It’s finally time to retire the word ‘podcast’

According to YouTube’s 2025 Recap feature, the podcast I consumed the most on its platform was Seth Meyers’ recurring segment “A Closer Look” on his show Late Night.

Last year, I would have argued that this is not a podcast. That it is, in fact, a clip of a TV show. But in 2025, with almost every major podcast now having a video component, the definition of the word “podcast” has become pretty meaningless. A decades-old TV show talk show format is now almost indistinguishable from podcasts like Good Hang with Amy Poehler, Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Club Shay Shay with Shannon Sharpe, and other shows at the top of Spotify’s podcast charts. In fact, they are now on the same playing field.

Scrolling though my YouTube feed, most of the suggestions in the Podcast tab are late-night talk show interviews, host-driven video essays, food reviews, and cable news segments — very far from what we used to use the term for: narrative audio journalism and roundtable discussions.

So in 2026, instead of trying to define what a podcast is, I think we need to stop using the word altogether. “Podcast” is becoming an outdated or even a potentially cringe internet relic, similar to how the phrase “web series” faded from use online.

The need for new nomenclature

So what do we call these formats instead? I don’t think we’re going to invent a new word, but instead repurpose an old one.

Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman noticed this change in her coverage of The Podcast Show in London this past May:

…two separate panelists made it clear they do not call their podcasts “podcasts.” Georgie Holt, chief executive at FlightStory, the company behind Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO , said the team calls their programming “shows.” In a conversation on stage with me, Max Cutler, founder of Pave Studios, said exactly the same thing.

Anecdotally I have heard this change of nomenclature from “podcasts” to “shows” internally here at Vox Media too, and echoed from my colleagues at other media companies as well.

Using the word “show” seems to be a more marketable term for advertising, especially when attaching celebrity names to the project. Pitching podcasts to advertisers sounds limiting and niche, but pitching a “show” — hey, that’s a place where they can get ears and eyes, and a definitive platform where the shows will live. Podcast creators want that Seth Meyers money.

Because of this, fans will likely begin calling them “shows” as well, the same way consumers started claiming internal marketing terms like “influencers” and “creators.”

We’re seeing the word fade from the hosts, too. There’s a recurring bit on The Adam Friedland Show now where guests call the show a podcast, and the titular host corrects them instantly, claiming it’s a talk show. Instead of the cliche “Find us wherever you get podcasts” sign-off, I’ve noticed many hosts are now pivoting more to the “like-and-subscribe” phrasing of YouTube culture.

These podcast shows are all starting to live together with non-podcast shows like Hot Ones, Chicken Shop Date, the Criterion Closet series, Tonight Show clips, etc. — so why limit them to a term that used to go hand-in-hand with iPods?

Unfortunately, all this also means that a lot of the openness of podcasting is slowly going away and becoming more centralized on platforms like YouTube and Netflix. YouTube says more than one billion people watch podcasts on its platform every month. It was reported by Bloomberg that Netflix is going to add podcasts to its streaming platform, developing its own shows and working with major networks like Spotify, iHeartMedia, and Sirius.

In fact, YouTube is starting to look more like Netflix. “Talk show–style podcasts” on YouTube are already considered to be the next generation of late night TV, especially with CBS signaling an end to investing in the genre by cancelling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2026 (I can imagine a cheaper-made podcast going into CBS’s late night lineup instead) and celebrity press tours prioritizing YouTube over traditional network TV.

Next year, you probably won’t be recommending your favorite new podcast to your friend, but instead something you “watched on TV.”

So what about audio-only programming?

Despite all this, I still think the audio-only format will stick around. After all, people still drive cars, and they aren’t typically looking at a screen for the whole three hours of a podcast. In fact, according to Edison Research, most podcast listening is done at home. It’s likely, though, that most audio-only podcasts will be from more independently run shows. Media companies will still publish audio versions of their video shows for the podcatcher apps, but they’re not the priority anymore.

As a result (and long overdue from the era of the iPod), I think the era of the term “podcast” is ending. Perhaps in the future, the question “What is a podcast?” will disappear in favor of “What was a podcast?”