26,000 tickets sold last weekend for Goalhanger’s Fest

• What can fill the whole of London’s Southbank Centre for three days, and sell 26,000 tickets? Podcasting. Goalhanger’s The Rest Is Fest took place over the weekend, with 22 shows and live podcasting from the Goalhanger stable of podcasts. We’ve tons of pictures to show how big podcasting can be.

• Fyyd, a German-language podcast directory, is to close - after receiving a copyright claim for unauthorised use of podcast artwork. Its owner wrote: “I have received a cease and desist letter from (news agency) the dpa regarding the graphics of an NDR podcast. I just don’t have the strength for it right now. Because I am neither wealthy nor healthy, I am going to minimise the risk for the future and close fyyd.”

  • Opinion: We’ve covered companies sending these sorts of things before. Where a photograph for a thumbnail has been used under licence from a publisher, then our legal advice (and the advice of stock image libraries that we asked) is that this use should be covered by the publisher’s licence: even if a resized/cached copy of an image by a directory is made for privacy or technical purposes; there is some US case law to that effect. But - a slow hand-clap to the German dpa, who it appears may succeed in closing the only German podcast directory, giving more control to the US-run directories of Spotify, Apple and Podcast Index which are outside their legal jurisdiction. We’ve asked dpa for comment: they haven’t replied.

• In Canada, Pod The North has announced the Pod The North Pitch Contest, which will be held at PodSummit YYC on Oct 17. You can win over $3,500 to support your podcast. Appplications to take part are open now.

• BBC Radio’s In Our Time will be available in video on the BBC iPlayer from later this month. The oldest podcast from the BBC, it won’t be available on video outside the UK.

• Rankers:

  • In the UK, Edison Research published the top 25 podcasts for Q2 2026. Goalhanger has four shows in the top ten.
  • Genuina Media published The 20 Biggest Podcasts in Spain - and, the company says, the list highlights how fragmented the industry is. The #1 is The Wild Project - also the only podcast in Spain’s 500 largest YouTube channels. The #2 - El Podcast de Marian Rohas Estapé - is an exclusive to Spotify.
  • Podscribe released its August 2026 Rankings. In podcasts, Crime Junkie is top by audio reach and by downloads/views per episode; The MeidasTouch Podcast is #1 by downloads/views per month. In podcast publishers, Spotify leads the way; and in podcast advertisers, Mint Mobile leads the way, spending $4.9mn.

• If you speak Russian, VibeVO and Go Influence analysed more than 4,000 video clips from 141 creators to see how they perform. Of the 250mn+ views, the top 10% of clips accounted for two-thirds of all views. It’s not just podcast clips; but it does show the wide variance of how well clips work - and, perhaps, that they aren’t the tool for everyone.

  • As a note: Podnews’s website has been unavailable in Russia and Belarus since 2022, after the Russian government’s aggression against the people of Ukraine.

• There’s a new podcast app just for kids. Kids Podcasts has launched an iPhone app with shows that parents approve from a list of over 200+, and listening rules can be set for daily limits. The app also connects to a Yoto player.

• Serial Productions and the Metro desk of The New York Times are working on a new, always-on, narrative podcast focused on New York City. The Times is looking for a senior multimedia producer. (Is this the first always-on show from Serial?)

• “Popularity can be a factor in an award. It shouldn’t be the price of admission,” says NaVell Lee in an opinion piece today. “The Golden Globes has taken an important step by giving podcasting a seat at the table. Now it’s time to make sure more of podcasting has a legitimate opportunity to earn that seat.”

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• Audacity v4 has been released: with a brand new, cleaner, user interface for the popular audio editing program. The software now promotes (but doesn’t require) a paid cloud-saving service from the company, but otherwise remains free - including noise reduction, vocal removers, and AI transcription.
• When editing video podcasts, one of the most annoying (but important) things is to sync all the audio feeds together to the camera video. WaveXML is in free beta, and does exactly that. It works with Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Avid.

Tips and tricks - with Podcast Movement NYC

• What changed on YouTube? Your podcast growth plan doesn’t need to change, suggests Headliner in a new blog post.
• One of the confirmed keynoters at Podcast Movement NYC is Tom Webster. Here he is at Dallas last year, looking through that year’s data. The Podcast Landscape was just awarded the 2025 Content Marketing Institute award for Best Data Storytelling and was one of five international finalists for Best B2B Branded Content Program, cementing this study’s place not only in the world of podcasting but also with marketers and advertisers all over the world.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast aims to match nature time with the average amount of American kid screen time - which is more than a thousand hours a year. Nature time, research shows contributes extensively to every area of childhood development.

C’est moi. Salut. Le problème, c’est moi. Plongez dans l’univers musical de Taylor Swift avec L’Herméneutique Taylor Swift - le podcast qui analyse et interprète ses chansons en français. Profitez d’une exploration de l’œuvre de l’une des artistes les plus influentes de notre époque, et découvrez les histoires, les références cachées et les émotions derrière chaque titre. La saison trois commence aujourd’hui et se concentre sur Evermore.

Alan Cross’s true-crime-meets-music podcast Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry is going on a tour across Canada. Here’s the website to find out more.

Lamplighter Kids Stories has launched its first full animated episode on YouTube: Hamsternauts in Space. The show has been going for nearly seven years, sharing original audio stories.

The World and Everything In It is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year; and has just also hit a total of 100 million downloads. The faith-based podcast is a weekly overview of every Supreme Court case, biblical cultural analysis, and key international stories.

You Might Be Right has just released a special tribute episode in honor of Dolly Parton. Both former Tennessee governors share a uniquely close personal relationship with Dolly, having worked alongside her throughout their respective administrations to expand her Imagination Library program from a single county in East Tennessee to all 95 counties in the state. Expect stories of moments from their time with Dolly, including her famous humor, her extraordinary business acumen, and her unwavering commitment to her Tennessee roots.

Before the six wives, the executions and the break with Rome, Henry VIII was a charismatic, athletic second son never expected to become king. How did this dazzling Renaissance prince metamorphose into an aging, authoritarian dictator? In Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and Dr Joanne Paul chart Henry’s dark descent, exploring how a monarch driven by dynastic desperation ultimately rewrote the rules of England to satisfy his own unshakeable will.

Spooky Season Begins! Spooky season starts early on After Dark, the podcast exploring history’s darkest tales. This month, delve into the chilling world of medieval werewolf trials, uncover the secrets of England’s most haunted house, and discover the tragic story of Bridget Cleary, the Irish woman murdered after being accused of being a fairy.

Unquiet Realities is a cinematic nonfiction series set in the Driftless Region — the unglaciated bluff country of steep valleys, wooded ridges, and Mississippi River towns that the last ice age went around. The Midwest Mountains. Season One is a complete four-part documentary arc: field investigation, archival history, and the accounts of people who saw something they haven’t been able to put down since. Hauntings, UFO encounters, cryptids, folklore older than the towns that still tell it.

Meet Hannah Gaber, your new Jewish friend, and host of Jew-ish. She’s revamping the pod and building a community for all the deep-dives into whatever the heck it means to be Jewish, answers to questions you weren’t sure you should ask, plenty of humor and alllll the opinions. Jew curious? Listen in!