What Even Is a “Podcast” Anymore?

Speaker A: Hey, it's Willa. Uh, before we start this episode, I want a moment of your time. Something we really pride ourselves on here at Decoder Ring is curveballs that it's very hard to guess what our next episode will be about, whether it's the Tooth fairy or the 90s swing revival or the origins of a bird that shows up for 10 seconds in the Charlie's Angels movie. If Polymarket offered the chance to bet on our next topic, it would be a loser's bet. But at the same time, when you finally do see our topics, you're like, yes, of course. That's totally a decoder ring. Since 2018, we have been at this delighting, fascinating, and provoking you by excavating deep into mysteries you may never have realized you could possibly be curious about, probing farther than any sane person would dare. And that kind of consistent surprise and variety, it's rare. There aren't a lot of shows like Decoder Ring and not a lot of outlets left like Slate willing to give journalists like us the space to be so seriously playful, to chase daffy larks, and to uncover forgotten stories that can make you cry. We have an episode for you today that touches on the state of the media landscape and how it's affecting podcasting in great detail. But the plain truth is that in a moment where it is much safer and more lucrative to bankroll a podcast that consists of two celebrities sitting on a couch. The only way to make a show like ours sustainable is through our community of listeners and those listeners willingness to become subscribers. And so we are asking you to join us in becoming Decoder Ring plus members. Now through October 16th, we are offering 50% off for one year of a Decoder Ring plus membership. All you have to do is head to slate.com decoderplus and enter the promo code decoder50 at, uh, checkout. For $59, you can help support the show in a way that truly matters. But that's not all, because we have enticements. Oh, boy, do we have enticements. Plus subscribers get access to every episode of Dakota Rings Back. That's our series where I call up a listener just like you and answer their burning question about a cultural mystery directly. These have been so fun and rewarding for me to do personally. And they've also showed me that there is a community of Decoder Ring listeners out there, people who are as deeply curious as we are, and we want to be more conn to you and with each other. So at the end of the pledge drive, new Subscribers will be invited to sit in on one of the Decoder Ring team's regular production meetings. Over Zoom, you get to see how the sausage gets made. As we plan out the logistics of episodes, hash out ideas and debate how to tell certain stories, and even pitch each other potential topics for future shows. Before the meeting, you'll also have the opportunity to submit questions for me and the rest of the team, and we'll try to answer as many as we can during the meeting. Subscribers also get ad free listening across all Slate podcasts, unlimited reading on Slate.com and the Slate app, and every Slate game. You can get all of this again for 50% off by going to slate.com decoder+ and entering the promo code decoder50 at checkout. If you care about the show, if you like this show, if we have kept you company while you were doing the dishes or walking the dog or commuting to work, we've been there when you needed a crowd pleaser everyone in the car could agree on for a long road trip, we need you. Smash that subscribe button or as I said, head to slate.com decoder+ and enter decoder50 at, uh, checkout. We appreciate you. Thank you. On with the show. Just a heads up before we begin, this episode contains some adult language. A couple of months ago, a new program premiered on Netflix called the Pete Davidson Show. It's an interview show, and in each episode, the comedian Pete Davidson chats with another comedian or celebrity on camera. Hi guys.

Speaker B: Welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Today we have a very special guest. Uh, the whole thing is very loose. Pete and his guests sit in slim leather chairs with big black, bulbous mics beside them. Um, on a darkened stage set, which may or may not be Davidson's actual garage. They banter about sobriety, depression, about his guest's life and career. My mom was the one who was

Speaker B: encouraged me to play the piano and

Speaker A: then I started playing through that.

Speaker B: Something happened.

Speaker A: M Historically, we've long had a term to describe this kind of show. Like if you time traveled from any time in the last 40 plus years to right now, and for some reason you used your miraculous ability to move through time to watch the Pete Davidson show, you'd be like, I recognize this. I've seen this plenty of times before.

Speaker B: I didn't want to be on a movie set. I wanted to be in the arena. That's fucking dope, right? Thousands of people going, hive.

Speaker A: Fucking. It's the best. Sure, they're cursing and meandering, but this is two people sitting and Chatting on screen. This is a TV talk show. Except you'd be wrong.

Speaker B: Pete Davidson, the former SNL star, stepping into the world of podcasting. Yesterday, Netflix announcing they're teaming up with the comedian for an original video podcast called the Pete Davidson Show.

Speaker A: A few years ago, I would have thought a video podcast was an oxymoron. What made a podcast a podcast was that it was audio, something you listened to, not something you watched. But now that seems to be flipped. Almost all of the most popular podcasts have video also, but the Pete Davidson show stuck out to me because it's not just video also, it's video only. There is no audio version. You can only watch it on Netflix. Now, perhaps Netflix is just being weird and clever with their marketing. They're using the term video podcast to make their new talk show seem like something more contemporary and maybe avoiding paying staff typical union rates for TV while they're at it. But I don't think that's all that's going on. Something else is happening. The word podcast and the visual tropes associated with podcasts. A medium that until recently had no visuals at all. They're metastasizing and showing up in strange places. Like earlier this year, CNN briefly gave podcast mics to some of its anchors, presumably to make the news feel podcastier.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Lead. I'm Jake Tapper, coming to you live from my actual office. We thought we'd experiment, bring you to the desk where there are multiple channels

Speaker A: on YouTube that feature AI generated dogs talking into giant studio mics that call themselves podcasts. Welcome back to the Dog Pod. I'm glad you're here. I hope you brought treats. Today we're talking about one of the

Speaker B: world's worst topics, cats.

Speaker A: Speaking of cats, here's a clip from Instagram that looks and sounds like a podcast, but is actually just an ad for cat litter.

Speaker B: My big thing with crystal litter is

Speaker A: that it doesn't clump. I can't stand the feeling of walking through stray litter on floors, the fine particles in crystal litter. I make podcasts for a living, so maybe it's predictable that I'm fascinated and fine freaked out by the head spinning, speed and depth with which podcasts, talk shows, cable news, advertisements, and whatever the hell is going on with the AI. Dogs seem to be converging, but I don't think this only matters to people like me. Podcasts are more popular with listeners and I suppose viewers than they've ever been. They're everywhere, but at the same time, it's less and less clear what a podcast actually is. What's going on? This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. Our mission here is to crack cultural mysteries, and what's happening to podcasts counts. The platonic ideal of a podcast, like what most people imagine when they close their eyes and envision one, has changed so much in recent years, going from an audio to a video format. But as we set out to crack this mystery in our usual fashion, researching and reporting and interviewing experts, we found it hard to behave like neutral observers. You may or may not be aware, but our show is not a video podcast. After the umpteenth staff meeting devolved into an emo conversation about our Big Mike envy or you know what it means to make a non video podcast In 2026, we decided to try something different. This episode is largely a conversation between me and Evan Chung, our supervising producer, and we really let ourselves get into it. Our feelings, our anxieties. And we did it in part on video, the format that's vexing us so very much. So today on Decoder Ring, we are embracing our inner chat show to ask what the f is a podcast anyway?

Speaker B: This episode is sponsored by HeyGen. HeyGen turns a script, photo or presentation into a polished video of you in minutes, no camera or crew required. It's how real estate agents, financial advisors, attorneys and creators show up consistently on every feed and build a brand that brings in clients without spending their whole week making content. Rated the 1 AI video platform for small businesses on G2 with the most realistic AI avatars in the industry, trusted by a community of over 30 million people and 85% of the Fortune 100 and built to work in over 175 languages so you can reach your audience in theirs. Here's the wild Record yourself for just 15 seconds and Heygen builds an AI avatar that makes professional videos for you on demand so you can post everywhere your audience is as yourself without filming every time. Your first three videos are free at heygen.com pod that's H E Y-G-E-N.com pod

Speaker A: this episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Ever wonder why we make the choices we do and how to make smarter ones? Join Wharton Professor Katie Milkman, an award winning behavioral scientist and author of the best selling book how to Change as uh. She shares true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes and everyday people about why we do the things we do and how to make better choices to help avoid costly mistakes. Choiceology covers the latest research in behavioral science and dives into themes like the power of self control, shaping your mindset for success, navigating new beginnings, and why starting over can feel so hard. Listen to choiceology@, uh, schwab.com podcast or wherever you listen. Oh, this is my camera. I see. Okay. Are we supposed to stare directly at it, like in the office?

Speaker B: Which. There's three cameras.

Speaker A: Oh, there's three. Look at this fancy setup. Okay, but where do we look?

Speaker B: I don't actually each other. I guess so.

Speaker A: Yeah. Michael, where do we look? That's me and Decoder Ring supervising producer Evan Chung behaving like total noobs at Slate's office this past August. I have to. These chairs are. Guys, why are the chairs so. So squeaky?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, they are very squeaky chairs.

Speaker A: Like I said, over a period of months, Evan and I had a lot of emo and meandering conversations about how podcasts seem to have all morphed into video chat shows. During those conversations, it became clear we both felt strongly, but also differently about what's happened. And though neither of us is comfortable on camera, we thought our subject matter kind of demanded that we set up some lights and some big microph of our own to try it all out for ourselves. We'll post some of the videos onto our show page so you can watch us fumbling around.

Speaker B: Does that look stupider?

Speaker A: No, you're fine. What's happened to podcasts is not some overnight thing. Whatever the f they are now, they evolved from somewhere. And we realized that we could lay out the history of podcasting by talking about our own personal histories. That how Evan and I each personally got into podcasting as a window into how they started, how they got bigger, and how they've changed. And so that's how we're going to begin this story, you know, by talking about ourselves. So, Evan, like, how did you get into podcasting?

Speaker B: Well, I didn't seek out podcasting. When I got into it, I planned to be in radio. Or that's what I fell in love with was radio. I mean, I first discovered radio as a kid. I remember as like, a fifth, sixth grader having, like, you know, a clock CD radio in my bedroom, and I would listen late at night to. To, like, whatever I could find. Like, old time radio from the 30s and 40s, like suspense or the Whistler or Dimension X Adventures in Time and

Speaker A: Space told in future Tense.

Speaker B: Dimension X. There was, like, a pivotal moment for me, a discovery during my, like, late night surfing of the airwaves. Have you ever Heard of word jazz? Are you familiar with word jazz?

Speaker A: Um, I'm not familiar.

Speaker B: Here it is Ken Nordeen's word jazz. Stare with your ears. So Ken Nordeen was this classic Chicago guy and he would do this kind of like beat poetry on top of these sort of strange ethereal soundscapes. Ever think about how something begins? It could be this radio show, could be this could be anything. And I would listen to this and I was honestly super creeped out by it as a kid. Like I didn't know what was going on, but at the same time I found it so mesmerizing and like felt like enveloped by it. That's sort of the moment, I think that sort of expanded my idea of what this medium could be. That it's like really can contain anything, any kind of weird sound art. Like just the possibility of radio came clear then.

Speaker A: The thing that I did as a kid is I recorded radio shows on cassette tapes. Like I would pretend to be like the news. So it was like, there's something about it I always liked, you know, But I never was like, I want to be a news anchor. Like, you're a radio guy, But I

Speaker B: didn't like plan to be a radio person.

Speaker A: Like, you thought you were gonna make movies?

Speaker B: Yeah, like many. Like a teenager, like, I thought like filmmaking. Yeah, I'm gonna be a director, a writer director.

Speaker A: And then you were like, oh, no, that's wrong. I don't want to make movies. I want to make radio.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Why'd you stop? Wanted to make radio instead. What happened?

Speaker B: I went to film school when I was 18, thinking that's what I was gonna do. And like your freshman year in this film production conservatory training, you don't touch a film camera at all or like a video camera. You don't make any motion pictures. You have a class on photography and you have a class on sound. And it was in the class on sound where I just sort of felt at home. Mhm. It just felt.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And part of it was just like, it was so immediate. Like, I remember we had one assignment where we had to make this kind of like audio drama thing that was set in a diner. So I remember going to a diner with like a classmate and we just sat eating a meal for an hour and a half in silence, holding a microphone. Like total weirdos. Just collecting the ambient sound of like the tables and the dishes and the knives clinking and people chattering away. And then we use that sound that we recorded and sort of like underlayed it underneath. Like the Dialogue that we recorded of actors. Like, you listen to it, it's like, yeah, this sounds like, uh, we've transported you to a diner. And that's just so easy to do in a sort of logistical sense, in the way that, like, making a film is not. If you want to make a film set in a diner, you have to, like, get permits, rent out a diner. You got to get lights and a crew and money. But with audio, with radio, like, in terms of making it, it's like, you

Speaker A: can just go do it.

Speaker B: You can just go do it.

Speaker A: Did you feel like you were giving something up by not having people see the visual part?

Speaker B: No, the opposite. I think that there are such advantages to radio. Not just the quickness of it and the immediacy, but it's. You know, it's sort of the cliche, but it's the theater of the mind. Like, there's a radio drama adaptation of the Lord of the Rings that I grew up listening to, that the BBC made in the 80s that I still think is far and away better than the Peter Jackson movies. Partially because it's like, I want to imagine what these hobbits look like. I want to imagine what Mordor looks like. I don't want the CGI to, like, dominate my own imagination. Give us the precious Hobbit.

Speaker A: The pleasure

Speaker B: we want says it. No.

Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, we will. Happy.

Speaker B: But even in the more sort of documentary space, not just like fiction, I think there's a lot of virtues to just having sound and not having images to distract you. Like, in an interview, I think there's so much communicated in people's voices. Just, like, hearing the way they falter, the way they take a breath and gather their thoughts. Like, that communicates so much that I think that having the image of them just, like, keeps you from picking up on those clues.

Speaker A: It's funny, I think about, um, like on Entertainment Tonight, you know, like, they're the most banal interviews with celebrities that have ever existed, but kind of. Cause you can see them. It's not that boring.

Speaker B: I love that there's a new Star

Speaker A: wars movie on, um, the biggest screen

Speaker B: possible that audiences can experience together and have, I don't know, a new generation of moviegoers.

Speaker A: But it is actually that boring. Like, it's like, in a weird way where, like, the video is, like. You're like, oh, I have something to look at. So on the one hand, the video is, like, doing the work of making it interesting, but it's also totally papering over that it Was like a nothing burger, right?

Speaker B: Totally. And I think that does lead to a different style of interview where you actually probe and ask questions that are not just banal. And that's the point, I guess, is like, it's not like poor man's tv. Radio is its own craft, its own medium that is durable.

Speaker A: And in the early years of the 21st century, right when Evan was falling in love with the craft of radio, the technology to make and distribute radio was radically democratizing. It started in the late 1990s, when the MP3 made it possible to condense previously huge audio files into something much smaller. Then came the RSS feature, a way to push those files to lots of people at the same time. Suddenly, anyone who wanted to could make audio and distribute it over the Internet. In 2004, a columnist writing in the Guardian gave this new kind of audio a name, a portmanteau of broadcast and the relatively new MP3 player known as the ipod podcast.

Speaker B: And it's kind of like an, I think, unfortunate accident that we got stuck with this name podcast. Like, it's not even the last one he lands at. He just throws out a bunch of possible names, like, what do we call this new thing of people putting audio online? But somehow that stuck, and it's still with us long after the actual ipod has been gone. Has been gone.

Speaker A: Got an urge to speak your mind and reach an audience? Well, you might want to think about creating a podcast. Thousands of people already have. Podcasting is spreading all over the Internet.

Speaker B: But it was really exciting because it just suddenly opened up this kind of utopian vision of what the Internet could be that was like, oh, now anyone can get audio to other people, that we can create new things. There's no mediators, there's no gatekeepers. You can reach people around the globe.

Speaker A: Podcasting's difference is in who can produce

Speaker B: programming and when and where users can listen. Just about anyone with a computer, a microphone, some basic software, and a topic can create a podcast. But I think what's really interesting and important is is that at that moment, what they were referring to as a podcast was all sorts of things. It wasn't limited to any particular kind of genre or form. It was just like the idea of audio on the Internet, which was like a novel thing. So some of it was kind of just sort of an extension of blogs. People who were just basically bloggers who were doing kind of like talk radio, south talk radio, or like, confessional, just sort of like diary posts, but also just weirder things, too, like field recordings. Not just for sort of amateurs. It also was exciting for actual radio professionals, too, because, like, now your actual terrestrial broadcast radio show, you could put it online and reach people who didn't live in your local area. You can reach people around the globe or also. And this is what really drew me to podcasts, it just made it more convenient to listen to radio shows on demand. I, uh, was in college. Like, I couldn't reorient my whole life around getting back to the dorm to make sure I heard the new episode of Radiolab.

Speaker A: Um, it's like the VCR of audio, like, exactly.

Speaker B: Or whatever.

Speaker A: The dvr. But look, right. Like, you weren't going to make appointment viewing to, like, listen to your radio show necessarily, but now you could just take it with you.

Speaker B: Right. Listen to it on my ipod, on my walk to the quad.

Speaker A: Totally. So, I mean, okay, so we're sort of like the mid-2000s, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And podcasting exists. It has a name. It's like, starting to be a thing people have heard of, but it's pretty eclectic. And insofar as, like, if you're a normie like me and you've heard of a podcast, it's probably a radio show that's, like, distributing itself also as a podcast. It's like Radiolab or this American Life. It's like something where it's like, this is a radio show, and now we've made it so you can listen to us whenever you want.

Speaker B: Right. I mean, I'm curious. Did you listen to podcasts in this era of when it was first starting to become, like, a buzzy thing?

Speaker A: I mean, I was definitely. It's very hard to remember what was going on. I was a print journalist. I was not in audio. Um, I was definitely aware of podcasts. Like, Slate started making the political gab fest in 2005, culture gabfest in 2008. Honestly, I can't, like, did I listen to a podcast the entire 2000s? I can't be sure. I think probably, but it could have not happened, you know? Um, and so I think really podcasts, like, percolated to another level when it sort of did for everybody else in America, which is when serial happened. It's kind of a cliche, like, how much in these conversations about podcasts, everyone's like, then cereal happened. And it was like a giant changing moment. And you're like, oh, no. But it was. That's what happened. From this American Life in WBEZ Chicago. It's serial. Uh, one story told week by week.

Speaker B: I'm Sarah Koenig serial comes out 2014. It's basically a spinoff of this American Life, a venerated public radio show. But their big thing was like, instead of telling, you know, small stories on their broadcast that exist only as like one 15 minute chunk, they could spin,

Speaker A: they could serialize it, they could serialize it. Like, can you tell a serialized story in a podcast and have people like show up from episode to episode? Like, can you generate audience? Can you keep people. And turns out they could. Hell yeah.

Speaker B: Especially when you do it investigating a murder in real time. Like, it just really clicked with people. And people as we know people got obsessed with it. And podcasting just jumped from being like a weird, buzzy, but kind of niche thing to a thing that's being literally parodied on SNL.

Speaker A: I'm Sarah Koenig. On December 25, 1999, a small boy awoke in Baltimore, Maryland. He went down to his living room and found a Nerf. In the years after Serial, a slew of new ambitious narrative series like it were launched. But all sorts of podcasts drafted off its cultural breakthrough. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.

Speaker B: This is the Daily.

Speaker A: The New York Times debuted itself flagship news podcast The Daily in 2017. It soon inspired new series from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and yes, Slate. Long running series like Mark Marin's WTF were suddenly awash in new attention. Uh, Marin was now even able to get then President Obama to stop by his garage.

Speaker B: You're like a big cheese now, man. You can't pretend like you're just some, um. What do you mean? Can I go on pretending? Can't pretend like you're some little guy. Should I move?

Speaker A: You're not. Big time. Meanwhile, true crime shows like My Favorite Murder and Crime Junkie were getting off the ground. Bill Simmons founded a new network of sports and culture shows. Actresses from the Office started recapping the Office. And in 2018, we started Decoder Ring from Slate magazine. This is Decoder Ring, a show about cracking cultural mysteries. I'm Slate's TV critic, Willa Paskin, and every month I'll take a cultural object idea.

Speaker B: Let me back up and ask you.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: How did you decide to get into podcasting?

Speaker A: What brought you to this? I so like, I was a print journalist, I was a TV critic. I had always wanted to be a TV critic since I was knew what a critic was like certainly since college. But I'd really been obsessed with TV my whole life. But I was getting bored of television. It's really hard to stay impassioned about a medium when you're a critic. And TV was structurally changing. Like, there was just. This was like the era of peak tv. There was so much more television. They weren't just sending you an episode, they were sending you 10. Because it's like the early days of Netflix. I had kids suddenly having to watch 10 hours of TV felt burdensome and not like an incredible perk. And also, I was just sick of like, you know, real people, you watch what you're interested in. You don't just like, watch things because they're premiering, right? And I was like, I don't want to watch these things that I don't want to watch. Like, I want to watch what I want to watch. Um, and I was feeling sort of exhausted with it. And I think also at the time, you know, like, journalism has not been in a great state for a long time. Like, um, you're always like, as a journalist, you're like, oh, how? Like, what are we gonna do? Like, it's a sinking industry. Like, we're all trying to get on the last ship. And then you look around and you're like, what happened to all, like the mid career? Like, where are all the 50 year old journalists? Like, like, they shoot old journalists, don't they? Like, where do we go? And so you're kind of like always thinking, like, what's gonna happen to me? And so podcasting did also seem like it had like, oh, maybe this is like a lucrative way or like a financially stable or grow, do the kind of journalism that I am interested in, which is like, chewy, has ideas, is reported, all the things. And so I just like was able to basically convince Slate that they should, like, give me a show. I mean, I think this sort of speaks to the chaos and looseness of the time, which was sort of like, yeah, sure, okay. Like, yeah, try something, you know. And I like, had zero audio experience. I had a lot of hubris and zero audio experience.

Speaker B: I guess my question is, when you started, did you think of a podcast as a particular genre or genres?

Speaker A: Certainly the thing I was interested in doing was like, fully what I now recognize to be like this American life school of podcasts. Like, I was like, I want to make a narrative podcast that looks like these other ones. You know, I think in my mind that's what a podcast was like, extremely crafted narrative shows.

Speaker B: So I think this is the key distinction that sort of explains to some degree what's happening and why I feel differently from other people maybe about this I think that for many people, the definition of the word podcast is a definition that's centered around genre. And that, uh, what genre that refers to has shifted. It's never been a singular genre, or it didn't start as a singular genre. There's like a few genres. For me, podcast was always completely genre agnostic. A podcast could be anything as long as it was sound, the same way that radio has been anything as long as it's sound.

Speaker A: But as many different types of shows as there were, one format did accrue, uh, the lion's share of prestige. Narrative shows like in the Dark, S Ah Town and Missing Richard Simmons were sparking cultural conversations and winning awards. And podcasts like Dirty John and Homecoming were being picked up for glossy TV adaptations.

Speaker B: Suddenly, being a podcaster is an actual potential job. There's a whole new industry that never existed when I first started thinking about working in radio of like, yeah, uh, you can just be a podcaster maker and never have anything to do with broadcast radio.

Speaker A: There were all these new jobs in podcasting because there was new companies devoted to making podcasts. Companies like Gimlet, a narrative podcasting outfit founded by public radio veterans not long after the premiere of cereal. Gimlet was a startup, the kind of company that's supposed to provide investors with an exponential return. And in 2019, it did just that when it was acquired by Spotify. Fresh off announcing that it made its first ever quarterly profit, Spotify also revealed a big bet on podcasting. The streaming service is buying podcast companies Gimlet media and Anchor FM. Price tag, a reported $200 million. In 2020, Amazon purchased the narrative podcast studio Wondery. Spotify made even more acquisitions, snapping up the Ringer Network and the Joe Rogan Show. And these are just the most high profile deals. The business of podcasts was flush, growing and brimming with cultural cachet.

Speaker B: You know, I was working in public radio, but like, at that time, at that moment of, like, I know 2018, when it really was kind of peak of podcasts, like buzziness and excitement, I started to feel a little bit embarrassed to tell people that I was a public radio producer. Because public radio, I felt conveyed, uh, a kind of stodgy. It wasn't cool, it wasn't cool, but.

Speaker A: And podcasting was cool.

Speaker B: It was cool. I felt like left behind because I couldn't say that I was a podcaster.

Speaker A: And then things started to shift. Uh, it's not that podcasting stopped being cool exactly. It's that what became relatively cool is a certain kind of podcasting, one that totally upended the medium. All that when we come back. This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Ever wonder why we make the choices we do and how to make smarter ones? Join Wharton Professor Katie Milkman, an award winning behavioral scientist and author of the best selling book how to Change as uh. She shares true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes and everyday people about why we do the things we do and how to make better choices to help avoid costly mistakes. Choiceology covers the latest research in behavioral science and dives into themes like the power of self control, shaping your mindset for success, navigating new beginnings, and why starting over can feel so hard. Listen to choiceology@schwab.com podcast or wherever you listen. You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself reaching for over and over again? The sweater that somehow works with everything. The jeans you know will always fit just right. Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe. And that's exactly what Quince does so well. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton and washable silk. The designs are timeless, thoughtfully crafted and made to be worn again and again. Quince makes a pair of patch pocket barrel legged jeans that I really pay attention to when they're in the laundry and make sure to do the laundry as well as fast as possible so I can get them back. They also have sheets that are a great thickness and just a little bit of silkiness and I know that my 9 year old reaches for her bathing suit from Quince all the time. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quints. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com decoder get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com decoder. Hi, this is Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. I am always looking for ways to elevate our daily rituals and the Kohler Smart Toilet is proof that design changes everything. It's this stunning sculptural piece that feels like quiet luxury for your bathroom. It totally transforms your daily ritual into something elevated with customizable cleansing and touchscreen controls its functionality. Functional art that makes your space feel cleaner and more intentional. A modern home deserves a modern toilet experience the difference of Kohler Smart toilets. Find more@kohler.com. So before the break we were Talking about how the 2010s sort of starting post cereal is this kind of like, feverish, exciting, economically fertile, creatively fertile boom time for podcasts and specifically for this sort of involved, obsessed, over reported, high touch narrative podcast that, like, if you went up to someone on the street and were like, what's a podcast? They'd be like, it's serial. Or one of the many shows that sort of was started in serial's image. And it's all like, going great. We get to start decodering. There's all these jobs. People want to be podcasters. It's a cool, hip thing to do. It seems respectable, but, like, edgy. It's. It's all great. And so, like, obviously things have changed.

Speaker B: Indeed.

Speaker A: Podcasts are still extremely popular. They're maybe more popular than they've ever been. They're more salient than they've ever been. What exactly a podcast is like when people close their eyes and imagine a podcast has changed quite a lot, though. And I'm curious, like, what do you think? How do you explain what happened? Like, what. What's happened since then?

Speaker B: Um, well, I think what happened was that the dreams, the economic dreams for what podcasts could be were never going to be fulfilled. They were a mirage. The idea that all these shows were going to be the new serial was never something that could have happened and didn't happen. There was only one serial in terms of there ever being one show that, like, everybody was talking about in culture that, like, dominated the conversation. Instead, you had a bunch of new shows, a glut even, of new shows that were in the serial model or innovated in the form. And they were good and they had good audiences. They were successful by most metrics, but that success didn't actually translate into, like, financial viability.

Speaker A: I would think about it almost this way. It's like serial and sort of startup culture around podcasts made it seem like podcasts could be movies.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: They could be things that made money the way a blockbuster movie made money. And that was like, the draw. They're not all gonna hit, but, like, when they hit, you're gonna make a lot of money. When really, I think the economics of narrative podcasting is much more closely aligned with journalism. And anyone who's in journalism will tell you, like, it just doesn't. It can't make money. It's too much work. It's too much effort for what it is. You know, you see, like, rich guys buy magazines because they want to make like, they're. We're gonna do like, serious Magazine journalism. And they always are like, let's start. Until they realize, like, they too will lose money and get bored. And the economics of narrative podcasting are much more closely aligned with that, with, like this just being like, you can make something really good, you can make something that breaks even, you can make something that people listen to, but you can't really make something that's like 10x on your investment. Listening back to this, I hear myself skirting something important when I say serious journalism can't make money. That wasn't always the case. For decades, newspaper and magazine journalism absolutely did make money, and they largely made it from advertisers. Then along came tech companies like Google and Facebook, basically the greatest advertising services that have ever existed, able to target a brand's potential customers with unprecedented accuracy. By the late 2000s, they had accrued enormous power to decide what kind and form of stories were their users would actually see in search results and on social media feeds. And though they were directing their users to lots of journalism, they were taking almost all of the ad money that had once funded such journalism for themselves. Hundreds, if not thousands of local newspapers and magazines went belly up as a result. And online outlets found themselves constantly chasing algorithmic traffic to stay afloat for a little while. Though in the mid to late 2010s, there was one segment of the industry that seemed to be bucking this terrible trend. Podcasts. Podcasts were the last great hope for serious journalism. Supported by ads, ads from mattress companies and meal prep startups. And famously in the case of cereal, email newsletter services, support for Cereal comes from Mailchimp, from Mailchimp, mail cream, chip, chimp. But in the early 2000s, amidst larger economic headwinds, advertising for podcasts began to dry up too. The shows that felt the consequences of this first were the ones that were the most expensive to make. Short run narrative series listeners were getting for free. Lauded and beloved narrative series lost their funding. Shows that could scramble to become more appealing to advertisers by publishing more often, as we did in 2024. Coming out every two weeks has worked for us, thankfully. And we feel fortunate because, believe me, not all of our peers have survived four years. After spending over $200 million to acquire Gimlet, Spotify folded the company altogether Last year. Amazon decimated wondery. Ad money in podcasts has continued to contract, and the money that has stayed in podcasting tends to go to formats that air consistently and often. There are podcasts that, like, can make quite a lot more money. Chat shows and interview shows and like things that are easier to make and people also love, um, and so it was like, oh, we've been like, looking in the wrong place for money. Like, there, there are podcasts that really can make their creators tons of money. Can make the companies that make them a lot of money. Like, there's really money here. It's just like, wasn't at all in what we thought it was in.

Speaker B: Right? You're Joe Rogans, your caller daddies.

Speaker A: What is up Daddy gang? It is your founding father, Alex. Alex Cooper with Call Her Daddy.

Speaker B: But also, like this whole crop of celebrity shows that are like, actors talking to their actor friends or comedians talking to their comedian friends that Mark Maron and Joe Rogan had sort of pioneered in a sense. But like, now you just take people who are way more famous than Joe Rogan.

Speaker A: They were like, hilariously, like, they had to do it because they weren't that famous.

Speaker B: They were D list, like washed up D listers, kind of.

Speaker A: They proved themselves, they climbed. And now, like, you could have like, Amy Poehler wants, like, like all these people that have shows, right? Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Good Hang. We have a comedy legend on today. And so what you get as the 2020s are going on is like, oh, stop, someone on the street. What's a podcast? It's not serial anymore. It's a chat. It's Bill Simmons, it's a comedy show. You know, like, it's all these sort of like, much more interview based chat show, like a famous person, just like a more casual hang.

Speaker B: Right? But I don't think that narrative podcast listeners ever lost their appetite. Partially it was because people liked podcasts so much that we made thousands of them. And, like, the audience became super fragmented, which was, I think, inevitable. But, like, the total number of people interested in this stuff, I don't think

Speaker A: really diminished to push back a little bit. I think the thing that did become clear, and I feel this myself as a listener, is that whatever itch you want scratched by a podcast, like, whatever is gonna satisfy you, whatever's gonna be fun to listen to or gonna learn stuff from or just like have something to listen to while we're washing the dishes or driving the car or whatever it is, it became clear that a cheaper, more consistent, less worked over podcast could actually kind of like deliver a ton of those pleasures. Like, I personally, like, I. When I started listening to podcasts, I was like, I don't understand chat shows at all. Like, I really don't get it. Like, I, uh, want to only listen to like narrative shows. That's all I listened to. And at some point, you know, it took years, but I was just like, oh my God, this is so effortful. Like, yeah, I just want to hear some people talking about something I think is interesting. And it's like there's something really generative about that. Like when you listen to a conversation, your mind is actually in a place where you're like listening to a conversation like you're, you're like ready to jump in, you know. And I'm not saying that the audience for narrative podcasts disappeared either, but I don't think it's just like the money men were like, this isn't worth it. It's like, like it turned out that you can do a lot by doing just a little less. All the stuff we've described happening in the world of podcasts was already causing narrative podcasters like yours truly some soul searching discomfort. But I surely would have had the decency to keep my professional navel gazing to myself if not for the existential development that has ratcheted my anxiety way up. And that's the arrival of video. The practice of simulcasting the same show on both video and radio goes back a long ways. Like all the way back to the very early days of tv. Howard Stern aired his radio show on e. Starting in 1994. Don Imus did the same on MSNBC. Plenty of sports radio shows got shown on cable too. And podcast wise, it's been going on for a long time as well. Some of the very first podcasts ever, like before they were called that, also featured video. Joe Rogan started streaming his show on video in 2009.

Speaker B: Yeah, how's the quality sound video wise? Does it sound all right?

Speaker A: Can you see us all right? Still, as YouTube got bigger and bigger over the 2010s, the YouTuber and the podcaster were mostly separate in related categories. That really started to change in 2020 when the pandemic hit and a new crop of celebrities and comedians stuck at home dec to give this podcasting thing a, uh go. And they didn't mind being on camera and so they were happy to start their podcasts with video and put them on YouTube. Basically what happens is Spotify realizes in its quest for attention that it is competing with YouTube. Like it's not just competing with like Apple, itunes. It's like, oh wait, the streaming service that people are spending a huge amount of time on is YouTube. Like, that's our competition. And YouTube is like, oh, Spotify, you want a tangle? Like, we can Also play this game. We have all this content. We'll give our creators the option to call their video also podcast. And, like, a lot of YouTube creators are essentially like, okay, cool. Like, we'll be a podcast dude. Like, we had video. We talk like, we were happy to be both. We're happy to be everything. And YouTube becomes sort of like the biggest podcasting platform in the world.

Speaker B: According to the latest data From Cumulus Media, YouTube is now the number one podcast listening platform, with Spotify in second and Apple Podcast in third place. This actually has huge ramifications for podcast creators. In a moment, I'm gonna give you five key reasons it's time to consider adding video to your show.

Speaker A: Up until this point, whatever a podcast was like, it was mostly supposed to be audio. Like, it wasn't video. That kind of was definitional. And suddenly that definition has just been, like, poofed. It's gone, right?

Speaker B: It's, for me, the definition that I always had going into it, which was like, an evolution of radio, is completely gone. Even sort of the RSS feed component, that's gone too. And also the important thing, the YouTube shows and channels that are now calling themselves podcasts, that now everyone is calling podcasts, they are a particular kind of show. It's really, really limited to those kind of chat shows, those interview shows, and those chat shows.

Speaker A: And then layered on top of that, sort of like, happening simultaneously, contiguously, is the rise of social video. It's the popular app taking over social media. Short and punchy videos uploaded to TikTok.

Speaker B: TikTok's biggest competition may come from Instagram reels. It has incorporated many of TikTok's core features, including that endlessly scrolling feed of short videos.

Speaker A: TikTok and Instagram Reels arrived in 20, 18 and 20, respectively. In just a few years, they made short videos meant to be watched on the phone, the stickiest and most viral format of all. And video podcasts prove to be a natural fit. So much so that in the last few years, most people encounter podcasts, and particularly ones that are new to them, not as podcasts, but as a video clip a couple of minutes long, flitting across their social media feeds. And if you're encountering a clip from a podcast on your phone, how do you know it's even from a podcast and not some other kind of content? Well, you know, because the podcast clips set themselves apart by having a very specific look. People sitting on chairs and couches, talking into large mics, mics that are not, strictly speaking, necessary.

Speaker B: We developed Decades and decades ago, a way to hide the microphones. And that's.

Speaker A: That's like, what newscasters.

Speaker B: That's what newscasters and talk shows, uh, TV talk shows and actors and all that. And actors, they wear lavalier mics. That was the whole thing for many years was like, how can you hide it? So it becomes as invisible and unobtrusive in the shot as possible. So, like, the microphones, these big microphones in front of podcasters, the ones in front of us now in a video, they're really just functioning as props. They're just there to fulfill that expectation of that trope.

Speaker A: It makes sense how we got to this look. People had always been making podcasts while sitting on chairs, talking into big microphones, not bothering with lavalier mics because no one was seeing them. But when they started filming, that's what there was to put on camera. And this was distinctive. So distinctive that at some point it became almost definitional. How do you know it's a podcast? It's got that mic, and that's opened the door for all kinds of things, from the Pete Davidson show to CNN to kitty litter act to the AI Dogs we mentioned at the top of this episode to lay some kind of claim to being podcasty. What do you think the word podcast or, like, this visual trope is communicating? Like, why bother?

Speaker B: It communicates at least a fiction that this is off the cuff and casual, that you're just sort of, like, hanging out with people in their living rooms, in their basements, in their garage. But, like, the truth of it is that it is just a trope. The Pete Davidson show is, like, a professional production, you know, so about the

Speaker A: Pete Davidson show, specifically, like, when I think about what it being a podcast does there, it communicates a couple things to me. Kind of like authenticity, like, uh, the willingness to go there to say outlandish things, to not be a stodgy, slick television show. But I think it also communicates in a nice way, like. Like, lowered visual expectations. Like, the Pete Davidson show actually looks, like, pretty good. But I think when you hear podcasts, you're like, I'm not expecting something slick, right? I'm expecting something kind of, like, pared down. And I think right now, like, that is, like, all very appealing to people. Like these, like, unfussy, more authentic, less, you know, not mainstream media, basically.

Speaker B: Right. But again, it's just the illusion of it. Like, how can you say it's authentic when it's just a fake podcast for a cat litter company, right? Or when you're sticking it in front of Anderson Cooper just for the heck of it, even though you don't need it. Like, this is true in every medium, but, like, chasing authenticity is a trap.

Speaker A: That's all true, but it's like, it is sort of working, right? Like, maybe we're gonna look back on this moment and be like, oh, my God, that's so 2025, 2026. But it is for right now. I think it is working enough where it's just like, you're like, oh, I see. What you aspire to be, what you're aspiring to be fake as it is, is something like a little less fussy. And that's appealing.

Speaker B: It's just like funny. Like this idea, like, oh, maybe this thing that we've been doing is passe. So what are we gonna go to a video chat? A TV talk show? It's public access TV from the 90s, visually looks exactly the same as public access TV from the 90s. And I think that's totally great. I love public access TV from the 90s. But like, we're acting like we've invented some new form with a TV talk show that just happens to be on YouTube. And like, that's not new. It's just even more conservatism than we had in the previous eras of public radio and commercial radio constricting. If you look at music, basically two companies own all the radio stations and they all have the same playlists in every city. And then in the public radio sphere, which is where I come from, you have your own kind of conservativeness, which is that there, uh, was never any room for anyone to break through. If you wanted a new show, you wanted to do something new. There was just no room on the schedule anywhere in the country for the most part. And that was the promise of podcasting was like, everyone can get past the gatekeepers who are so narrow in thinking what these things should look like. We can keep on experimenting, keep on taking the format in new directions. Now we're saying even podcasts can't be expansive. They can't be all these things. They can only be video shows that were two people talking with big microphones in front of them. That's what drives me crazy. It's like the age old story of every new medium is that inevitably the conservative forces take over. Conservative in a small C. I mean, and we just sort of settle on one or two formats that the masses seem to like enough and that are cheap and easy to produce.

Speaker A: Whatever words you use, like, it feels like we're Kind of converging on some like, universal form, right? Like we're sort of heading towards like this moment where all content and content such a gross word, but like everything everybody makes is getting very samey. Like it's all supposed to be able to be viewed in a video format on your phone. So all of this stuff, like television, online, video, audio, like it's all like blobbing into this one thing. And, and so you could have a conversation that's similar that we've been having about so many different mediums, right? Like, just like you could be making movies and you could be like, I'm worried it's all gonna turn into like Christopher Nolan aside, it's all turning into like short form reels. Or like I make television and I'm also worried about that. Or like I make social media and I'm really trying to make that because like that's the only thing that's gonna pay me. Like it's all kind of like, like converging into the same kind of looking thing that's kind of like trying to do the same thing, which is really just to get your attention for like a short period of time. And like that sort of sucks. Like, just not uh, because people aren't even happy with it. It's just like for those of us who like, would like a little diversity or would like to make sure that people are still trying to do weird things, or not even weird things, but totally normal things, but in forms that have their own languages and their own codes and their own like, histories. Like, that's a bummer. And it's not just a bummer in a theoretical way. When we come back, we get as far into our own belly buttons as we can go. What all this means for us. This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Ever wonder why we make the choices we do and how to make smarter ones? Join Wharton Professor Katie Milkman, an award winning behavioral scientist and author of the best selling book how to Change as uh. She shares true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes and everyday people about why we do the things we do and how to make better choices to help avoid costly mistakes. Choiceology covers the latest research in behavioral science and dives into themes like the power of self control, shaping your mindset for success, navigating new beginnings and why starting over can feel so hard. Listen to choiceology@schwab.com podcast or wherever you listen.

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Speaker A: So we've talked about the history and the present of the podcast, but so much of what is animating our interest here is the future. What does all of this mean for podcasts in general? But yes, for sure, what does all this mean for us? If Decoder Ring could just become a video podcast, maybe I'd feel differently, calmer, chiller, pumped about this whole video thing. But it's not that simple for something like Decoder Ring for us to make videos. If it's not just us sitting in a room chatting is like, we would essentially have to make a documentary. So that would mean totally, like cutting the interviews differently. It would mean having to go out and get footage for all the moments when we don't have something exciting to show you.

Speaker B: Yeah, we had to put a lot of B roll on screen, which is, like, often just unnecessary. It's just like to put up something, just throwing up a bunch of graphics, animations, maybe that could be fun. But it's also incredibly time consuming and we wouldn't be able to put out the number of episodes we do now if we had to do all that stuff.

Speaker A: Right? And it's like, would it really improve the show? It's like we'd almost have to break it apart and like, totally reconceive it. And actually there are YouTube shows that I think are doing something like, even a good version of what we would look like if we were to reimagine ourselves as video. So what's going on? Why is there all this contradictory information? Is moderate drinking good or bad? Here at Howtown, we investigate where information comes from. The joke is they are not podcasts. Like, they are YouTube shows. Like, they don't say they're podcasts, right? Because they're not two people in a room having a conversation.

Speaker B: That's what I find so scary and disheartening is that we've completely redefined what the word podcast means, which, fine, I don't care about. I, uh, have no investment in that stupid word. But what I'm worried is happening is that we're redefining our show and shows like it and the shows I want to listen to out of existence. There is no new word that's come up to describe the kind of stuff that I want to listen to, and as a consequence of that, that stuff is just not going to be made.

Speaker A: I think the thing you said about genre, that for you, podcasting or radio, is genre agnostic. And, like, I really understood podcasting as sort of, like, a genre specific is helpful because it sort of explains why through our circuitous roots, we've ended up at a similar place of just feeling, like, freaked out. Because for you, it's like, oh, okay, like, I'm agnostic about the genre, but, like. Like, I know radio isn't video. So now we're trying to do video. And, like, all the expansive sound things, like, this sort of forecloses adventurousness in that sphere. It just, like, makes it about video. And for me, I'm like, oh, the pivot to video also, like, forecloses on the genre of podcasting that I was, like, the most interested in. I think maybe where I feel more. This is also explicatory of why I feel, like, a little bit more tortured or, like, less sure than you is like, I think you're like, no, sounds really good. Like, uh, we should. We should be making cool radio things. And I'm like, oh, is the genre of, like, the narrative podcast like a hill I want to die? Like, is that really even the best way to do it? Like, I'm not sure that it's really better, more fun, more interesting, more illustrative than a chat format that does lend itself to video. I can see. I can really see the virtues of the chat format. And I. The thing I most care about is, like, the thinking is, like, the idea is the argument. And so sometimes when I hear the chat just, I'm like, oh, like, if what I want to get across is, like, a way to think about a thing, like, am I even doing it the right way?

Speaker B: Well, first of all, I don't think radio precludes thinking or coming up.

Speaker A: Of course not.

Speaker B: Arguing that is, like, a thing that we do too. We distill a Lot of things to something that's digestible and fun.

Speaker A: Yes. But are we saying the thing we want to say to the most people? I think there's lots of people been like, give it up. You lose some things in doing it in a chat way, but you gain an audience, you know, And. And I hear people talk about this sometimes who are very, like, matter of fact, where they're like, yes, the kids are somewhere else. The people are on YouTube. Like, you can feel, uh, any way you want, but if you want to reach the most people, like, get on board. And maybe that's not wrong. Like, maybe I should be like, okay, this is what it is. I want to express myself to all these people. Like, I should do it.

Speaker B: The difference for me is, like, I am invested in the medium itself. I can't just chase, like, the next thing, the next avenue to reach the most people. I want to make radio. So if this all goes belly up, if it all completely implodes, you'll be

Speaker A: making radio in the ashes.

Speaker B: I don't know. But that's the thing. Just, like, move on to the next thing. I would have to really start. I'd have to learn a whole new thing. I need to become like, a pipe fitter or a plumber or something. I don't know what I would do.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, to be clear, having done this, I am aware the effort and the labor that go into making the polished thing requires so much more research and reporting and honing and thinking that the idea you end up with at the end, the ideas you end up with are so much better formed, they're so much sharper. And I appreciate that, that, like, it helps me understand what I really think about something. That's what writing does too. Right. And that you can't have that in a chat show. But insofar as, yes, like, I want to talk to people, I am not wedded to the way that we're doing this particularly. But that, that also. That makes me feel like you have a lot of clarity. I have a lot of wishy washiness. We've been going back and forth about how to finish this episode. We were worried that ending with me sounding so ambivalent might seem like some implicit announcement that I'm over making Dakota Ring. But I'm not. Not at all. I'm not ambivalent about our show. I love making it. I love making it the way that we do. I love finding stories that have been forgotten about and getting to go all investigative reporter mode to track down the people who lived through them. I love talking to people who always, always remember things a little differently than how they've been written about in even the best books. I love that we find out what so many, many others think and work and write through it all to figure out what we really think. I love that we take the time to fit everything together just so, so that if we did it right, it sounds effortless, like it just had to be the exact shape that it is. What I am, um, ambivalent about, though, is this moment. It's such a confusing and strange time to make a podcast, let alone one like ours. Are we supposed to keep doing exactly what we're doing and maybe get stayed and lose our audience? Are we supposed to totally change? And if, uh, we're supposed to find some middle ground, how can we figure out how to change the exact right amount without giving up the things that we care about and that make us distinctive? That's what I hear listening back to Evan in my conversations, that I don't yet know quite how we're supposed to navigate all of this. And I hope that ambivalence is one it is okay to leave you with. We're not going anywhere, Knockwood. But now you know the mystery we're trying to solve all the time. The mystery under all the other mysteries we take on. Not what's the best way to be a podcast in 2026, but what's the best way, if we're lucky, to keep on being this one? This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. You can watch video of me and Evan talking about all of this on our show page. Be kind, and while you're there, please sign up for Decoder Ring Plus. One way for a podcast like ours to be less reliant on the whims of the ad market we just described is with the support of our listeners. If you sign up right now through October 16, you get get 50% off for the year. You will be supporting the show directly in a way that truly matters. You will also get to listen to the show without any ads, get unlimited reading on slate.com and so much more, including exclusive access to every episode of Dakota Rings Back. Our latest Dakota Rings Back is about something you have surely noticed, but perhaps never really noticed. It's the collectible souvenir spoon. Like, who came up with this idea? Who came up with the idea of we're gonna sell spoons to people? It just seems weird. Why would you buy a spoon? All that for just $59 by going to slate.com decoder plus and entering the promo code decoder50 at ah checkout. I want to thank Amanda Dobbins, Leon Nathan, Nick Qua, Ben Richmond, Amber Robinson, Susan Matthews, Mary Harris, and Mia Labelle. This episode was produced by Max Friedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by me and Evan Chung. Our supervising producer, Merritt Jacob, is senior technical director. Our intern is Phoebe Mulder. Video Production by Micah Phillips. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us@decoderinglate.com you can also leave leave us a message at 347-460-7281. We'll see you in two weeks.

Speaker B: You keep on talking about chat shows being less fussy and effortless. This is like an endurance test to make this thing.

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