This thesis argues that podcasts can function as coping mechanisms for liberal anxiety. As privatization, deregulation, and financialization bring the fantasy structure that supports constitutional democracy into crisis, the founding speech of citizen subjectivity creates conditions of possibility for ascendant practices of publicness. Through an analysis of Chapo Trap House, a podcast frequently associated with democratic socialism, I demonstrate how podcasts might prevent the citizen subject from definitively locating itself within the public. I read episodic discussions of legislation, elections, and rallies for insights into the conditions under which a podcast public emerges. I claim that the Chapo Trap House might help citizen subjects feign enough unicity to continue investing in constitutional democracy. My analysis contributes to existing theories of subjectivity and publicness within rhetorical studies by demonstrating how contingency and indeterminacy inform the return of speech as a mode of address. Keywords: liberal democracy, podcast, publicness
