"A lot of you have been asking me..." What's a muckraker, RKA? And why does marketing need more? The Marketing Muckraking podcast is an experiment in bringing my essays and some of my more scandalous lives — examining what brand culture is doing to us — to life in a new way. More importantly, I wanted to make my essays more accessible. And this podcast is also a reflection of my research and writing process; when I find a good book, I typically read it twice: once with my eyes and once with my ears. I process information differently based on how I consume it, so this is what inspired me to begin Marketing Muckraking. As for the question, "What's a muckraker?" I'm going to need to start with Instagram to answer that — and what the return of the chronological feed means for creators. (Spoiler: it's not all good news.) In this episode of Marketing Muckraking, I discuss the social media business model, how Zuckerberg & Co line their pockets with our unpaid labor, and the connection to muckrakers of the Progressive Era. You don't have to be a journalist to be a muckraker anymore. You simply must have an eye for injustice, corruption, and exploitation — and a willingness to stir some shit to find the truth.  This episode was originally published as an essay on my blog on March 10, 2022. Read the full text transcript of "What's a Muckraker? And Why Does Marketing Need More?" Sources for this show: Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture by William R. Leach;  Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture by Stuart Ewen;  Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market by Susan Strasser