This August, clips of millennial comedian and podcaster Adam Friedland talking about the Gaza War received millions of views online and became some of the most influential commentary of the year. In the footage, Friedland sits in a leather chair on a wood-paneled set, wearing a blue jacket and jeans, his curly hair disheveled like a fop. The atmosphere is casual, but there is a sober urgency in his words. “They are humiliated, dehumanized and constantly subjected to surveillance,” he says of Palestinians. Torn and increasingly passionate, Friedland argues that the war in Gaza amounts to genocide committed by people who should know better. “The fact that I still care so damn much that I’m Jewish is embarrassing,” he adds at one point. His interlocutor, New York Congressman Ritchie Torres, a pro-Israel Democrat, appears cold and indifferent, which only intensifies Friedland's emotions. These media excerpts are taken from “The Adam Friedland ShowFriedland first became a household name on the Internet nearly a decade ago as the host of the raunchy, left-wing, politically charged podcast “Cum Town,” but the recent success of his video podcast has turned him into something else: an on-screen talent, a recognizable face, a digital TV celebrity.
During 2025, the clip-video podcast has generally become the main unit of discourse. Once upon a time, aspiring public intellectuals and digital commentators wrote blogs. Then they had Twitter accounts peeking out from behind cartoon avatars; then podcasts, conversations into microphones into the void; then newsletters posting reams of text into our inboxes. In all of these formats, the human body was conspicuously absent, but was no longer there. With the advent of the somewhat oxymoronic video podcast, the mainstream media has become the digital talk show, a self-titled production performed—face, body, clothes, and soul—for the camera. We are not just listen to Friedland, Ezra KleinAlex Cooper of Call Her Daddy, Sam Fragoso of Talk Easy, James Harris and Lawrence Schlossman of Throwing Fits, or a host of other podcast owners; we watch, often in close-up, every expression on their faces and thus cultivate the kind of parasocial intimacy usually associated with Hollywood actors. No more hiding behind a signature; The moment calls for hairdressers and makeup. And with the end of faceless criticism, balanced neutrality also begins to become obsolete. The quality that presenters need to attract and retain an audience online is a dose of charisma that is desirable to capture in thirty seconds or less.
Some early adopters have been streaming their podcasts on video for years. Joe Rogan He's been filming his podcast since it launched in 2009, and tech tastemaker Lex Friedman began filming his conversations back in 2018. But the massive rush to video podcasts began with 2024 presidential racewhich clearly showed the impact that shows like Rogan's had on public opinion. Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and Elon Musk took turns holding three-hour conversations with Rogan in the lead-up to Election Day; That August, Trump went viral discussing addiction in an unusually touching moment on Theo Von Video Podcast. MAGAThe success of this approach with voters—and Kamala Harris' regrettable decision not to run against Rogan—has sparked a realization that there is more to this media outlet than just passive listening in a cave. Earlier this year, YouTube said it had one billion monthly users watching podcasts on its platform and billed itself as “the most used podcast listening service in the United States.”
In Trump's first year as president, homemade footage of two people talking into microphones shaped the news cycle as much as any cable network. In January Time Columnist Ross Douthat joined Steve Bannon in a Zoom conversation that first aired on the Zoom channel. episode belonging Timepodcast “Matter of Opinion” and later included in Doutthat's new video podcast “Interesting Times”. In a surreal mise-en-scène, Douthat, appearing in high definition in a cozy studio, watched Bannon's face on a laptop as he denounced “Broligarchs” like Musk, whose DOJ operations were gaining momentum at the time, signaling the first clear split between MAGA the right-wing and tech overlords who supported Trump in 2024. reappearance on Rogan's show and had one of his most in-depth public discussions DOJ; On YouTube, the episode has received over fourteen million views. The video podcast suddenly became a news-making outlet, an impromptu press conference at a time when, thanks in part to Trump's draconian approach to the First Amendment, the press was more constrained than ever.
