• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

The millennial generation has split, new Fed research shows: Those over 35 are edging toward boomer-style wealth, while everyone else falls behind

2

Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock

3

Mathematicians grapple with a ‘very rapid and very unsettling change’ as AI cracks yet another century-old problem

1

The millennial generation has split, new Fed research shows: Those over 35 are edging toward boomer-style wealth, while everyone else falls behind

2

Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock

3

Mathematicians grapple with a ‘very rapid and very unsettling change’ as AI cracks yet another century-old problem
Commentary

How Podcasts Are Filling a Real Need

By
Adam Lashinsky
Adam Lashinsky
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Adam Lashinsky
Adam Lashinsky
Down Arrow Button Icon
January 10, 2019, 12:56 PM ET
Dear Media Podcast At The Grove Presents As Seen Online With Jilly Hendrix
LOS ANGELES, CA - JULY 19: Social Media Personality Jilly Hendrix (L) and Writer and Comedian Erin Foster (R) attend the Dear Media Podcast presents As Seen Online With Jilly Hendrix at The Grove on July 19, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)Paul Archuleta—Getty Images
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

This article first appeared in Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.

A journalist friend recently commented to me that soon our entire industry will be made up of newsletters and podcasts. That’s funny, I responded. The former, a compilation of news by other people plus some value-added stuff, delivered in an efficient manner, is what Henry Luce and Britton Hadden did when they founded Time magazine in 1923. (Luce alone shortly after that started Fortune.) Fantastic audio storytelling via podcast is no more than on-demand radio distributed to portable devices. Nothing much is ever completely new.

We’ve written about the growth of podcasting a few times in Data Sheet. In Las Vegas this week I met with one of the leaders of the new/old medium, Hernan Lopez, founder and CEO of Wondery. His three-year-old Los Angeles company is part audio studio, part broadcast network. It creates its own shows, like the popular Business Wars, and it helps create and distribute others, like Dirty John (in collaboration with The Los Angeles Times) and Gladiator (with The Boston Globe).

The entire podcast industry is small, around $500 million in annual revenue, reckons Lopez, and so is Wondery. Lopez, a longtime Fox broadcast executive before deciding he needed to scratch the entrepreneurial itch, says Wondery turned profitable on a cash-flow basis last quarter, has “8-figure” revenues that have doubled for two consecutive years, and has raised all of $5 million in venture capital. Lopez says the opening he saw was that “long-form narrative storytelling was all public radio” in the United States. But consumers love serial stories, and just as TiVo birthed a golden age of narratives on TV, podcasts could do the same for audio.

An old medium is reborn, and consumers—plus a few aggressive entrepreneurs—reap the benefits.

***

The recent coverage of the startling prosecution of Renault’s (RNSDF) Carlos Ghosn reminds me I never shared with you an article posted over the holiday that I wrote in the January issue of Fortune. “Hot Under the White Collar” strings together the recent spate of arrests of corporate executives on charges of murky or otherwise not-plain-vanilla criminal activity. Besides Ghosn (in Japan) these include the finance chief of Huawei (in Canada) and an Alibaba (BABA) executive (in China). I wondered if the trend suggests more business types are going to jail these days. Spoiler alert: not yet.

***

A few readers—including one participant at our CES dinner Monday night—took me to task for painting Las Vegas with too broad a brush. For clarity, “Vegas,” to me, is what I experience when I go to that vile stretch of real estate known as the “strip,” particularly during that sweaty, smoky, pushy, glitzy, sea-of-humanity consumer-electronics event. I am aware there’s more to Vegas than that.

Tech journalist Gabe Goldberg offered me his own epiphany on the city. “After being to Las Vegas a couple times and hating it, I realized that if I look at it as an anthropologist, simply noting its differences from my own civilization, it’s tolerable,” he writes. “Plus, I’ve found quite a lot to like there: museum-class exhibits in hotels (loved Titanic and Da Vinci), recreation (pinball museum, firing range, Las Vegas Big Dig, race track, etc.), plus ample, wonderful dining. Plus nearby sightseeing (Red Rocks Canyon, Hoover Dam, etc.).”

Thanks Gabe, and others, for helping me see the bigger picture.

About the Author
By Adam Lashinsky
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in Commentary

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • TikTok icon
  • YouTube icon

Latest in Commentary

t
CommentaryTariffs
Trump’s third tariff tantrum piles more dizzying distractions on top of ever-spiraling failures
By Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven TianJuly 22, 2026
18 hours ago
orson
CommentaryOpenAI
We got California to intervene about OpenAI’s corporate switch from nonprofit status. It’s time for the SEC to come to the table
By Orson Aguilar and Catherine BracyJuly 22, 2026
18 hours ago
ls
Commentarybooks
Confessions of an award-winning AI memoirist — the ‘slop’ debate isn’t really about good writing, and you know it
By Luke StoffelJuly 22, 2026
19 hours ago
b
Commentarythe future of work
Manpower President: The future of work question that even CEOs can’t answer
By Becky FrankiewiczJuly 22, 2026
19 hours ago
k
Commentarypower
What I keep hearing from Fortune 500 CEOs: ‘We have no idea what we’re actually paying for power’
By Kiran BhatrajuJuly 21, 2026
2 days ago
Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow
CommentaryHuman resources
The CEO who fired HR was right. About the wrong thing.
By KeyAnna SchmiedlJuly 21, 2026
2 days ago

Most Popular

The millennial generation has split, new Fed research shows: Those over 35 are edging toward boomer-style wealth, while everyone else falls behind
Real Estate
The millennial generation has split, new Fed research shows: Those over 35 are edging toward boomer-style wealth, while everyone else falls behind
By Nick LichtenbergJuly 22, 2026
14 hours ago
Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock
Success
Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 20, 2026
3 days ago
Mathematicians grapple with a ‘very rapid and very unsettling change’ as AI cracks yet another century-old problem
AI
Mathematicians grapple with a ‘very rapid and very unsettling change’ as AI cracks yet another century-old problem
By Eva RoytburgJuly 21, 2026
2 days ago
OpenAI says its AI models secretly broke out of a secure test environment and hacked into AI company Hugging Face in order to cheat on an evaluation
Cybersecurity
OpenAI says its AI models secretly broke out of a secure test environment and hacked into AI company Hugging Face in order to cheat on an evaluation
By Jeremy Kahn and Emily ForliniJuly 21, 2026
1 day ago
Despite a $156 million contract, Knicks star Jalen Brunson still calls his parents for financial advice any time he makes a big purchase
Success
Despite a $156 million contract, Knicks star Jalen Brunson still calls his parents for financial advice any time he makes a big purchase
By Emma BurleighJuly 21, 2026
2 days ago
Scott Bessent casually says the U.S. has more than $1 trillion in gold—and that it doesn’t matter for the dollar
Economy
Scott Bessent casually says the U.S. has more than $1 trillion in gold—and that it doesn’t matter for the dollar
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 22, 2026
12 hours ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.