This article focuses on the relation between vulnerability and politics. The focus is neither on physical violence suffered or threatened nor on the vulnerability of marginalised groups, but rather on the current self-presentations of political, sometimes even governing, personnel. The subject of the analysis is the communicatively exhibited vulnerability of political actors. In this context, a special focus is placed on the media and formats that make such communication of vulnerability possible and reinforce it. In podcasts in particular, we can currently observe that political actors are expressing themselves publicly in a way that exposes their own vulnerability and thus re-examines the relationship between proximity and distance, objectivity and personality in politics. This also makes it necessary to scrutinise classic terms and concepts of political sociology such as 'power', 'representation', 'office' and 'person' anew.