Prime(d) – Podcast Review

In this Episode I talked about my experience with Prime(d) a podcast by Seattle based KUOW news and hosted by Carolyn Adolph and Joshua McNichols. The podcast had 18 episodes at the time of this recording, each focused upon how Amazon interacts with our daily life, especially the lives of those who live near the headquarters.


Welcome to PodApplaud, the Monday through Friday podcast that aims to enable your Podcast habit. I’m your host Seb, and today we are going to talk about the podcast: Prime(d).

Prime(d) is a journalistic podcast that examines the effects of Amazon on the cities it chooses for its headquarters, and on society as a whole. There is about 17 episodes at the time of this recording that range between 15 and 20 minutes.

The show states it best when it says, “It started with books, Today, Amazon is transforming virtually every facet of the American consumer economy.” The show talks a lot about the huge effects of Amazon’s second headquarters, but I would say cities compete even to have an Amazon warehouse nearer to them than the next city. Also America is but the tip of the iceberg, Amazon currently has 13 specific different sites for countries around the globe including Japan, Germany, and India.

However, Prime(d) is put out by local Seattle station and media producer KUOW, and hosted by Seattleites, is that the word Seattleites? Yeah, Seattleites, Carolyn Adolph, and Joshua McNichols. So living under the Amazon HQ umbrella, they have a unique first hand experience to tell the story of an HQ fever pitch and aftermath. They gather and share a lot of local opinions and data both pro and anti Amazon over the course of the show. I especially appreciated the effort KUOW went through to host a live debate event that cordially pitched the two camps each other. I thought that was the type of effort you don’t see in many podcasts. There was also an episode where the hosts split up to proposed HQ2 locations to gather the atmosphere, reception, and anxieties of the locals. So you know Prime(d) is really putting in the work to bring you the best story they possibly can.

The show covers a lot more topics, especially now that the whole where is HQ2 going to be issue has been resolved. Some of these go into specific Amazon practices such as how Amazon treats their employees, how Amazon pushes to automate the company further and further, and how Amazon intends to take over even the grocery and fashion world. They talk about Alexis, AI, data, and of course Jeff Bezos. The show continues to become more interesting, speculative, and specific since they have shifted their focus away from HQ2. I can see myself continuing to listen until they run out of interesting topics.

Ok so here on PodApplaud I rate shows on a 1-5 scale, 1 is silence, 2 is a slow clap, 3 is applause, 4 is a round of applause, and 5 of course is a standing ovation! I put Prime(d) down as a  ⅗ The HQ2 content is a little stale now that we know what has come of it and they played up the intruiqe quite a bit. A lot of those early episodes have relevant information about how Seattle is handling Amazon HQ so I’m not sure if I should recommend you skip the earlier episodes or listen to them regardless for the info.

I’d recommend Prime(d) to people who want to hear the Amazon story, and maybe be a bit more conscious of their consumption.

So that’s been the show for today I hope you found it valuable If you wish to reach out to me you can find me on twitter @podapplaud or send an email to Thank you for listening, and please tune in again.