The cloned podcast that carried on publishing

• Sanderson Jones made a podcast. People liked his podcast, but he didn’t really make any money from it, so he stopped doing it. But, as you’ll hear in the latest episode of Hyperfixed, his podcast didn’t actually stop. Someone else hacked his podcast account, switched his podcast host, cloned his voice… and just carried on making shows for him. His voice - his podcast - but saying things he’d never say in real life.

  • As you’ll hear in the show, the scammer moved his podcast to RSS.com where it earned $1,293. After Hyperfix got involved, RSS paid that money direct to Sanderson - it was his show, after all - and helped transfer the podcast back to him. All’s well that ends well, we guess?

• Airwave has launched an in-house advertising sales operation. The company says it’s the next stage of Airwave’s growth, and creates a more direct connection among the network’s creators, advertising partners, and sales team. It now represents more than 120 million combined monthly views and downloads.

• Edison Research at SSRS posted the top 50 podcasts in the US for Q3/26. Joe Rogan remains #1; the highest new entry is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. The research includes all podcasts in the US.

• As newsletter companies Substack and beehiiv launch podcast membership tools, the podcast membership tool Supercast has launched a newsletter feature. It’s offered as part of the base Supercast toolset, and offers content gating, tiered subscription levels, and segment targeting.

• In the UK, Global has expanded Plus with new podcast subscriptions. Shows are available ad-free on Global Player and YouTube. Subscriptions start from £2.99 a month (about US $3.99) for ad-free episodes, and from £4.99 (US $6.69) for ad-free episodes plus exclusive content.

• Podcast Days 2026 took place in Madrid, Spain. The event featured representatives from Acast, Oxford Road, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, as well as a number of Spanish-language podcasters.

• The shortlists for the All Ireland Podcast Awards have been announced. The winners will be revealed on Wed Nov 11. The shortlist has also been announced for the APAs in the UK (which will, we’d assume, be added to the website shortly); those are on Thu Nov 26. And, nominations are now open for the 9th Canadian Podcast Awards. There are 31 categories, open to anyone who is Canadian and works in podcasting.

• Wondering how to win a gold in the British Podcast Awards? In an evening of British Podcast Award winners, a free event at City St George’s University of London, you can find out! It’s on Tues Nov 17.

• Can anyone beat YouTube in podcasting? Yes, argues Neil Mody of Headliner in a blog today, giving some examples of things we can build to make podcasting better. “The leading (podcast) platform changed twice over the last ten years. It can change again.”

• “Even Successful Podcasters Can Lose Audiences in New YouTube Era” argues Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman in her Soundbite newsletter this week, wondering whatever happened to Dax Shepard. Here’s a gift link she posted on LinkedIn.

Podnews’s Editor is an advisor to RSS.com who appear in a story today.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• Need tools to test your tech setup? This pack of WAV files from Saturalabs are free, and are good for format support, channel checks, loudness, fades, gating, and high-pass filtering. (Ask our Editor about that radio station he once worked at where the “right” and “left” channels were wired up the wrong way round - or the other one where the online stream was just encoding the left-hand channel).

• Podigee is now listed in the Claude Connectors Directory and the ChatGPT plugin directory. The podcast hosting company now allows AI tools to query podcast transcripts, compare analytics, write titles and descriptions, and even import other shows via RSS.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: Zero To Travel is packed with life-changing perspectives, inspiration, and practical advice for everyone from travel newbies to nomads. This show will give you everything you need to travel the world on your terms.

If it’s not odd podcast clones, it’s something else… why does the microwave have a “Popcorn” button when almost every bag of microwave popcorn tells you not to use it? To find the answer, Hyperfixed talked to the microwave industry, to the popcorn industry, and even cold called the man who patented the first microwave popcorn sensor, the technology behind the first popcorn button.

Richard Fawal, founder and CEO of Voxtopica, is the guest in this week’s PodBiz. He talks about why mission-driven and educational spaces are powerful avenues for professional podcasting.

On the Podnews Weekly Review this week, Steven Goldstein suggests that RSS isn’t podcasting’s future. “It won’t stand the test of time,” he suggests. “That’s not so great for us, but let’s be realistic about where things are going.”

As New Zealand heads to the polls, Take It From Us with Kent Johns brings two conversations that sit apart from the campaign noise. You’ll hear former Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson and former National Party leader Todd Muller speak more candidly than they ever could while in office about the very personal toll of a life in politics. It’s not about parties or policy. It’s about the people behind the billboards, and it’s for listeners of any political leaning.

Podcasts in the wild

Spotted by Podnews reader Chiara, a “conspiracy theory podcasting game” that’s suitable for 3-5 podcasters. Not sure what this says about podcasting, but we’ll not be signing up for the launch of this thing BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT “BIG GAMES” WANT YOU TO DO, SHEEPLE.