David Plotz — the former CEO of Atlas Obscura, past editor-in-chief of Slate, and longtime co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest — is starting a new company, and it takes some explaining. To begin with: the new venture is called City Cast, and Plotz explains that the fundamental idea is to build a for-profit network […]

As you probably know by now, the Third Coast Festival, which typically takes place as a physical conference in Chicago every fall, is being held as a virtual event this year due to the pandemic. The virtual version of the conference goes by a slightly different name, Third Place, and aside from its non-corporeality, it’s […]

Last Wednesday, Spotify announced that it was rolling out a new experimental feature that’s frankly a little confusing and has some capacity to raise a few eyebrows. Broadly speaking, the rollout revolves around a new on-platform audio experience that combines music and talk content in specific, layered arrangements. It’s rooted in a new creation tool […]

Gastropod, the six-year-old independent podcast by journalists Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley that serves up stories about the science and history of food, released a fascinating report last month that comes as the result of a years-long effort to provide what they call “a public and transparent accounting of the diversity of voices represented on […]

News, broadly… It’s official: SiriusXM’s acquisition of Stitcher has been completed. From Media Matters, the left-leaning media watchdog organization: “Media Matters has identified four major platforms — Spotify, Vimeo, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts — where QAnon content is flourishing. These platforms must follow other tech companies’ lead and commit to swiftly banning all QAnon content; […]

Last month’s rollout of Sway, the new interview podcast led by Kara Swisher, marked the beginning of a new chapter for New York Times’ adventures with podcasting, as it serves as the first high-profile launch to emerge from the organization’s revamped efforts to build a meaningful audio presence around its valuable Opinion section. Sway isn’t […]

On Sunday, the Writers Guild of America East announced that it has begun organizing within the scripted podcast space — “scripted podcast” largely meaning fiction podcasts, a nomenclature that borrows from the “scripted series” terminology from the television world — through the launch of a new initiative called the WGA Audio Alliance. “As large companies […]