Do self-congratulating celebrities need more plaudits?

The two biggest awards shows in America are mixing things up for 2026. In March the Academy Awards will present its inaugural Oscar for Best Casting. And on January 11th the Oscars’ boozy cousin, the Golden Globes, will also hand out a new prize: Best Podcast.

At first glance, it might seem odd that the Globes—which have celebrated films since 1944 and television shows since 1956—are now judging another medium. But that is to misunderstand the place of podcasts in the cultural landscape. These days every celebrity worth her larynx has a podcast, or at least appears on them: they have become as essential a stop on the film-promotion circuit as late-night talk shows once were. Podcasts may also have helped Donald Trump back to the White House: from July 2024 until election day, he appeared on 20 to Kamala Harris’s eight, and his were vastly more popular.

It is also to misunderstand podcasts’ relationship to the screen. Many films and TV shows are adapted from hit podcasts. They provided the source material for “Dirty John”, “Gaslit” and “Homecoming”, all of which picked up Golden Globe nominations in recent years. In 2023 Amanda Seyfried won Best Actress in a Limited Series for her turn in “The Dropout”. (The mini-series and podcast charted the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, the now-jailed ex-boss of Theranos, a blood-testing startup.) And podcasts may have started as an audio medium, but they are increasingly a visual one as well. YouTube says that 1bn people watch podcast content on the platform every month.

The Golden Globes, then, are not wrong to include podcasts alongside film and television. But their approach is misguided. The six shortlisted shows raise depressing questions about podcasts’ evolution—and their future.

“SmartLess” features three famous actors (Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes) chatting to other famous actors. “Good Hang” features a famous actress (Amy Poehler) chatting to her celebrity friends. “Armchair Expert” features a celebrity actor (Dax Shepard) chatting to other celebrities, with the occasional writer, academic or fan of the podcast thrown in for variation. “Call Her Daddy” features a now-celebrity host (Alex Cooper) chatting to other celebrities, mostly women, with the occasional news-you-can-use episode for the show’s largely female audience (“How to Leave a Bitchboy”).

“The Mel Robbins Show” is a self-help extravaganza; its popularity has made the host a celebrity. She talks to other self-helpers about “Why You Feel Lost in Life” and “How to Lose Belly Fat, Sleep Better, & Stop Suffering Now”. Rounding out the category is the inevitable bowl of spinach: “Up First” is National Public Radio’s daily news podcast. It has as much chance of winning as its hosts do of flapping their cardigan-clad arms and flying to their next breakfast meeting.

Of course, griping at nominees is an awards-season tradition. But the process used to select the nominated podcasts was bizarre. For the Globes’ film and television categories, studios and production houses submit titles for consideration. They are then assessed by the Globes’ voters: a group of almost 400 entertainment journalists from 95 countries.

To be sure, the podcast ecosystem is more diffuse. It has lower barriers to entry than film or tv. Voters could not be expected to listen to and choose from all 4.5m podcasts. But rather than approach production companies, the Globes asked Luminate, an analytics firm, to come up with a list of 25 of the most popular podcasts, taken from the five most widely used podcast platforms. Voters then selected six titles from that list.

Popularity and excellence have always been two separate, albeit sometimes overlapping, things. The Globes acknowledge this distinction already by offering separate awards for Best Picture and for Box-Office Achievement. They do not base their TV nominations on Nielsen’s ratings—otherwise they would have to recognise “NCIS” and “Bluey” every year.

The types of podcast that made the genre popular still exist, but the Globes’ approach means that they have been ignored. The first season of “Serial” was acclaimed for its deep reporting on a murder case, for instance, and similar investigative work was evident in “Missing in the Amazon”. There was the inventive immediacy of “Shell Game”, which examines AI at a personal level, and an illuminating portrayal of a musician in “Fela Kuti”. These podcasts were triumphs of storytelling and sound design.

Perhaps it should surprise nobody that Hollywood-centred voters chose mainly Hollywood-adjacent podcasts. But is it rude to wonder how much time each voter spent actually listening to the nominees? The five non-NPR candidates are loose and lack rigour. They are identical in form: the host(s) and guest(s) spend around an hour congratulating each other on their kindness, funniness and general wonderfulness. They are light on facts about the world and heavy on personal trivia. Anyone who has ever wondered about Dave Franco’s skincare routine (pinched from his wife, may involve snails), how many pictures Julia Louis-Dreyfus has on her phone (56,276) or what Mr Shepard calls breasts (blampers) will have their curiosity sated.

They follow a path blazed by Marc Maron, who recently ended his celebrity-interview podcast, “WTF”, after 16 years, and Joe Rogan, the most popular podcaster in the world, whose shows run to an average of two hours and 39 minutes. Similar open-ended talk shows abound; if you include political talk shows, the numbers swell even more. Plenty of these are pleasant enough entertainment for a run or a commute, but instil newfound appreciation for the time constraints imposed on traditional talk-show hosts.

Such programmes are easy and cheap to produce, and guaranteed to be popular as people like eavesdropping on celebrities being themselves. (Some call the relationship “parasocial”, which is grad-school lingo for “enjoys listening to”.) It is doubtful that most people listen to them intently all the way through: they are background chatter as you complete boring chores. The best moments get clipped and put on YouTube shorts, where they can rack up millions of views.

Why complain about something so many people love? After all, anyone who wants to keep ablamper of the news still has plenty of podcasts to choose from. Is it snobbery? A general suspicion of light-hearted fun? Jealousy that none of The Economist’s podcasts was nominated? No, possibly and no.

It is instead dismay that a form still so rich with possibility risks being swallowed by a dull conformity. Ellen Horne, who directs the podcasting programme at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, worries that the Globes’ choices, and the trends behind them, “will affect what gets cancelled and what doesn’t”. A star host is “a cheap shortcut: you don’t have to spend money building something if you’re just borrowing the celebrity power of a big name.”

The Globes’ foresight is commendable. It is good that they are choosing to recognise a new and important medium. But the Best Film category includes a range of ambitious and original nominees, not just hits. That the podcast category does not is a missed opportunity. ■