Theo Von’s podcast is climbing the charts, with a little help from TikTok

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I hope you all had a great weekend. Today I have news on James Corden’s new deal with SiriusXM, Theo Von’s rise up the charts, and, in what I admit is a significant shift in tone, a look at which podcasts are really helping the discussion about the war between Israel and Hamas. .

Don’t call it a podcast offer (that’s what I’m told). first late show The host will have a new weekly show on SiriusXM that is exclusive to subscribers. This life of mine with James Corden It’s going to be a weekly celebrity chat show, because literally, what else would it be? The show, set to launch in early 2024, was announced before SiriusXM unveiled its new app on Wednesday.

The new app is expected to better combine SiriusXM’s podcast and satellite offerings, as executives discussed during an investor call last week. The company is under pressure to attract younger audiences like its flagship satellite product and Pandora Hemorragia subscribers. In the third quarter, SiriusXM lost 94,000 subscribers and Pandora lost 112,000. Meanwhile, podcasting revenue grew 28 percent, even during what everyone can agree has been a pretty bad year for podcasting.

The idea that Corden has swapped the daily routine of late-night TV for a lower-intensity audio show isn’t groundbreaking (see Conan O’Brien and Trevor Noah), but it’s interesting that his show is on SiriusXM proper and isn’t transmits widely. distributed as a podcast. Corden has never been known for being edgy, but he was exceptionally good at creating fluffy, viral content about celebrities. (“Carpool Karaoke” is the most notable). An agreement in which his show is exclusive and a radio show first and a podcast later, seems to go against that strength.

On the other hand, we still don’t know how the new app will integrate SiriusXM shows with podcasts. Perhaps the exclusivity and new setup of the app will encourage Corden-heads to move to the satellite side.

Or maybe it’s just me, but I blame it on maternity leave (as I do with everything!). Edison Research launched its list of most popular podcasts between July and September, and This past weekend with Theo Von got the number 5 position (!!), right between This American life and Intelligent.

Von, a comedian who is a frequent guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, has been doing his show since 2016. While we’ve seen new shows with big names appear in the ratings pretty quickly, it’s been a while since we’ve seen a long-running show like this one. Between April and June of this year, he held the position No. 15. In the same quarter last year, Von didn’t even break Edison’s 50 Greatest.

According Rolling Stoneclips This last weekend have been blowing up on TikTok lately, which could explain this sudden surge. Like other programs that generate viral moments (calls his daddy, JRE), Von’s show is a video podcast.

I’ve been racking my brain trying to find a way to understand how podcasting affects the way the public digests and debates war. In many ways, podcasting takes a back seat to other forms of digital media in this situation. TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter/X have been front and center because they are designed to amplify the kind of shocking images that emerge from war and the resulting outrage. I think that’s where podcasting can provide something different and much needed.

What podcasting lacks in its ability to go viral, it can (can being the key word here) compensate with depth. Over the past month, I’ve turned to various podcasts as I try to make sense of what’s happening, and for me, it’s been an antidote to the righteous, oversimplified fury of social media.

For day-to-day news and analysis, I loved it The news agents. The UK-based show, hosted by three former BBC heavyweights (Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall) has done a great job of looking at the war from different points of view, and analyzing the Presenters manage to be spicy without being sensational. While The New York Times has done some, huh, false steps in its breaking news coverage, The newspaper published a fascinating episode last week about how the way people view the 1948 war still fuels conflict today. Also, The Ringer’s Simple English with Derek Thompson has had a series of great episodes that address the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with nuances.

I’ll keep an eye on how this plays out in podcasting. I am also interested in how left-wing political programs can reflect the Accelerating division on the left more generally, so keep an eye out for this in a future edition. In the meantime, what programs have you turned to in the last month? Feel free to send me ideas and recommendations to ariel.shapiro@theverge.com.

That’s all for today! I’ll be back next week with the latest audio news.