Podcasts, Comedy & Changing Forms Of Entertainment

Podcasts are everywhere these days. We all know someone who has one; if you are lucky, it’s just one. Some of us have half a dozen friends who think they’re going to be the next Joe Rogan, and usually, they’re not exactly the most gripping hour or two of the week, let's be honest.

Gone are the days of helping out a friend by simply liking their Facebook page or following their business page on Instagram. It’s a commitment now, a bi-weekly, two-hour-long, incoherently arranged episode where people tackle some of the most controversial topics on the planet or spend an hour rambling about nonsense, often with no suitable middle ground.

Seeking Out Helpful & Entertaining Podcasts

For comedians and entertainers, podcasts are a valuable tool. For those who know how to leverage it, it can be the most effective way to speak directly to their audience. They can use it to promote their shows and feature guests on their podcast who share their sense of humor.

One of the problems is market saturation, and the fact that accreditation in a global market is more challenging to prove than it was in the days before the internet, when experts who appeared on radio and TV actually had to prove their credentials. 

Nowadays, podcasters with little to no credibility hold the world to rights from their mother’s basement on a rented microphone, and some of these ridiculous views can spread virally across social media like wildfire, all while social media bosses fall asleep at the wheel, with limited fact-checking or damage control.

That said, that’s not to say there aren’t quality breakdowns and industry insight across a myriad of entertainment sectors. Those who have a penchant for poker, for instance, can attest to this. There’s now an encyclopedia of power, knowledge, terms, and walkthrough guides available online, often for free. 

There are detailed tournament breakdowns, such as the WSOP 2025 recap, and an array of podcasts featuring ex-professionals and those with a good understanding of the intricacies of the poker industry.

It’s essential to conduct research and ensure that the opinions you are taking on board are from unbiased sources and from individuals who have a proven history of working within the industry they claim to be an expert in. 

Social Media’s Indispensable Role

Even in areas of entertainment that have often relied on face-to-face interaction and the power of in-person dynamics, social media has become an integral part of the landscape. In the world of poker, as you can see below, social media posts are now used as one of the most impactful forms of knowledge building and marketing. 

From an entertainment perspective, this goes a lot deeper. The emergence of AI tools that enable people to create full movies and ideas with a few prompts could endanger a number of highly skilled creative jobs, the likes of which, up until a few years ago, were among the safest jobs in entertainment. 

As questions linger about the future of copyright and how it will adapt in a changing digital world, social media is where this issue first emerged over a decade ago. 

The emergence of meme pages and users stealing creative material created a domino effect, whereby large swaths of consumers with no stake in the game when it comes to originality were drawn to marketing ideas that allowed them to use other people’s content to build their own follower base.

So long as it makes them laugh, and with this whole shift taking place on social media, comedians and other entertainers had to adapt or risk falling behind. 

The rise of Photoshop and other tools has allowed people to express a wide array of quirky ideas, whether through photoshopped pictures of themselves or the use of AI to create zany and creative concepts.

Can Tech Transform The Future Of Comedy?

It’s fair to say that there’s always going to be a need for human-driven comedy, even if we are entering a weird stage where AI is creating bizarre posthumous sets of comedy greats. We must be mindful not to lose sight of the authenticity, originality, and fearlessness that come from great comedians and performers.

With more people now seeking out YouTubers and TikTokers as an easy, throwaway version of comedy, with high-spec edits, multiple takes, writers, and carefully orchestrated marketing strategies, podcasts remain one of the best ways to get a true insight into how a comedian works and the sort of image they want to perpetuate of themselves. 

Some of the worst-case scenarios of AI envisage a world in which everything entertainment-related is churned out by generative AI, with no authenticity, no human connection, just cheap, hyper-accessible material. While we hope it never reaches that stage, it’s certainly not something that should be ruled out, given the amount of money pouring into the industry.