Kylie Kelce was on the prime of the charts. The previous subject hockey coach and NFL royalty had dethroned Joe Rogan in his personal area — and his followers couldn’t imagine it.
It occurred late final yr: Kelce — whose marriage to former Philadelphia Eagles heart Jason Kelce had pulled her into the limelight — had launched a podcast referred to as Not Gonna Lie With Kylie Kelce, selling it as a medium for her opinions on motherhood, sports activities, and, sometimes, politics.
Podcasting is a male-saturated world. Whereas Alex Cooper’s uber-successful Name Her Daddy podcast is among the many few exceptions, males are inclined to occupy the highest spots on podcasting charts. Assume Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Andrew Huberman.
So it got here as a shock, particularly to Rogan’s followers, when Kelce’s debut in December unseated The Joe Rogan Expertise from Apple’s No. 1 slot, and held the highest spot for 10 days on Spotify’s chart. Certainly, a few of Rogan’s followers claimed the numbers will need to have been artificially inflated. Kelce, they claimed, was a no person.
And but the 2 exhibits would proceed to commerce locations on Spotify for the subsequent few weeks. Even now, although it solely publishes as soon as per week, Not Gonna Lie routinely stays in Spotify’s prime 10.
There are a lot of believable causes for the present’s breakout success: her Kelce and Taylor Swift connections, her capability to talk relatably about motherhood and femininity, the present’s comparatively quick (45-minute) size in comparison with rivals. However no matter what fuels it, her journey to the highest of the charts — and the ensuing disbelief, mockery, and sizzling takes about that success — reveal a extra fascinating dynamic in leisure and information media consumption in 2025.
Podcasts have rapidly grow to be one of many essential methods Individuals inform themselves. Whereas there are nonetheless conventional newscasts from information organizations, the preferred podcasts, notably because the pandemic, are piloted by charismatic, trusted, and unpolished creators. Their content material is a mixture of information, political evaluation, cultural commentary, and popular culture — with hosts typically promising to ship the reality or have the conversations nobody else is having.
However not everyone seems to be listening to the identical factor. Individuals are sorting themselves into ideological bubbles, giving these exhibits and their hosts the attain and affect that was as soon as the unique provenance of mainstream media.
Audiences’ ideological fragmentation, mixed with these hosts’ energy, are creating totally different realms of fact, each through the hosts’ opinions and the present occasions they select to debate for his or her followers. Information and knowledge is getting filtered to distinct teams of shoppers in radically other ways — and there are not any indicators these habits are about to vary.
Certainly, because the second Trump administration takes off, they’re positioned to additional drive American polarization, serving as the appropriate’s chief communications wing in a single realm and as a method to inform and manage opposition in one other.
Individuals have grow to be obsessive about listening
Podcasts’ function within the 2024 marketing campaign, throughout which Donald Trump sat down for free-wheeling conversations with the preferred male hosts and Kamala Harris performed catch-up with smaller liberal ones, demonstrated the medium’s surging predominance in American life.
A bit greater than a decade in the past, barely greater than a tenth of Individuals reported listening to 1 in a given month. That quantity has since quadrupled, to just about half of the American inhabitants over the age of 12, in response to Edison Analysis’s “Infinite Dial” media survey in 2024.
The sorts of podcasts individuals are listening to have additionally shifted: What was as soon as an area dominated by public radio and institution establishments has given method to an enormous ecosystem of impartial podcasters and non-news group affiliated exhibits. As of 2023, lower than 20 p.c of the highest 451 most-listened to exhibits are related to mainstream information stalwarts like NPR, the New York Instances, or The Ringer.
Till lately, males, millennials, and older Individuals had been the first shoppers of those exhibits; however over the previous couple of years, Gen Zers and ladies are driving progress in podcasting audiences.
Weekly, and even, day by day, discussions that fold in information and politics with popular culture, sports activities, self-help recommendation, and private tales are how almost a 3rd of America retains updated with present occasions. In 2023, a Pew Analysis Middle report discovered that about two-thirds of American podcast listeners hear information “mentioned” on their exhibits, even when it’s not the primary cause they hear.
And but what they’re listening to will be radically totally different relying on the host and the audiences they’re cultivating. Reality and opinion typically mix collectively in conversations that filter data, and listeners aren’t essentially higher knowledgeable on account of it.
And listeners actually belief what they hear on these exhibits
This new breed of podcast — the place the hosts primarily talk about sports activities, popular culture, historical past, or life-style developments and blend in some present occasions — creates a particular type of intimacy and belief. Maybe as a result of these exhibits aren’t getting down to be overtly political, audiences are loyal. These exhibits aren’t your commonplace cable information fare — they could convey on a politician, like Trump’s appearances final yr, or stay apolitical. However mostly, they blur the road between information, opinion, and evaluation.
The actual charisma and presence of podcast hosts makes them notably influential in convincing their listeners to vary habits or take motion. Understanding this affect explains why the podcast circuit was such a significant a part of the methods Trump and his marketing campaign pursued — and simply how vital they’ll be for political efforts within the subsequent 4 years.
That 2023 Pew research discovered just a few sensible examples of this sway. On common, greater than half of listeners say a podcast has moved them to look at a film or learn a e book, and about 4 in 10 had tried a brand new exercise, or began a food regimen. And there are additionally indicators of a core group of extra loyal followers who really feel comfy spending time and cash doing what these exhibits and their hosts counsel. At the very least one in 10 listeners had joined a web-based dialogue group, donated to, volunteered for, or attended a political occasion or trigger, and nearly a 3rd had purchased one thing promoted on a podcast.
This affect additionally implies that listeners anticipate podcasters to be telling them the reality. An enormous share, 87 p.c, imagine that what they’re listening to on these exhibits is “largely correct.” A 3rd say they belief this data to be extra correct than what they get from different sources.
These ranges of belief are astounding, particularly in comparison with belief in information from social media or mainstream media. And but these sorts of exhibits don’t essentially have the identical type of editorial oversight or infrastructure as conventional information organizations do to fact-check and confirm the claims and narratives they’re spreading.
And that is the place the manosphere is available in. Republicans, or Individuals who lean towards the GOP, are notably loyal and trusting of those exhibits. They report, at a lot increased charges than Democrats or Democratic leaners, that they belief podcast information greater than different sources, partially as a result of they assume these exhibits are giving them unique insights they wouldn’t hear wherever else.
Essentially the most ideological and partisan listeners report that they have a tendency to listen to opinion and evaluation that strains up with their preexisting views — they, in impact, shore themselves up in echo chambers on this ecosystem. When in comparison with reasonable Republicans, twice as many conservative Republicans say they take heed to political beliefs that largely match what they already assume, in response to Pew’s 2023 survey. The identical goes for liberal Democrats when in comparison with reasonable Democrats.
This ideological sorting additionally occurs amongst listeners of the preferred exhibits. Some 54 p.c of Rogan’s listeners, for instance, leaned towards Trump earlier than the presidential election, one Edison Analysis survey discovered. Solely 1 / 4 leaned towards Harris. Name Her Daddy’s listenership was a mirror picture. And Pod Save America, the preferred left-leaning present, is nearly solely for Democrats.
This improvement — the place audiences are fiercely loyal to their chosen hosts and fewer uncovered to others — creates an fascinating dynamic. Data and political discussions get filtered into echo chambers. And it explains how the inhabitants of those totally different ideological realms will be stunned after they rediscover the opposite, as within the case for Rogan’s followers at Kelce’s success.
The podcast bubbles that await us
These totally different realms of podcasting actuality don’t appear like they’ll disappear anytime quickly. Given Trump and the political proper’s success within the final presidential cycle, it appears extra probably that American liberals and the left will hold searching for methods to copy, or no less than mimic, what their rivals have achieved.
Which is why Not Gonna Lie’s success got here at an fascinating time: in searching for causes to elucidate Harris’s loss, Democrats and liberal thinkers recognized one main contributor. Democrats had ignored the brand new media atmosphere, and misplaced the struggle for consideration, notably the affect of those podcasts and their hosts. Trump had understood this, and began early, on the suggestion of his zoomer son Barron and youthful marketing campaign aides.
Now, Democrats have to create their very own, liberal model of Rogan, the speculation goes. They wanted their very own expansive, intimate community of relatable and reliable podcasters and influencers. The deeper angst right here was the revelation that these more and more standard podcasts might attain so many Individuals and affect their considering — and that liberals didn’t have a solution.
A realm like this exists, although it’s not as expansive as these aiding the cultural proper. The obvious Rogan replicas — streamer Hasan Piker (3 million followers), the leftist Chapo Entice Home community (about 150,000), the liberal Pod Save America bros (no less than 1.5 million listeners per episode) — have loyal and devoted followers, however there are fewer of them, and the exhibits are extra diffusely related than these within the conservative manosphere, which appeared significantly better organized round politics in 2024.
All of which suggests there’s room to develop on the left.
Podcasters themselves try to innovate to win these audiences. With declining curiosity in conventional codecs of political and exhausting information, they’re experimenting with totally different codecs: livestreams, pushing video content material, and creating much more shut relationships with audiences. Younger folks, particularly, are hungry for this type of content material and evaluation, particularly on YouTube, Rachel Janfaza, a Gen Z political guide and author, advised me. The Google-owned video platform is now the main podcast internet hosting service, pushed largely by younger folks’s demand for video-first content material. Lots of the hottest podcasts in America now file and stream straight on the platform.
“We’ll see extra motion there when it comes to exhibits including video parts to podcasts, and that may very well be an space that explodes within the coming months, as a result of [creators are seeing] … younger folks like to hold YouTube streams on within the background, or YouTube exhibits on within the background whereas [doing other things],” she stated.
This makes Kelce’s place, together with different liberal and feminine hosts like Cooper of Name Her Daddy, all of the extra fascinating to look at within the coming years. There are giant and rising audiences on the market for them to make the most of — notably younger, feminine, and liberal. So when Kelce revealed her politics “aggressively” lean left, and that she hoped to interview former first girl Michelle Obama or Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro sooner or later, some puzzled in the event that they’d discovered their reply to the appropriate.
“That Kylie Kelce might find yourself being ‘the left’s Joe Rogan’ goes to actually fuck with among the (ahem, male) pundits’ heads,” the top of 1 Democratic PAC posted on X.
Based mostly on her first six episodes, it doesn’t look like Kelce is attempting to aggressively transfer down that lane. She’s not diving into evaluation of the top of the Biden presidency or the Trump time period to this point. She’s as a substitute speaking with company in regards to the struggles of motherhood, the prices of kid care, the wrestle of elevating younger boys, and the way forward for TikTok. And that could be the entire level. She’s not saying something groundbreaking — but. However she’s saying one thing, feeding demand and cultivating an viewers that may come to belief her when she desires to say one thing huge.
