The federal government spent $8.5 million of taxpayer money to create podcasts promoting left-wing causes, according to a report obtained by The New York Post.
The spending, first discovered by taxpayer watchdog OpenTheBooks.com, revealed that $8,535,556 has been provided to create 58 podcasts between February 2020 and September 2023.
During that same period, the government spent $323.7 million on numerous other projects including the podcasts.
According to the report, the podcasts were largely funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), operating on a combined budget of $207 million. Some of the topics covered in the podcasts included history, art, literature, science, languages, and religion.
One podcast funded by the entities focuses on Southern history and features an episode titled, “Bedfellows Forever: How 19th-century male romantic friendships queer our understanding of historical masculinity.” The episode’s host is described as “grappling with how to define his own relationship with his best friend.”
More than $200,000 was provided for an episode of a podcast discussing a “relatively new, gender-neutral pronoun which challenged Swedish grammar norms.”
“The use of hen tapped into a conversation the country was already having about gender and equality,” the episode’s description continues. “Can the introduction of one word make a difference in changing societal views?”
Another podcast targeted children with COVID-19 content.
One podcast, funded by the State Department, seeks to address “issues and stories affecting trans and intersex lives in Zimbabwe.”
OpenTheBooks founder Adam Andrzejewski told The Post, “We pay plenty of taxes — from income to inheritance to capital gains. But who knew we were paying a podcast tax?”
He added that “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. It’s a thinly veiled propaganda campaign used to hype silly notions or radical ideologies paid for by the American people.”
