One of the reasons I stopped listening to Ferris’s podcast is that he’s a totally uncritical interviewer. His guests are allowed to blatantly self promote

Not to mention the blatantly self indulging attitude as well. Of course, he’s talking to people who are at the least millionaires if not more, so that’s expected, but some episodes just reek of tone-deaf “I’m smart and rich and have no idea how insensitive my hobbies and activities might sound to a Normal person” sense.

But he does talk to a lot of smart people, and there’s often much interesting to learn about, so I put up with their egos and extract the information by listening.

Ferris is kind of a grifter. If he were to probe deeply, then others might do the same to him.

I try to remind myself that Ferris started out in marketing (as I recall) and it shows - he’s an aggressive self promoter. Even so, some of his guests are excellent and I enjoy his themes and topics.

I agree, but I still enjoy some of his guests. His podcast can serve as a good stepping stone to other great people.

Not to invoke Godwin’s rule, but this scenario seems a bit too far off from acceptable for “that’s now how I remember things going down” to just let it slide, blaming someone else with a clearly different storyline in a fundamental sense seems a lot more deliberate on the persons part. Just because you didn’t care enough about he involved subjects to walk away from a podcast doesn’t mean the truth can just be twisted any way?

Also is it possible to walk away from a podcast offended at all? The explosion of this medium and the way everyone seems to consume it suggests you can’t afford to emotionally involve with what you’re listening to anymore.

It's not clear there's any "blaming someone else with a clearly different storyline" here. The storylines seem to agree almost down to the lowest detail, even to the ascription of "blame": both accounts agree that the author was afraid, the publisher pushed him to publish, but the author was so paranoid that even the publisher's (amazing) attempts to calm him only spooked him further. Even from reading only Pollan's account, the podcast interviewer reached the impression of "In reading that chapter, that section, coming back to Rick, I kind of fell in love with Rick MacArthur, honestly".

The only disagreement is over Pollan's speculation in this podcast about why the publisher supported him to such an extraordinary extent, and although MacArthur felt those words to be "nasty jibes" (understandable, if one focuses on the "He was hoping I would get arrested" part rather than the "He’s not afraid of controversy" part), such clearly-marked speculation ("And I shouldn’t speak for him, but my guess is…") seems not quite a case of the truth being twisted.

I’m generally pretty selective of what I listen to, and I try to by critical of what I hear, so the idea of being bothered by what I hear isn’t too crazy. There are definitely episodes/casts/whatever where I hear things and come away disappointed.

You’re probably right though; if what Pollan said elicited a response, he probably shouldn’t have said it. I’m wondering why he did, now. It wasn’t a very entertaining account by any means.