A strange thing happened with podcasts in 2024. After a year from hell, podcasting was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight over the past 12 months owing to a preponderance of head-turning moments and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium’s consequential nature. This state of affairs is undoubtedly connected to a broader trend that saw podcasting become further integrated with digital video, specifically YouTube, which allowed shows to achieve viral attention and reach even bigger audiences.
Indeed, this more than any other was the year that demonstrated how podcasts as a whole bleed into the real world and play a huge role in American culture, for better or worse. To reflect this, we’ve carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through the medium.
10.
Dudesy Creates an AI George Carlin
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come out with new material, but I do have a good excuse — I was dead!” So begins the hourlong “special” titled “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead!” created by Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen, who host the comedy podcast and YouTube show Dudesy. The duo initially claimed to have used generative AI that had been trained on the late Carlin’s body of work to produce the special, which mostly comes off as an airless facsimile of the legendary comedian. The stunt caused a stir, a news cycle, and, ultimately, a settlement. But not because Sasso told the New York Times that the Carlin special was, in fact, not truly AI generated but written in large part by himself. This incident was telling: While the actual use of artificial intelligence was debatable, the anxieties it generated were very much real.
9.
A Podcast Raises Sexual-Assault Allegations Against Neil Gaiman
Over the summer, fledgling British news operation Tortoise Media published a short investigative podcast series called Master, which was built around two women’s allegations of sexual assault against celebrated author Neil Gaiman. The project prompted three more women to voice their own accusations in subsequent months — two on a follow-up episode of Master, another through a separate podcast — but no other major news outlet has since corroborated the story. Still, Master has had some impact: A quiet trickle of several Hollywood productions based on Gaiman’s works have paused and stalled since the podcast’s release, though it was never made official if those delays were related to the allegations. We’re left with the feeling of a shoe still suspended in the air.
8.
A Podcaster Becomes the Lakers’ Head Coach
JJ Redick, the retired NBA journeyman, took his standing as the Ur-athlete-podcaster a step further in March when he launched Mind the Game with LeBron James, which featured the two men analyzing basketball plays and drinking wine. As it turns out, James was using the podcast as a bizarro audition process: The Lakers would hire Redick as their new head coach later in the summer. The appointment revitalized the team but, in so doing, brought Redick’s illustrious podcasting career to an end — for now, at least. James’s head coaches tend to have notoriously short stints; we may well see Redick back at the mic soon enough.
7.
Talk Tuah: A Viral Meme Goes Longform
If you care what “Pookie” is — or even know what that word refers to at all — then, well, Haliey “Hawk Tuah” Welch has done her job. It has been apparent for quite some time that you don’t really need all that much to cultivate currency as a celebrity, and so it is with the 21-year-old Tennessee native who gained tremendous viral attention for her spontaneous R-rated advice. Reflecting the thoroughly modern fame playbook, she proceeded to launch her own podcast, Talk Tuah, where she has been working to squeeze as much juice as she can from her charisma. We’ll see how long it’ll last, but for now, she has turned her 15 minutes of fame into a full half-hour.
6.
Mark Zuckerberg Goes on Acquired
Since 2015, Acquired hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal have been publishing hagiographic audio portraits of business leaders that garnered them a following among LinkedIn hypebeasts and actual titans of industry. It reached an apotheosis over the summer when they sold out a live taping with Mark Zuckerberg at the arena where the Golden State Warriors play. Onstage, Zuckerberg seemed relaxed. “We accepted other people’s view of some of the things that they were asserting that we were doing wrong, or were responsible for, that I don’t actually think we were,” he said. Platformer’s Casey Newton later underlined the significance of this posture: “Meta’s CEO says he’s done apologizing. Should we worry?” Probably.
5.
The Zach Bryan–Brianna LaPaglia Breakup
Chaotic, confusing, and at times genuinely upsetting, the split between Grammy-winning country singer Zach Bryan and Barstool Sports podcaster Brianna LaPaglia was a soap-operatic tragedy that played out across podcast episodes, social-media posts, YouTube videos — and even a diss track courtesy of Barstool king Dave Portnoy. 2024 may have been a turning point for podcasting as a political force, but its meat-and-potatoes stuff continues to be the kind of drama that’s enthralling for a certain type of cultural consumer on the internet.
4.
Call Her Daddy Books Kamala Harris
Alex Cooper, host of Call Her Daddy, the podcast believed to have the biggest following among women, has lately expressed her intention to become bigger than Joe Rogan. This hasn’t happened yet, but in October, she got closer when Kamala Harris went on her show to talk about reproductive rights. In hindsight, the appearance ended up doing more for Cooper than for Harris. The host became a flashpoint for the conversation around this presidential cycle being the first so-called “podcast election,” boosting her profile further than ever.
3.
Ezra Klein’s Audio Essay That Might or Might Not Have Contributed to Biden’s Ouster
Months before an apocalyptic debate performance would sink Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, the Times opinion writer and podcaster Ezra Klein published an audio essay that raised an obvious question: Was this guy actually fit to run a second campaign? No, not really. The essay was released while there was virtually no meaningful public discussion about Biden’s stepping down, and it sparked a firestorm in Democratic circles. How much Klein’s essay actually contributed to Biden’s eventual withdrawal from the race remains a point of debate, but there’s no denying its release resulted in a sustained conversation that almost certainly laid the foundation for what later seemed inevitable.
2.
Donald Trump Embraces the Manosphere
To what extent did working the “manosphere” help Donald Trump win the election? Hard to say, but one can’t deny it helped sharpen his relationship with young male voters. He chatted with the streamer Adin Ross, who gifted Trump a Tesla and a Rolex. He sat down with Theo Von on This Past Weekend, where they spoke about addiction and sobriety. He palled around with Andrew Schulz and friends on the comedy podcast Flagrant, where the candidate was laughed at as much as laughed with. And, of course, there was The Joe Rogan Experience, which kicked the entire conversation around Trump’s podcast appearances into overdrive. In the end, Trump’s electoral win was a victory for the manosphere. It also cemented the idea that podcasts and YouTubers represent a very real front of political engagement in an era when traditional media institutions continue to struggle with their footing.
1.
Katt Williams Lays Waste to the Universe on Club Shay Shay
“All lies will be exposed”: 2024 was barely a week old when comedian Katt Williams went on Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay and popped off on a dazzling array of targets from Harvey Weinstein to R. Kelly. Williams’s comments about Sean Combs would reverberate when the rapper was arrested in the fall for allegations of sexual assault, harassment, and sex trafficking throughout his career. The episode, almost three hours long, has been viewed almost 84 million times on YouTube, establishing Club Shay Shay as a media venue of note (Harris would go on to visit as part of her campaign) and Sharpe as an unexpected force in the national discourse.