How is Youtube changing the podcast space?

In a December 2025 episode of Galaxy Brain titled ‘How YouTube Ate Podcasts and TV’  – itself a video podcast – host Charlie Warzel turns to the camera and asks: “Why are you seeing my face?” It’s a simple question with a surprisingly complicated answer, and it cuts right to the heart of what’s happening to podcasting right now.

 

the line between a podcast and a TV talk show is blurrier than ever

The medium we once associated with a commute, a pair of earphones, and nothing else to look at has undergone a dramatic transformation. Video podcasts are booming, YouTube is dominant, and the line between a podcast and a TV talk show is blurrier than ever.

 

YouTube’s Quiet Takeover

YouTube didn’t set out to conquer podcasting – it just sort of happened. As Bloomberg reporter Ashley Carman puts it, it was “the sleeping giant”, a platform so enormous that its influence eventually reaches every corner of media. During the pandemic, YouTube noticed people were already watching podcasts on their platform without any dedicated push from the company. So it got serious: launching podcast landing pages, hiring specialist executives, and offering grants to creators to film their shows.

 

The results have been staggering. YouTube now boasts over one billion monthly viewers for podcast content worldwide – dwarfing Spotify in scale. 31% of weekly podcast listeners now consume podcasts on YouTube, compared to 21% on Spotify and 12% on Apple Podcasts. And in the UK, YouTube’s influence has spread even further: in an unprecedented moment at the end of 2025, YouTube overtook the BBC in monthly audience reach figures published by Barb, the UK’s official ratings body. For a broadcaster with decades of dominance, that’s a seismic shift.

 

What’s the difference between an investigative analysis podcast in video form and a documentary?

The Rise of the Video Podcast

The format itself has changed beyond recognition. Where podcasting once meant audio-only storytelling – think Serial, those gripping episodes you’d devour on the bus — it now increasingly means cameras, studios, lighting rigs, and thumbnail design. What’s the difference between an investigative analysis podcast in video form and a documentary?

 

Podcasts in the top 30 with video available have doubled year-over-year since 2022. Figures like MrBallen, who built a true crime YouTube channel before launching a podcast that now pulls in millions of monthly downloads, represent a new breed: creators who blur the line between platforms entirely.

 

The appeal for creators is algorithmic as much as artistic. Joe Marler, the rugby player and podcast host, has noted that video is simply more shareable than audio – it’s why clips go viral on social media in a way that audio never could. The algorithms on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels reward visual content, surfacing it to audiences who didn’t even know they were looking for it. For Gen Z listeners, 84% discovered new video podcasts through YouTube.

 

But Are We Actually Watching?

Youtube has become the new radio for a generation that grew up with screens

Here’s the twist. For all the talk of video’s dominance, a lot of people are still essentially just listening. Video podcast consumers spend around 40% of their YouTube podcast time listening to the audio without watching, and among 18-to-34-year-olds, half prefer to have the video playing in the background. YouTube has become the new radio for a generation that grew up with screens – it’s on in the background, ambient, half-attended to.

 

NPR host Rachel Martin, who made the leap to video podcasting, argues the visual element does add something real. Watching a guest absorb a difficult question, noticing the nervous foot tap, the suppressed smile – these things shape conversation in ways audio can’t. “There are so many more ingredients to the conversation”, she says. And in a media landscape where trust is at a premium, she argues that showing your face humanises you to your audience in ways a disembodied voice can’t.

What Gets Lost?

Not everyone is convinced. Some worry that the soul of the medium is being sacrificed. As writer Derek Thompson argues, “everything is television now” – podcasts have become a replacement for daytime TV and late-night chat shows, autocompleting from one episode to the next, tailored to your interests. The intimacy that drew people to audio in the first place – that feeling of a voice speaking directly to you – risks being swallowed by the visual noise.

 

I hope we don’t forget the power of audio, just to try to game an algoritan

As one podcast executive put it plainly: “I hope we don’t forget the power of audio, just to try to game an algorithm”.

 

It’s a fair warning. YouTube has transformed podcasting – expanding its reach, its audiences, and its ambition. Whether it’s enhanced the medium or just televised, it is, perhaps, a matter of how you prefer to listen.