Today’s Big Story

Podcasts Are Booming

As the pods embrace video, the medium is now taking on TV

Over the last few years, podcast listenership has grown with more than 100 million people actively tuning into podcasts at least once a week in the United States. As podcasting has matured, podcasts have expanded into more than just audio content, but into true multi-channel communities. According to a recent Prosper Insights & Analytics survey, nearly 30% of Gen-Z listen to podcasts regularly. And now they’re watching them, too.

The share of Americans who say they prefer listening to podcasts with video grew 10 percentage points between October 2022 and August 2024, from 32% to 42%. Similar bumps were observed among all generations, too. Some of the reasons for video podcast fandom include an improved ability to focus on show content and a desire to see the facial expressions of hosts and guests.

The addition of video has to be the biggest and most fundamental shift for the relatively new medium of podcasting. Edison Research, the gold standard of podcast analysts, laid it out last month: “YouTube, typically known as the go-to platform for video content, has risen to the top as the most popular service used for podcast listening in the U.S. … 31% of weekly podcast listeners age 13 and up choose YouTube as the service they use most to listen to podcasts, surpassing Spotify (27%) and Apple Podcasts (15%).”

Ben Cohen argues in the Wall Street Journal that for younger listeners, the switch to video is a fundamental change. It means that podcasts aren’t the new radio. They’re more akin to a new TV: “For a decade, podcasts were something you listened to while you were doing something else: driving, working out, unloading the dishwasher. That was a passive experience. Now an entire generation has been conditioned to think of podcasts as something they can actively watch any time on any kind of screen—a phone, a computer, a TV.”

The Intelligencer says that this might be overreading the data; “most video podcasts are still primarily audio products, legible to listeners without the video feed from the studio (or sofa or webcam).” While Edison’s research notes that video helps young listeners feel “more connected” to podcasters, we’re still left to wonder how, in a few short years, YouTube became not just a popular place for podcasts but podcasting’s new default. And they think it’s because of things like TikTok. And it makes sense, right? Audio doesn’t really go viral. But videos? Much more likely to get shared and streamed far and wide. Not to mention, videos can be recommended by YouTube’s savvy algorithm.

On the Cusp of Ceasefire Deal

Israel and Hezbollah are ‘very close,’ regional source says

A long-awaited ceasefire deal between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is “very close,” a regional source told CNN on Sunday, even as an uptick in Israeli attacks saw the death toll in Lebanon since mid-September pass a grim milestone. More than 3,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the uptick in hostilities, according to a recent tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, underscoring the urgency of a ceasefire.

As negotiators press on, Hezbollah fired about 250 rockets and other projectiles into Israel on Sunday, wounding seven people in one of the militant group’s heaviest barrages in months, in response to deadly Israeli strikes in Beirut. According to the Associated Press, some of the rockets reached the Tel Aviv area in the heart of Israel.

The draft ceasefire agreement includes a 60-day transition period during which the Israeli military would withdraw from southern Lebanon, the Lebanese army would deploy in areas close to the border and Hezbollah would move its heavy weapons north of the Litani River. The draft agreement also includes a U.S.-led oversight committee to monitor implementation and address violations. Apparently, the agreement was nearing completion last Thursday when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, U.S. and Israeli officials say.

The Resistance Goes Quiet

Trump’s first win sparked waves of public activism and aggressive media coverage. This time, not so much.

While President-elect Trump's 2016 win sparked shock, outrage and massive protests, the response to his 2024 victory has been noticeably more muted. Yes, there were demonstrations. Marchers in Manhattan took over streets carrying a block-wide banner that read, “We Won’t Back Down.” Activists in Los Angeles and Chicago decried Mr. Trump’s abortion and immigration policies and vowed to descend on Washington to protest his inauguration in January. But on the whole, there’s been little mass mobilization (despite plenty of resistance to Trump across the country).

According to the New York Times, some have noted that Trump had not appeared to be swayed by protests, petitions, hashtag campaigns or other tools of mass dissent during this last administration. So many have been calling for a fresh playbook. And both experts and activists expect the renewed resistance to come in different forms. Tamika Middleton, managing director at Women's March, told Axios the organization is trying to find new ways to mobilize people, such as holding local-level training sessions on combating misinformation and sharing strategies for immigrants to protect themselves.

“The exhaustion is real” among those who organized against Trump during his first term, only to see him elected again, Middleton says. So part of the shifting playbook could be a more focused approach, targeting specific Trump policies versus Trumpism as a whole.

Is AI Hitting a Wall?

Just as the hype around it reaches the stratosphere

It’s been two years since OpenAI bestowed ChatGPT upon the world and set off a kind of gold rush for artificial intelligence. Billions of dollars are pouring into AI-focused and AI-adjacent companies on the promise that the technology is going to accelerate (or possibly obliterate) every aspect of modern life. Of course, the key to that narrative is the promise that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT keep improving at an exponential rate.

But skeptics have warned for years about “scaling laws”—the idea that you can continually improve a model’s output just by throwing more data and computing power at it. These aren’t so much laws as they are educated guesses, though. And the truth is, even the scientists who build LLMs don’t fully understand how they work. And now, some of the leading language models appear to be hitting a wall, according to recent reports.

Tech news outlet The Information cited unnamed OpenAI employees who said that some of the company’s researchers believe its next flagship AI model, Orion, “isn’t reliably better than its predecessor in handling certain tasks.” Reuters reports that “researchers at major AI labs have been running into delays and disappointing outcomes in the race to release a large language model that outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, which is nearly two years old, according to three sources familiar with private matters.” And even Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist who once penned an essay titled “Why AI Will Save the World,” recently said on a podcast that the available models are “kind of hitting the same ceiling on capabilities.” Of course, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is pushing back on the reports, posting on X earlier this month that “there is no wall.”

For the Guys Who Want to Improve Their Sex Life

MysteryVibe’s award-winning couples' vibrators are on sale

Looking to make the most of your time spent indoors this winter? Bring in the ultimate in personalized pleasure to your bedroom with MysteryVibe's line-up of multi-award-winning vibrators. These game-changers are built for men who want to go beyond the basics. Clinically proven to boost performance, pleasure and arousal for everyone involved, these vibrators are FDA-registered, and sex and relationship expert recommended. And now you can save 35% on anything from the brand during MysteryVibe’s early Black Friday Sale.

Shoot your shot.