News

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang won the podcast of the year award at the 2025 iHeartPodcast Awards.

The interview and culture podcast saw the two hosts welcome a number of starry guests over the past year, including Ariana Grande, Charl Xcx, Dua Lipa and more. This week, Lady Gaga has been announced as the guest. The podcast also won the coveted award in 2023.

Planet Money took home the award for best business podcast, while The World’s First Podcast with Erin & Sara Foster won best pop culture podcast. Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus won best advice/inspirational podcast. Mel Robbins of The Mel Robbins Podcast won for best overall host.

The ceremony was held Monday night in Austin, Tex. at Acl Live at The Moody Theater, hosted by Jack O’Brien and Miles Gray of The Daily Zeitgeist podcast.

Special guest presenters included Annaleigh Ashford and Melissa Moore,...

Tonight, the 2024 iHeartPodcast Awards Presented by The Hartford Live at SXSW brought together the most influential names in podcasting to honor the most entertaining and innovative podcasts of 2023, celebrating the incredible talent and wide variety of leaders across the podcasting industry live and in-person in Austin, Texas at the Fairmont Hotel. The event was also exclusively video streamed on iHeartRadio’s YouTube Channel and broadcast across iHeartMedia radio stations nationwide and on the iHeartRadio app.

The night featured a variety of appearances by award nominees, celebrity presenters and special guests including Angela Rye, Andrew Gillum and Tiffany Cross of “Native Land Pod;” Adam Devine and Blake Anderson of “This Is Important;” Bobbi Althoff of “The Really Good Podcast with Bobbi Althoff;” Charlamagne tha God; Danielle Robay and Simone Boyce; Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark of “My Favorite Murder;” Jay Shetty; Jack O’Brien and Miles Gray of “The Daily Zeitgeist;” Kyle MacLachlan...

Rub a little Vaseline on your teeth, fire up a hot latte, do a few mouth stretches and whisper, “It’s showtime!” That’s how the most powerful people in the podcasting business — a mix of hosts, executives and reps featured on THR‘s annual power list — ready themselves before recording their widely-heard shows. As part of this year’s survey, the group, which also includes Call Her Daddy‘s Alex Cooper, Bill Simmons, Ben Shapiro and My Favorite Murder co-hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, reveals its dream guests and guilty pleasure listens as well.

My pre-recording podcasting routine entails…

Bill Simmons, The Bill Simmons Podcast Big bottle of water, put my phone on silent, remind myself not to say anything dumb.

Karen Kilgariff, My Favorite Murder I feed the dogs, gather up all of my beverages (usually 4, 1 hot and 3 colds), rub some Vaseline on my teeth and as I log onto Zoom,...

Busy Philipps has good reason to believe in psychics.

“I’m psychic,” the “Freaks and Geeks” actor says during an appearance on the July 24 episode of the podcast “Ghosted! by Roz Hernandez.”

What?

“Well, I think I’m very intuitive,” Philipps explains. “But sometimes I just know things are going to happen. I sort of just see things in the future and then I have a lot of really psychic connections with people.”

If that’s not enough bizarreness, “Ghosted!” host Hernandez says she and her best friend, “A Million Things” star Sam Pancake, once came face-to-face with a murderer while housesitting for Philipps. “You and Sam thwarted the murderer from coming to my home,” Philipps said.

Hernandez recalled, “I’m wandering my eyes around and I see a man starting into the window at me! It’s the thing I’ll never forget. I was staring him in the eyes.

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Crime Junkie, the true-crime podcast led by THR Next Gen 2022 honoree Ashley Flowers, was the most popular show on Apple Podcasts this year, the tech giant said on Monday.

To populate the lists, Apple looked at user listenership and engagement between November 1, 2021, through Oct. 31, 2022. Crime Junkie, the flagship show of Flowers’ Audiochuck company, also took the top spots in the top followed and top shared categories, while Audiochuck was honored as the top free channel on Apple Podcasts for the year.

For podcast subscriptions, Morbid — a true-crime show hosted by Alaina Urquhart and Ashleigh Kelley that has an exclusive ad sales and one-week windowing deal with Wondery and Amazon Music — landed at No. 1. Wondery retained its spot as the top subscriber channel on the platform.

Meanwhile, on Spotify, which released its annual Wrapped list on Nov. 30, the most listened-to podcast shows were led...

True crime has come under the spotlight of popularity as the recently released Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story gained instant success on Netflix and even earned a place as the #2 watched series on the platform in less than a month.

Even before then the format of true-crime podcasts has been very successful in the past decade, becoming the only thing from the age of television to transition into this new era and gain even more support. Through this love of the genre, talented individuals have put it upon themselves to tell these stories, and sometimes they'd even enhance further than what could have been simply retelling it.

The Clearing (Spotify)

The Clearing is a podcast that can be listened to on Spotify, with 8 episodes, each ~40 minutes long, it could be entirely viewed within a day. It tells the story of April Balascio who went on to suspect her father of being a murderer,...

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John Allen, the former Navy Seal and rising podcast star known as MrBallen, has struck a wide-reaching content deal with Amazon that will see his hit podcast become available exclusively on Amazon Music beginning on November 1.

With Allen, Amazon will have another true-crime star in its growing stable of podcasts, which includes Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes’ pandemic breakout SmartLess; Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark’s true-crime behemoth My Favorite Murder; and Guy Raz’s business savvy How I Built This. But unlike those shows, which have a one-week early distribution window on Amazon Music and Wondery+ before going wide on all platforms, Allen’s MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories will be available to stream only on Amazon Music — and not even on Amazon’s podcast subsidiary Wondery.

In competing with Spotify, which set the standard for exclusive podcasts...

“It’s the end of an era,” podcast network Exactly Right tweeted in May 2022. “Jensen & Holes: The Murder Squad is going off the air.” The tweet set off dismayed speculation among the true crime community, and rightly so: The podcast, which launched in 2019, was a popular powerhouse of the genre, featuring Paul Holes, the now-retired detective who helped crack the Golden State Killer case, and Billy Jensen, who helped finish the 2018 bestseller, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, that detailed the hunt for the serial killer, after author Michelle McNamara...

Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark are taking the summer off. They’re hanging out in Los Angeles, probably wearing matching caftans and decadently eating chicken fingers by Kilgariff’s pool. And why shouldn’t they? Since starting the wildly popular true crime podcast My Favorite Murder in early 2016, the hosts have not had a vacation.

That’s not to say they haven’t traveled. Hardstark overcame an extreme fear of flying so the pair could tour in Australia, Europe and Canada, doing live recordings in front of thousands of their...

Since 2016, podcast hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark have been recounting gruesome crimes to each other weekly on My Favorite Murder. Their unabashed appreciation for the gorier things in life — plus quippy advice like “fuck politeness,” and frank talk about anxiety and mental health — draws thousands of fans, known as murderinos, to their sold-out live shows all over the world. Kilgariff, a comedian, and Hardstark, a former Cooking Channel TV personality, released a joint memoir in May called Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered, borrowing its title from the duo...

Led by Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong, “Tuca and Bertie” sports a truly interesting voice cast with some genuine surprises in the mix, including Oscar nominees, Emmy winners, and British TV favorites. The animated adventures of two best bird friends, created by Lisa Hanawalt, takes some sad and dark turns, but the actors prove more than capable of handling the challenges, bringing out the inherent humanity in their animal creations on screen.

The large ensemble plays such a wide range of characters that it’s difficult to identify every single character that every single actor plays (especially since a number of them double up on roles). Beyond the cast members specified below for individual roles, credited cast members include Emily Axford, Shamir Bailey, Kate Berlant, Cole Escola, Jermaine Fowler, Karen Graci, Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff, Betsy Sodaro, Sheila Vand, Baron Vaughn, and David Wain, with Hanawalt and executive producer Raphael Bob-Waksberg also contributing voices.

Podcast industry leader Stitcher today unveiled its expanding roster of new shows, original content and advertising partnerships at the Winter Podcast Upfront in Los Angeles.

Hosted by Stitcher and six other top podcast networks, the Winter Podcast Upfront gave advertisers, agencies and media a first look at the newest partnerships, talent and shows slated for 2019, with presentations featuring stars, producers and leading industry executives.

Actor and comedian Paul Scheer joined Stitcher Chief Revenue Officer Korri Kolesa to unveil Stitcher’s slate of new programming. Scheer launched his movie critique podcast “Unspooled” on Stitcher’s Earwolf comedy podcast network last year and is the host of Earwolf’s long-running hit show “How Did This Get Made?”

Also joining Stitcher onstage were writers, actors and New York Times best-selling authors Allison Raskin and Gaby Dunn. On March 13, the pair will debut “Just Between Us,” based on their hit odd-couple comedy YouTube series of the same name,...

In today’s TV News Roundup, Amazon sets the release date for upcoming docuseries “Lorena.”

First Looks

Netflix has released the trailer for the fifth of “Grace and Frankie,” which stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as women who became unlikely friends after their husbands left them for each other. In the new season they are dealing with new relationships and trying to get their house back while still navigating their complicated family dynamics. The new season launches Jan. 18.

Variety has obtained an exclusive clip for tonight’s episode of ABC’s “The Kids Are Alright,” featuring guest star Ken Jeong. The show airs Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. on ABC. Watch the full clip below.

Dates

Amazon has announced the premiere of “Lorena,” coming to Amazon Prime Video Feb. 15. The four-part Prime Original documentary series will first debut at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 29. The series is executive produced by Jordan Peele,...

Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, the hosts of the wildly popular true-crime comedy podcast My Favorite Murder, are asking their cult following of self-anointed “murderinos” to stay sexy, don’t get murdered — and to tune in to the four podcasts debuting under their newly launched podcast network, Exactly Right. The Los Angeles-based duo, in partnership with Stitcher, has curated a roster of shows that speak to the diverse interests of their dedicated fanbase, which has grown to an astonishing 19 million monthly listeners since the show debuted in January 2016.

“We couldn...

Last week, Pen America hosted their 2018 LitFest Gala in Los Angeles, a celebration of free expression and the literary arts that honored some of the brightest names in film, television, and literature.

Ai Weiwei Honored at Pen America 2018 LitFest Gala

Globally lauded artist Ai Weiwei received the Artistic Expression Award, Academy Award Winning writer-director Barry Jenkins received the Award for Screenplay Excellence, award-winning Sharp Objects writers Marti Noxon and Gillian Flynn received the Award for Teleplay Excellence, and Pen America Trustee Marvin Putnam received the Distinguished Leadership Award. The event, hosted by My Favorite Murder creators and authors of the forthcoming book Stay Sexy & Don’T Get Murdered, Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, raised funds that will support initiatives including advocacy for writers, journalists, and artists threatened or imprisoned worldwide, as well as landmark research that addresses critical free speech issues, and the advancement of literary excellence and cross-cultural exchanges through hallmark initiatives,...

UTA is teaming with podcast and media company Cadence13 to launch Ramble, a podcast network that will feature digital stars including Rhett and Link, Hannah Hart and Flula Borg. The new network will feature a team of producers that will work alongside talent to create audio-focused content, with the plan to extend their brands beyond podcasting to social media, events and merchandise.

The Hollywood agency already has a dedicated podcast division repping networks including Wondery, Gannett, Tenderfoot and HowStuffWorks, and creators including Ira Glass, Sarah Koenig, Marc Smerling, Chris Hardwick, Aaron Mahnke, Anna Faris, Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, Jake Brennan and Guy Raz. It also has expanded the scope of some podcast IP — 2 Dope Queens, My Favorite Murder, Lore and Comedy Bang Bang among them — into TV, touring and endorsements. The division also brokered Amy Schumer’s comedy podcast deal with Spotify.

“As we evaluated the podcast business landscape, we...

In today’s roundup, Netflix reveals the list of guest stars on Season 4 of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” while YouTube Red debuts the official trailer for “Impulse.”

First Looks

YouTube, Universal Cable Productions, and Hypnotic have released the official full-length trailer for YouTube Red Original series, “Impulse,” an action-thriller created by Doug Liman and starring Maddie Hasson and Missi Pyle. “Impulse” will premiere all ten one-hour episodes on June 6.

Casting

Season 4 guest stars for “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” will include Busy Philipps, Greg Kinnear, Bobby Moynihan, and Aidy Bryant. Philipps will play Sheba Goodman, a hard-living heiress who has seemingly turned over a new leaf; Kinnear will play himself (sort of); Moynihan appears as Fran Dodd, a men’s rights activist; and Bryant will be seen as Tabby Bobatti, the Reverend’s willfully ignorant ex-girlfriend. Favorites from past seasons are also set to return including the Reverend himself, Jon Hamm, Amy Sedaris as Mimi Kanassis,...

Bravo Media has given the green light to six new original digital series, including an Imposters after-show which premieres today, and new series The First Time I.. with special guests including Shaquille O’Neal, Russell Brand and Derek Hough, slated to premiere in June. The network also is renewing video series Throwback Bravo for a second season.

Hosted by Georgia Hardstark (My Favorite Murder), Imposters after-show True Cons: The Tricky Business of Real Life Imposters take a light-hearted look at the art of the con. Each week Hardstark is joined by experts on the con game to break down the real life tricks of the trade used within the linear scripted series, which airs Thursdays at 10/9c on Bravo.

The new digital series greenlights come on the heels of Bravo Digital’s best month ever in April for full episode starts (11.2M). Both the site and the app saw growth...

2017-08-15T11:43:24-07:00Anna Faris Thanks Fans for Support

She loves her fans! Anna Faris thanked her podcast listeners for their support amid her split from Chris Pratt.

On the Tuesday, August 15, episode of “Anna Faris Is Unqualified,” the Mom actress, 40, started off the show with a short statement. "Hey, dear listeners!” she said. "I just want to thank you all so much for all the love I’ve been receiving, and I truly love you."

The rest of the episode was a pre-taped crossover with the hosts of “My Favorite Murder” podcast Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark.

Faris’ brief intro marked the first comments she’s made has made since the couple, who share 4-year-old son Jack, announced they were calling it quits on August 6. “We are sad to announce we are legally separating,” the duo wrote in a joint statement posted to Faris’ Instagram.

Anna Faris has shared her first comments since the news of her split from Chris Pratt. The actress opened her Unqualified podcast today with a message of appreciation to her fans. "Hey, dear listeners: I just want to thank you all so much for all the love I've been receiving, and I truly love you," she said before the segment transitioned into a pre-taped episode featuring the My Favorite Murder hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. However, later on in the episode, she did touch on the importance of self-worth and being valued in a relationship while answering a question from a woman struggling with her boyfriend and one of his co-workers. "Don't be afraid of...

Comedy Central’s Drunk History is so hilarious if you’re in the right mood, and probably even if you aren’t. So, what’d we learn from “Nashville”? (Nsfw language and somewhat blurry hand gestures ahead.)

Key ‘Drunk History’ Lessons for the week of August 20, 2013

–When Dolly Parton (Casey Wilson) went to New York to tell the RCA executives she was leaving The Porter Wagoner Show, her exact words were “I’m gonna be in f*cking movies. “Are you in or are you out? Back me or back the f*ck off.” And they were like yeah, sure.

Tripping Out With Alie and Georgia premieres June 21 at 10:30pm Et on Cooking Channel. It could be among the most unusual first steps toward celebrity ever — grab your best pal and a video camera, make a McDonald’s run to fetch a chocolate shake and Chicken McNuggets (you’ll need the barbecue sauce, too), add a liberal splash of vanilla vodka and your quirky senses of humor and serve it all up on YouTube. Within weeks, The New York Times, Time, CNN, the Associated Press and a host of food-centric web sites had all hunted down the McNuggetini’s irresistible founders Georgia Hardstark and [...]

The post Tripping Out’s Alie and Georgia: “We want to win at McNuggetini” appeared first on Channel Guide Magazine.

June 2013 is downright delish on Cooking Channel. The network kicks off June with new series The Freshman Class, a docu-series following four culinary school freshmen as they embark on their journey to gain a culinary degree that will change their lives, on Monday, June 10th at 10:30pmET/7:30pmPT. Alie Ward and Georgia Hardstark are going on a culinary journey of their own in new series Tripping Out with Alie & Georgia premiering Friday, June 21st at 10:30pmET/7:30pmPT, as they travel the country in search of new adventures and then share their experiences with their beloved friends over travel-inspired drinks and dishes. Roger Mooking is back for a second season of Man Fire Food showcasing one-of-kind ways to...