You heard that right.
The federal government spent $8.5 million of your money on producing dozens of podcasts over the past four years — with several promoting progressive priorities, according to a report on the spending exclusively obtained by The Post.
The taxpayer watchdog OpenTheBooks.com found at least 58 podcasts have been produced at a total cost of $8,535,556 through grants and other federal funding between February 2020 and September 2023.
A whopping $323.7 million was spent over the same period on the overarching projects that included the podcasts, the watchdog noted — with both foreign and domestic entities receiving the money.
“We pay plenty of taxes — from income to inheritance to capital gains,” said OpenTheBooks founder Adam Andrzejewski. “But who knew we were paying a podcast tax?”
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) were the primary funders of the audio content, covering topics related to history, art, literature, science, languages, and religion, among others.
The NEH website states that it awards grants “for top-rated proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers.”
“Because democracy demands wisdom, NEH serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans,” the agency states.
“As with all NEA grants, these grants are made on the basis of artistic excellence and artistic merit as described on the NEA website and as required by Congress,” a spokeswoman for the agency told The Post.
“Panels of arts experts and other individuals from communities across the country, including at least one knowledgeable layperson, made recommendations on all of the Grants for Arts Projects applications. Panel recommendations were reviewed by the National Council on the Arts and then the NEA chair, who makes the final decision on all grant awards.”
While many podcasts are even-handed in the topics covered, others come across as “left-wing ideological agitprop,” according to the report.
A $370,000 podcast on Southern history funded by NEH features an episode titled, “Bedfellows Forever: How 19th-century male romantic friendships queer our understanding of historical masculinity.”
The NEA spokeswoman said all funding it provided “was to support the publication and promotion of The Oxford American magazine, as well as original content online such as book excerpts and photo essays.”
The NEH did not respond to a request for comment.
The NEH also shelled out $227,420 for a linguistics program that aired an episode about “a relatively new, gender-neutral pronoun which challenged Swedish grammar norms.”
Another $228,546 NEH-funded program about the recent history of Queens during the COVID-19 pandemic includes talks “about the Black Lives Matter movement, taking part in protests” and “continued self-education on racism.”
The National Science Foundation funded a third podcast for a cool $556,544 with pandemic-related content for children that included “superheroes prepared to help us defeat the coronavirus: Sgt. Socially Distanced, the Masked Mentor, the Testmaster and the Vaxinator!”
A $5,000 podcast funded exclusively by the State Department “addresses issues and stories affecting trans and intersex lives in Zimbabwe.” It currently has a glowing, five-star rating from one reviewer on Apple Podcasts.
Fullbright Forward, to which the State Department gave $20,000 in funding, discusses the scholarship program but also features a discussion on “Exploring Identity, Language Teaching, and the Impact of Whiteness.”
The Department of Agriculture is spending $446,353 to podcast about “beginning agrarians,” including those interested in “building a queer farmer community.” The show also has five-star ratings from four reviewers on Spotify.
More than $171,000 is being spent to train journalists, artists and others how to produce their own podcasts in Brazil, Bulgaria and Yemen, while another $89,000 is going toward the same training in Rhode Island, Alaska and Texas.
“Americans are accustomed to getting untold hours of free content through podcast platforms, and the federal government should stay out of the podcast content business,” Andrzejewski said.
“It’s a thinly veiled propaganda campaign used to hype silly notions or radical ideologies paid for by the American people.”
The NEH and NEA had a combined budget of roughly $207 million last year — an increase of more than $45 million since 2020.
EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this article stated that both the NEA and NEH funded a podcast on Southern history titled “Bedfellows Forever.” In fact, the episode was only funded by the NEH.
