Ireland’s award-winning podcasts

• The winners of the All-Ireland Podcast Awards were announced. Nicky Byrne won the Spotlight Award. The Irish Independent won two separate awards. We’ve a full list of the winners.

• The invite-only Podcast Business Summit took place in Los Angeles. It was hosted by Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman, who shared this gift-link to read her coverage. (Podnews readers can get a 25% discount off her newsletter.)

• How loyal is your podcast audience? The ideal is for repeat listeners, not just tire-kickers. Dan Misener at Bumper has learned that every podcast has an average lifetime value score, which goes up and down depending on the promotion your podcast gets (and whether it’s any good). The score has been added to the Bumper Dashboard.

  • Want a peek at ours? For the Podnews Weekly Review, you can see a significant jump in new audience when we had Jeanine Wright from Inception Point AI on (Sep 26), and we’re seeing more new audience on Apple Podcasts recently. Apple Podcasts listeners are more loyal, too; but Spotify’s slowly creeping up. And here’s our overview.

• Newsletter platform beehiiv annnounced a number of additions to its product line, including podcasts. You can now integrate an already-existing podcast on your beehiiv site, and it’ll show latest episodes and other details. (It doesn’t offer podcast hosting, despite saying so in its press release).

• Don’t host your podcast with Soundwise. It’s emerged that the company does not offer redirects, according to their support team: so if you ever decide to leave the company to another that might be better then, tough, you - and your audience - are stuck forever. Soundwise is not a wise choice, in our opinion.

• The Washington Post has signed with Triton Digital for podcast monetisation and measurement.

• SF Sketchfest, a comedy festival in January, has announced some of the live podcasts that will be part of the event, including Stuff You Should Know … meanwhile, On Air Fest in Brooklyn in late February has announced the first wave of headline talent and programming for its 2026 flagship festival.

• Audiochuck has added Campside Media’s Chameleon to its network. The show explores the lives of scammers and masters of disguise operating in plain sight … PodcastOne has launched Help Me I’m Single with dating coach and matchmaker Blaine Anderson … and The Golf Channel has picked up the Vanity Index Podcast, and will broadcast it weekly on Wednesday mornings.

• First seen at Podcast Movement in Dallas, Podwars has been launched by Ausha. The tool gives visiblity checks for your podcast in Apple Podcasts for specific keywords.

• For Trans+ History Week, in May 2026, UK-based LGBTQIA+ publisher QueerAF has launched a paid commission scheme for Trans+ audio creatives.

• You can now create and save your own templates in Descript. The service also supports more languages for translation and dubbing.

• And in her newsletter, Julia Barton critiques TV shows about podcasting. As one example: Only Murders In The Building partially uses iPhones pointed “in the general direction of people being interviewed”, but also uses a stand-up microphone, leading to inconsistent sound - not that it matters because there’s no producer or sound editor, seemingly, and oddly nobody actually uploads it either.

Enter The Webbys. Be Big on What’s Next.

Paid content

For 30 years, The Webby Awards has set the standard for Internet excellence. Since 1996, it has been recognized as the preeminent international honor for the best of the Internet, with last year’s Webbys receiving nearly 13,000 entries from all 50 states and more than 70 countries worldwide. This milestone year celebrates three decades of honoring the innovators, creators, and visionaries who have shaped culture online and the next generation of groundbreaking work.

By participating in The Webbys, you place your work on the same stage as boundary-pushing talent, like past Webby Winners Audible, Crooked Media, iHeart Podcasts, PRX, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Lemonada Media, Vox Media, Jay Shetty, Mel Robbins, Las Cultaristas, and many more.

New this year: Expanded offerings in Podcasts, including Best New Podcast, Best Video Podcast, Best Video Podcast Host, Interview or Talk Show – Entertainment & Culture, and Interview or Talk Show – News, Business & Society. New Creator honors now also include Podcast Creators, further spotlighting the voices and stories shaping today’s digital culture.

Learn more, and enter the 30th Annual Webby Awards by the Final Entry Deadline on December 19th, 2025.

Moves and hires

• Stephanie Arakelian has joined Mark Manson’s team at Solved as Podcast Growth Strategist, leading audience growth across both the podcast and YouTube platforms, as well as brand strategy.

Podcast News

Ep 446 of Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy interviews Luca Ferrari, the co-founder of Bending Spoons, the company which acquired Streamyard last year (and has also acquired Evernote, WeTransfer, Brightcove, Vimeo and AOL).

The Love Boat Podcast is new from some of the original cast of the TV show; and the second episode, out now, pays tribute to MASH star and frequent Love Boat guest, Loretta Swit, in her final interview.

The indie podcast People of Agency is a new podcast that looks at one US institution and tells the surprising, human stories inside it. Season one focuses on the United States Postal Service - which was the backbone that helped create the United States, receives no regular taxpayer funding, and is now under threat.

Winning is new from Rosenblatt Law - a six-part series exploring the mindset, strategy, and resilience behind high performance across law, business, sport, and the arts. It’s hosted by Ian Rosenblatt OBE.

Grim Death and Bill the Electrocuted Criminal is the result of a new partnership between Cineverse’s horror division, Bloody Disgusting, and fantasy audio studio Echoverse. It’s an audio adaptation of the Thomas E. Sniegoski illustrated novel.

Surviving Trump launched a six-part investigative series tracing the evolution of America’s current immigration crackdown. Host Bella Goode follows the human impact of raids, then moves deeper inside the system. The series exposes the architects behind today’s enforcement machine, unpacks the political language driving public opinion, and closes with a look at how communities nationwide are pushing back. It’s a clear, gripping look at how immigration policy is reshaping democracy in real time.

From the underground clubs that birthed music that took over the world, to the hustlers who made the city a mecca for filmmaking, and the churches whose pastors influence politics, Atlanta Is… tells the stories behind the rise of one of the most important cities on the planet. Launched this month, it’s the first oral history of its kind for Atlanta.