My guess would be that this has a lot to do with IQ differences of both the audience and the creators. First, Sam Harris listeners may have a much easier time learning new apps and websites than PewDiePie viewers. Second, PewDiePie is primarily “famous for being famous” and there are many people producing videos of more-or-less equivalent quality to PewDiePie’s, whereas there aren’t that many nearly identical podcast hosts ready to step in and replace Sam Harris as soon as his podcast becomes slightly more inconvenient to access.
In addition to the IQ difference, the “cluster in thingspace” that includes rationalists and Sam Harris fans contains disproportionately many people with IT skills.
And as you say, Sam Harris is less “fungible” than PDP. He already exists outside of YouTube, while PDP was made (and therefore can be replaced) by YouTube.
My guess would be that this has a lot to do with IQ differences of both the audience and the creators. First, Sam Harris listeners may have a much easier time learning new apps and websites than PewDiePie viewers. Second, PewDiePie is primarily “famous for being famous” and there are many people producing videos of more-or-less equivalent quality to PewDiePie’s, whereas there aren’t that many nearly identical podcast hosts ready to step in and replace Sam Harris as soon as his podcast becomes slightly more inconvenient to access.
In addition to the IQ difference, the “cluster in thingspace” that includes rationalists and Sam Harris fans contains disproportionately many people with IT skills.
And as you say, Sam Harris is less “fungible” than PDP. He already exists outside of YouTube, while PDP was made (and therefore can be replaced) by YouTube.