Good morning. Here’s the latest:
We have more news below. But first, Joseph Bernstein explains how videos came to take over our podcast feeds.
Sound and vision
Log on to social media these days, and it’s likely that you’ll come across a video of two people in a studio, talking. Usually the host is famous — Joe Rogan, or Amy Poehler or the Kelce brothers. Often the guest is, too. And while the clip on social media is probably brief, the video it’s been cut from may well be three, four, even five hours long. This is podcasting in 2025: Many of the most popular shows are now video conversations that seem to stretch on forever. They often feature major political figures and may even have played a role in electing Donald Trump to his second term. The sheer profusion of these talk shows poses a very basic question: Who, exactly, is watching all this? I put that question to podcast creators and viewers, industry analysts and executives. And the answer, it turns out, is complicated. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain what I learned. Who’s watchingOne thing we do know: A lot of people are hitting play on podcast videos. YouTube announced recently that more than a billion people a month watch podcasts on its platform. And according to the most recent survey research, around three-quarters of podcast consumers play podcast videos. What makes it complicated, though, is that we don’t know whether everyone playing these videos is actually watching them. The same survey showed that more than 40 percent of people who play podcast videos on YouTube listen to them only in the background — say, while folding laundry or doing other work. Podcasting began as an audio-only format, which led to an extraordinary degree of intimacy between listeners and hosts. Hearing the same people in your ears week after week tends to do that. Video podcasts strive for the same, or an even greater, sense of intimacy with their audience. One superfan of “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von” told me that she liked to watch the entire podcast because it made her feel less alone and as if she had company over. (Von’s show, which regularly draws hundreds of thousands of viewers on YouTube, typically runs for about two hours.) Indeed, if cable news is the background noise of choice for many boomers, video podcasts have the potential to become the same for younger audiences, who often consume media with a smartphone in hand. Alyssa Keller, a stay-at-home mom from Michigan, told me she often watched “The Shawn Ryan Show” while cleaning during her children’s nap time. The old guardThe rising popularity of video podcasts challenges how people conceive of the medium. Many were introduced to podcasts through deeply reported, painstakingly produced narrative shows like “Serial” and “This American Life.” The popular video shows today are less ambitious, and they’re much easier to share on social media, which increases the potential for bigger audiences and more money. But at least one podcast pioneer doesn’t see much to be alarmed about. Ira Glass, the creator of “This American Life,” believes the expansion of the podcast tent is good for business, he told me. And, he added, traditional, radio-style programming — listening to people, not watching them — has a unique power that video lacks. “If people want to watch people on a talk show, that seems fine to me,” he said. “I don’t feel protective of podcasting in that way. I don’t have snowflakey feelings about podcasts.” Read more about video podcasts here.
Trump Administration
Democratic Party
Weather
Other Big Stories
Brian Rosenthal has been investigating the U.S. organ transplant system for more than a year. Below, he explains the findings from his newest story, which he reported with Julie Tate. In Alabama, surgeons cut open a woman’s body to retrieve her organs only to discover she was alive. In New Mexico, coordinators subjected another woman to days of preparation for donation even as she seemed to be regaining consciousness, which she eventually did. Those are just two examples from a growing number of bungled attempts to retrieve patients’ organs. These lapses have occurred as the U.S. health care system comes under growing federal pressure to increase transplants. Here’s what else our reporting found:
Read our full investigation here.
Does the backlash over Trump’s refusal to release information on Epstein represent a real schism in the MAGA coalition? Yes. While Trump will eventually quiet his base, this fracture will never fully heal. “Mr. Trump’s not exposing the story is Mr. Trump’s not draining the swamp. That is a big moment in the history of MAGA,” Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal. No. Though his influential supporters are standing firm for now, they know Trump has a history of abandoning conspiracies he no longer needs. “They can’t let go of Trump, adored by their audiences as he fuels content, which they convert into profits,” Chris Brennan writes in USA Today.
“Hamlet” isn’t a true tragedy: It’s a story about how even in the most dire of circumstances, it’s possible to find peace, Jeremy McCarter writes. Here are columns by Maureen Dowd on the MAGA rift and Nicholas Kristof on the impact of deportations. Everything The Times offers. All in one subscription. Morning readers: Save on unlimited access to The Times with this introductory offer.
Vidiots: This L.A. video store, a holdover from the golden age of VHS, is staging a comeback as a community hub. Vows: Their shared love of theater was just the opening act. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about a couple’s hunt for a home in the woods of Central Connecticut. Trending: Charli XCX and George Daniel, a member of the band The 1975, got married in a town hall in East London, Vulture reports. Lives Lived: Felix Baumgartner, nicknamed “Fearless Felix,” was an Austrian extreme adventurer who hurtled to earth from more than 24 miles high in 2012 and became the first human to break the sound barrier while free-falling. Baumgartner died, paragliding, at 56.
W.N.B.A.: Team Collier cruised to a 151-131 victory over Team Clark in the All-Star Game. The captain Napheesa Collier scored a record 36 points, capturing M.V.P. honors. N.B.A.: Marcus Smart appears headed to the Los Angeles Lakers. He has agreed to a contract buyout with the Washington Wizards after one injury-shortened season.
“These Summer Storms,” by Sarah MacLean: If Steve Jobs’s will had stipulated that his four children spend five days together before collecting their inheritance, one might say that MacLean’s delicious romp of a novel was based on his life (or death, really). Instead we land in the long shadow of a fictional tech billionaire, Franklin Storm, whose grown offspring have gathered at the family compound in Rhode Island to complete a series of tasks tailored according to their specific issues with one another. We arrive on the island with Alice, the problem child, who only cements her reputation by getting entangled with one of her father’s henchmen before crossing Narragansett Bay. MacLean’s previous 15 novels have been historical romances; here, she proves she can more than hold her own in the modern world, spinning love, grief and sibling rivalry into a mesmerizing cyclone of family dysfunction. More on books
|
