"Left of Dial's Essential Listening Poll gathered 300 audio creators, podcast hosts, writers, and scholars from around the world for the...
Now that we know what podcasts Tumblr users who like engaging with polls have listened to, what podcasts do the people who make and critique podcasts rank as being the most influential? And has Tumblr listened to them?
How many of these podcasts have you heard?
0
1–10
11–20
21–30
31–40
41–50
51–60
61–70
71–80
81–90
91–100
101–107
Voting ended onOct 26, 2025
Note: Unlike our previous List Challenge, this one is listed lowest rank to highest rank.
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Held from 20th – 26th May, McKirk Week is a creation event focused on the Kirk/McCoy pairing, across all universes.
HOW IT WORKS:
There are three prompt lists – Trek, Gen, and NSFW. Trek are prompts based on the Star Trek universe, Gen are general prompts and tropes, and NSFW are of course the NSFW prompts. You’re welcome to pick from any prompt list (or even combine a few), and you can fill as many or as few prompts as you fancy.
Your creations can be any form of media: art, fic, edits, videos, web weaves, memes, playlists, fic rec lists, cosplay… the list goes on! As long as you can make it McKirk, it counts.
And on that note: this is a McKirk event so McKirk should be the main pairing in your works. Background ships, side pairings, and poly ships are okay as long as Kirk and McCoy are the focus.
NSFW prompts, plaintext transcript, and rules below the cut:
PROMPT LISTS:
TREK PROMPTS
Day 1 (20th): First Contact
Day 2 (21st): Shuttle Crash
Day 3 (22nd): Clones / Doppelgangers
Day 4 (23rd): Shore Leave
Day 5 (24th): Old Married McKirk
Day 6 (25th): Transporter Malfunction
Day 7 (26th): Diplomatic Dinner
GEN PROMPTS
Day 1 (20th): Amnesia
Day 2 (21st): Taken Captive / Abduction
Day 3 (22nd): Huddling for Warmth
Day 4 (23rd): AU
Day 5 (24th): Drunken Confessions
Day 6 (25th): Sickness / Injuries
Day 7 (26th): Reunion
NSFW PROMPTS
Day 1 (20th): Lingerie
Day 2 (21st): First Time / Virginity
Day 3 (22nd): Sex Pollen
Day 4 (23rd): Crying After/During Sex
Day 5 (24th): Only One Bed
Day 6 (25th): Semi Public Sex
Day 7 (26th): Sex Toys
THE FINER DETAILS:
You’re welcome to start on your piece(s) whenever you’d like, but please refrain from posting them until the relevant day(s) where possible.
When posting your works to tumblr, please use the tag # mckirkweek2024 and/or tag us @mckirkevents so that we can find your posts to reblog.
There is an AO3 collection HERE that you’re welcome to add your McKirk Week 2024 works to.
There is no deadline to post your works (we get it, life gets in the way sometimes), and the AO3 collection will be open indefinitely.
You’re welcome to create whatever you want, but please do tag/warn as appropriate for NSFW and other sensitive content.
For tumblr posts, please do add a mature label to explicit imagery, and/or crop and link externally to the full image, in order for us to be able to reblog.
And most importantly: have fun, be yourself, and keep it McKirk!
Yesterday I pointed out how Where Do We Begin? probably did not deserve its place in Tumblr's 101 Most Heard Podcasts from two different cues: at 1,343 total votes it was an outlier (third highest number of total votes in fact, behind only Welcome to Night Vale and Wolf 359), and after being listed in the List Challenge list of top 101 it dropped 79 ranks from 11th place to 90th place.
Well not to beat a dead horse (sorry RTVS fans) but I have a third indicator that our original data was not representative of Tumblr's listening habits as a whole. Where Do We Begin? is part of the 123 (and counting) podcasts that have been polled by both haveyouheardthispodcast and @haveyoulistenedtothispodcast.
A drop from 54.3% of people polled saying they've listened to it to 6.9% saying so is incredibly steep. How steep?
An 87% drop. (Or a 684% increase from the perspective of the haveyoulistenedtothispodcast poll.) This is the largest difference in both raw numbers and proportionally.
Now, each indicator by itself is not a guarantee that our initial data was not representative. Maybe Hi Nay's 95% increase from 17% of 353 votes in December 2023 to 33.2% of 413 votes in January of 2025 represents an increase in listenership over the year 2024.
In the above charts, Hi Nay is indicated in pink. Clearly it is not an outlier in December 2023, but it could potentially be an outlier in 2025. It's far enough away from where the data is clustered to make me want a stronger definition of outlier than "looks like one". (Note these charts have different y axes.)
While Hi Nay is not featured on either of the List Challenge lists I have made, it does feature on lists made by @fyeahaudiodrama and @shelterwoodpod, where it has 13.8% of 982 responses for the former audio-drama-focused list, and 18.7% of 432 responses for a list of podcasts that inspired a suburban gothic audio drama. Both of those Lists received the bulk of their responses in late March/early April 2025, and both were probably filled out by a more niche audience than our polls received (namely, people who don't listen to fiction podcasts probably are probably underrepresented in both samples, and people who don't like horror genres are probably underrepresented in the latter sample). I'll repeat my findings from yesterday: every podcast received a smaller percentage of the vote on our List Challenge than they did on our polls. So to me, the fact that 18.7% of the shelterwood voters had listened to Hi Nay when only 17% of haveyouheard's voters had listened to it is notable. But that could be explained by the smaller target audience of the List.
Conclusion: I have no idea if Hi Nay became more popular over 2024 from this data. Sorry. But I had fun poking around!
If you want to poke around at the data from nearly two years of tumblr polling across two blogs, here's the spreadsheet.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I am sad to announce after Sunday's poll we're taking an indefinite break. I have a slight concussion from a car crash (no other people or vehicles were hurt, and I'm alright) and I have been spending too much on a screen. Additionally I will be camping this weekend.
I promise I haven't abandoned the blog, and I hope to return soon.
Would you be interested in a McKirk themed prompt week sometime in May?
Yes, as a participant* (see note below)
Yes, as a supporter/commenter/reblogger
Maybe/unsure
Not for me this time
I just wanted to press a button
Voting ended onApr 7, 2024
*You don’t have to be an artist or writer; participating can mean pretty much anything! From art and fic, to edits, web weaves, playlists, fic rec lists, memes, or any other fanwork you can come up with – anything goes.
