I confess that I am often the person referred to when using the adage, "Unless you've been hiding under a rock..."

The goings on of popular culture simply are not that interesting to me.

So when the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday featured a drag queen in place of Jesus Christ in a mimicry of Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper painting, I must confess I didn't notice.

It wasn't until this morning, several days after the incident, that I read about what happened, and the ensuing controversy that followed.

And after processing it for a couple of hours, I can firmly say, "I really don't care."

Da Vinci's painting itself is problematic to me for a number of reasons I won't get into in this email. I will say that the scene at the Olympics is more of a mockery of a mockery than anything and leave it at that.

What I do find interesting is in the non-apology given by the Olympics organizers after facing some pretty serious backlash for their actions. It's the standard, "If you were offended, we're really sorry; but you really shouldn't have been offended" type of thing.

Say what you will about that, but as someone building an audience myself with a podcast, and helping others do the same, there's one thing that we can learn from all this.

And that is to use controversy to your advantage.

Now, I'm not referring to intentionally provoking literally billions of people to anger as the Olympics organizers did in extremely poor taste. (For them to say they had no idea people would get upset at that is absurd.)

Actually I would advocate for the opposite approach. 

All too often I have hesitated to say something that I believe needs to be said. Why? Because no one else is saying it. If it was truly important, than others would have said it by now, right?

Perhaps, but at the same time if this issue is something truly important and it's eating away at you that it's not being said, it might mean that...

You're the one to say it.

Who knows, if you say it in a public forum like a podcast or YouTube channel, perhaps you'll discover there are others who feel the same way you do and have been waiting for someone to finally grow a pair and say it in public.

"Itch = Niche"

That's the title of a chapter on a book on podcasting I've been working on for a few weeks and expect to have finished around the end of August.

I'll of course share it with you when it's completed, and there may even been opportunities for beta readers to give feedback.

But in the meantime if you or someone you know is thinking that a podcast might be a viable option to share a message that is important, then keep this link in mind:

https://podcastartistry.com 

JN