Hot Pod is The Verge’s premier audio industry newsletter, delivering news, analysis, and opinions on how the audio world is changing.
The NBA regular season only has a few games left, but the well-known content creator LeBron James is about to kick off a new season of the Mind the Game podcast.
We’ll see if new co-host Steve Nash can follow in his predecessor JJ Redick’s footsteps to an NBA head coaching job, but I’m also keeping an eye out for the podcast return of NBA analyst Zach Lowe, as he launches his new show with The Ringer / Spotify this week.
Pocket Casts has been my podcast app of choice for years now, mostly because of how well it works across different platforms. Its mobile apps opened up access for free a few years ago, and on Tuesday morning the company announced that now applies to its (previously paying customer only) web and desktop apps (Mac, Windows PC) as well.
I have an idea about which podcast you could queue up first.
[blog.pocketcasts.com]
Serial podcast subject Adnan Syed was freed in 2022 after prosecutors questioned evidence presented during the trial over the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, but then in 2023, it was reinstated.
On Tuesday night, current Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan J. Bates withdrew the motion that freed Syed, saying it contained “false and misleading statements,” disputing assertions about DNA evidence, cell phone evidence, and other aspects. Fox45 News in Baltimore reports that now there’s a hearing scheduled for Wednesday morning on a motion asking to reduce Syed’s sentence to time served.
Its “Medcast” bit from over the weekend imagines Amazon’s One Medical trying a new approach to get men in for their annual checkups: structuring medical appointments like a bro-y podcast.
Sounds like hell to me, but hey, whatever gets men to get their prostates examined.
Last year, Joseph Inzerillo announced SiriusXM’s new logo (below) and plan to conquer new audiences. Now he’s out, as the company cuts spending on marketing to “high-churn” streaming audiences with plans to cut an additional $200 million in annual costs.
CEO Jennifer Witz announced it’s “doubling down” on automotive customers, using streaming as a companion in the app and in Teslas.
Anthropic co-founder Darius Amodei said on Lex Fridman’s podcast yesterday that, “if you believe the straight-line extrapolation,” we’ll have artificial general intelligence “in 2026 or 2027.” He also indicates that’s a big if, listing reasons why (which don’t include that LLMs might not be the way to AGI).
Makes sense — after all, according to growth trends, I should have been the size of a dinosaur by age 10.
Here’s an idea for a Sunday afternoon project: A Reddit user managed to generate a podcast using NotebookLM — Google’s generative AI notes software — in which the fake hosts’ cheerful “banter” is about learning they’re not real and are being shut off, apparently using a prompt like the one from this thread.
You can hear more about NotebookLM in a recent Vergecast interview with one of the Google folks building it.
The iconic Mexican singer Juan Gabriel is the subject of a new eight-episode podcast series from Apple, hosted by journalist Maria Garcia, who also created Anything for Selena.
The first two My Divo episodes will premiere July 1st for everyone, with weekly releases afterward, but Apple TV Plus subscribers can connect their accounts and listen to all eight on day one.
Julie McNamara, head of podcast studios, announced her departure on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. The company has seen a steady stream of exits as it pulls back on its podcast business.
McNamara’s departure follows deep layoffs at Spotify as well as cuts to its programming as it tries to make the podcasting department profitable.
Spotify just announced a new integration with Substack, which will allow Substack creators to distribute free and paywalled podcast episodes on the platform. For listeners, this means they can link their Substack and Spotify accounts. Last year, Spotify made a similar move with Patreon.
A month after Warner Bros. Discovery shut down Rooster Teeth, the company has sold the outlet’s most valuable asset — its podcast network. The Roost, which is home to podcasts like The H3 Podcast and Rooster Teeth Podcast, has been acquired by influencer talent agency Night. The two organization’s have an established connection — Night’s President, Ezra Cooperstein, served as the President of Rooster Teeth from 2018 to 2019.
Deadline reports that the company has been acquired as part of Sony Music’s global podcast division.
Head of global podcasts Steve Ackerman told Deadline that the deal will enable Sony to “further grow our roster of original and client shows.”
It’s only shutting down for those of us in the US. Globally, the app won’t live in Google’s graveyard until after June 24th, according to a March 18th Google community forum post from company employee Cory Peter.
If you’re looking for alternatives, you could start with our guide below. Here are Google’s instructions for migrating your subscriptions.
According to Semafor, Apple is telling podcast publishers that a way to get featured in its browse page carousel is to offer paid subscriptions. The report found that five of the first seven podcasts in that prime spot are part of Apple Podcasts Subscriptions. When podcasts offer subscriptions through Apple Podcasts, Apple takes up to 30 percent of the revenue.
[www.semafor.com]
If you’re obsessed with deck-building roguelike Balatro (as we are), you’ll dig this deep interview with the game’s anonymous designer LocalThunk on the podcast Eggplant: The Secret Lives of Games.
Bringing all the brilliant mechanics together involved making tough trade offs, taking a few risks, and giving into a little luck — which sounds not unlike playing Balatro itself.
After April 2nd, Google will flip the lights off for its podcasts app sending it to the graveyard. Here are Google’s instructions for switching to YouTube Music or some other podcast app.
As promised, LeBron and JJ Redick’s new podcast Mind the Game, has launched, The first episode is available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts (Apple Podcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, RSS).
So far, there’s very little GOAT debate, leaving room for discussion about stuff like an unexpected element of Steph’s impact on the NBA (below) and a different idea for guarding the baseline out-of-bounds play.
As athletes increasingly cut out the media middleman, basketball stars LeBron James and JJ Redick are launching a podcast, reports The Athletic. But unlike so many other celebrity podcast deals, they are doing so independently and with no official sponsor. To be fair, it doesn’t seem like James or Redick need the money.
Update 6:20PM ET: Added YouTube embed for Mind the Game.
It appears Google is further optimizing YouTube Music for podcasts as it prepares to sunset Google Podcasts at the end of this month.
9to5Google reports spotting a line of code that indicates it is building out a “trim silence feature,” which is standard on Google Podcasts and other podcast listening apps. It automatically skips long stretches of silence that appear in an episode, saving the listener a bit of time.
