YouTube publishes top charts for 2025

• YouTube released its annual end of year trending lists. The Global Culture & Trends Report 2025 contains top ten lists of creators, topics and songs across a number countries and regions; and - for the US only - a list of top podcasts, calculated by total watch time. The Joe Rogan Experience is #1; Kill Tony is at #2; and Good Mythical Morning - a video-only show - is at #3. The full list is at the bottom of their press release.

  • The company is also rolling out YouTube Recap, a personalised look back across your activity across all of YouTube for the first time. It also links to YouTube Music’s Recap too, which is currently rolling out.

• AI tools for podcasting offer an exciting opportunity - but also a legal minefield. Writing for Podnews, Gordon P Firemark reminds us what to look for when we use AI. (As one example - if you make a logo using AI, you can’t copyright it.)

• With a hundred days until the event, Podcasthon has revealed that it already has more than 1,000 registrations from more than 40 different countries. The event in March asks you to dedicate one of your episodes to a charity of your choice, and has support from companies like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

• Headliner is running a survey on whether you use captions on YouTube. Up for grabs is a free year’s Headliner Pro account for one user.

• Some readers might have had difficulty accessing Ausha’s Podwars podcast visibility checker yesterday. This link works great.

Enter The Webbys. Prove You're The Best.

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The 30th Annual Webby Awards are open! Enter before the Final Entry Deadline on December 19th, 2025.

For three decades, The Webby Awards has been recognized as the preeminent international honor for Internet excellence. Last year’s Webby Awards received nearly 13,000 entries from around the world.

The 30th Annual Webby Awards introduces exciting new recognitions for independent creators and podcasts in 2025. Expanded categories now include Best New Podcast, Best Video Podcast, Best Video Podcast Host, as well as Interview or Talk Show – Entertainment & Culture and Interview or Talk Show – News, Business & Society.

Don’t miss the opportunity to compete for Podcast Company of the Year, another Special Achievement award for the podcast company with the highest number of wins at the 30th Annual Webby Awards.

Don’t miss your chance, enter the 30th Annual Webby Awards by the Final Entry Deadline on December 19th, 2025!

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: This Week in Tech has joined Airwave - hosted by Leo Laporte, it’s the top-ranked flagship tech podcast from TWiT.tv, and is one of the most recognised brands in tech media.

The New Media Show - absent since Todd Cochrane’s sudden passing in early September, returns today. Rob Greenlee will be joined by this week’s co-host Rob Walch - the show will now have a set of regular co-hosts. It will stream live on YouTube at 6pm ET tonight.

In today’s episode of The Female Stoic Podcast you’ll hear a discussion about bias and come to understand the importance of objectivity when interacting with others, and also yourself - by examining Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. The novel is used as a starting point for our look at why, as Stoics, it is so important to create a distance between ourselves and biased reactivity, which does little to preserve our inner peace.

86% of women feel overwhelmed by the amount of pregnancy information out there? Labour of Love with Síomha Ní Ruairc launches today - it’s the broadcaster’s first pregnancy, and we’ll hear her cutting through the unsolicited advice and avalanche of knowledge to find out what parents-to-be really need to know. A 6 part mini series CWB original podcast.

From Patrick Wyman (host of Tides of History and Fall of Rome) comes Past Lives. Every week, this history show focuses on the lived experiences of real people in the past, from the Stone Age to the near-present. Peasants, laborers, artisans, merchants, soldiers, and the enslaved are too often overlooked in favor of kings, generals, and politicians; not here. The real people who populate our shared past mattered, and so do you.

When a police officer is found dead in her home with a bullet between her eyes, who investigates? One of Their Own, a new five-episode investigative podcast from KPBS, reopens the case of Officer Ciara Estrada — and exposes the conflicts, silence and unanswered questions that surround the death of a young officer who was one of their own.

When the world turns cold, Season’s Readings – Christmas Stories and Holiday Tales is your fireside refuge from the season’s noise — a handpicked collection of classic and original tales, read with warmth and heart by voice actor Don McDonald. Experience stories, both joyful and bittersweet, that remind us why light, laughter, and love matter most when the nights grow longest.