirkiness.