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This is Grow the Show, the podcast that helps you grow your podcast. My name is Kev Michael and I'm recording this on Friday, January 2, 2026. And so no matter when you're listening to this, I wish you a very happy new year and a pleasant 2026, even if it's 2028 for you right now. I hope your 2026 was great, but I am kicking off this new year with an audio only episode for only you, the Grow the Show listener who is with us here on the RSS feed. So this is not available on on YouTube, it's not available via video. And what I'm gonna do in this episode today is I wanna answer the question that I got the most in 2025, and that question is, what do I think AI is going to do to podcasting now in 2025? I did several webinars, I did lots of Q and A sessions with Grow the Show accelerator and Academy students. And to my surprise, this was actually the most common question that I got. It was not about YouTube, even though I talked mostly about YouTube in 2025, it was about AI and what I going to do for podcasting. So I thought I would kick off the new year real quickly here with you as we all ramp back up to address that question. And my hope is that it'll help frame podcasting for you as we head into 2026. Maybe it can alleviate some hesitations that you might have into doing your podcast and whether or not it's all a waste of time because of the AI overlords. So let's get into it. What do I think AI is going to do to podcasting? So this question is mostly asked by people who I sense are feeling really nervous. And really, aren't we all feeling super nervous about a just this huge cloud hanging over everything and there's just this sense of man, maybe everything that I'm doing won't matter because AI is just going to completely replace everything in one or five or 10 years and everything will be a waste of time. And what am I going to do? AI is going to replace my job, all that stuff, right? And I actually don't think that's true at all. I think AI is very similar to past technological leaps that we as humankind have had. At first, the overarching thought is, this is the end of times. This is going to make everybody's life worse. And you can hilariously find similar discourse about many inventions in human history, like the plow, the printing press, electricity, the Internet, and what we find is that when these things are invented, there's this euphoria and paranoia and stuff, and then it just kind of dies down as the technology settles in and everybody just gets used to it. So I think that's going to be the case with AI. And a lot of people compare AI to the Internet, how the Internet changed everything. And I definitely think that's true. I also think that AI is a lot like the nuclear bomb, where people are thinking, oh, AI is going to destroy the world. And, you know, it probably will be capable of it, just like the nuclear bomb is capable of it. And from 1945 for several decades, everybody pretty much thought the world was going to end at any moment. We as humans kind of invented this thing, got to the edge, and we were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then we dialed it back a little bit. Now, the thing is with these technologies is that it only takes one bad actor to make that not true. And so Murphy's law states that at some point there will be a bad actor who uses either the nuclear bomb or AI and it negative negatively affects the human race. But what does that mean for us and our content and our businesses? Well, in the micro, in the here and now, I sense that business owners and content creators feel behind when it comes to AI. And there's also what everybody's saying is AI is going to ruin social media. AI is going to completely inundate social media with content where it is impossible to tell whether something is AI or not. And for us, the answer is going to be volume. And that's what everybody is saying. A lot of fellow content pundits like me are putting out content that says the only way to win is going to be through putting out tons of volume. And they're probably right in some sense, but I think about this a little bit differently because I really don't think that the answer to the problem that AI will create, which is a vast, vast rise in the supply of content, what will happen is that will lower the demand for content. So the supply and demand fundamentals dictate when you increase supply, demand goes down. And I think that everybody is missing that point when they're saying, oh, well, AI is just going to be able to create hundreds of thousands of pieces of short form per day. So you as a business owner are also going to have to create hundreds of thousands of short form per day. I'm like, no, that's just going to lower the demand for short form, or at least for AI generated short form, because I don't know about you. But when I'm doing my doom scrolling, you know, my Friday afternoon cat videos and whatnot, the second that I detect a video is AI generated, I scroll past it and sometimes I get pissed. I'm like, damn it. Because I'm just not interested in that. As soon as something is AI generated, it loses all interest to me. And I've talked with other people about that, and I suspect that the same is true for them as well. And the same is true in marketing. Like, as soon as you detect AI, the value of that, with everything, with books that I've read, with substack articles that I've read, with marketing emails that I've received, with billboards that I have seen around Philadelphia, with videos that I watch, with commercials that I see, the second that I detect that AI even contributed to the piece, the piece is less valuable to me. I trust it less and I'm less interested in it now. At first I just kind of noticed that within myself and I'm like, wow, why is that? But after thinking about it and reflecting on it, I think it's because nobody put any effort into it. Like, when you see something that was very clearly, like if it's got an em dash in it, or it uses the classic ChatGPT tropes and says, it's not about this, it's about that, you're like, oh, this was generated with ChatGPT. There was no thought or effort put into this. This is not valuable to me. You trust it less and I'm just not interested in it. Right. And I really think the same is probably true for you too. Or at least for most of us. For a lot of us. And how about when that tool came out that could generate a podcast at any point. Remember, like last year or two years ago, somebody created a tool where you can have an AI generated podcast where it's completely AI. It's two voices. They sound like they're having a podcast conversation, and that's it. Now, I don't know about you, but I have not heard any of those. I have no interest in hearing any of those. And I don't see those flooding the market because I really don't think that that's how this is going to go. For the past couple of years, as people have asked me, what do I think and AI is going to do to podcasting specifically? Previously, I would say I don't really know. And then I would say, here's what I really think. There's something that I would always say that is very true, that I believe very strongly. That seemed to get a calming reaction in folks, whether I was talking to folks on a webinar who had never heard from me before or, you know, my tried and true Grow the Show Accelerator clients, some of whom have been with me three separate times. And they say, what do you think AI is going to do to this? And I say, there are two things that AI will never replace and cannot ever replace, and that is the experiences that you have and the relationships that you have. AI cannot experience anything for you, and AI cannot replace the entity that is a relationship, a connection that you have with another human being. It can't be done. Those are two inherently human things. And I very strongly believe that AI will replace everything and accept what only humans can do. By definition, if AI can't do it and only humans can do it, AI will not replace it. If AI can do it, then AI will replace it. So what will remain after AI finishes spreading throughout human technology? What will remain are things that only humans can do. And really what that'll do is put us back to the Stone Age when we didn't have any tools. All we had were what we were lived in tribes and, and we told stories, we had experiences and relationships. And that is all two things that cannot be replaced by AI and two things that I believe are extremely interesting to us, to other humans. What piece of content is nothing but experiences and relationships? It is podcasts. It is long form. Experiences can be shared in your solo content where you say, here's what I did, here's what I've seen, here's how I feel, and here's what I think. Your experiences, AI can't replace that. And your relationships, which are interviews. AI cannot replace that feeling you get when two humans that you admire are talking with each other. Think about when one of your favorite podcasts publishes an episode and it's a two hour interview with one of your other favorite podcast hosts or just some other celebrity or influencer or person that you follow that you really admire, and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that I get to hear two hours of these two having a conversation. Now, if that was AI generated, if someone said, hey, this is going to be AI generated, so and so talking with AI generated, so and so, you'd be like, oh, that's funny, that's interesting, that's probably cool. And you'd probably be able to guess all that would say, but nothing beats hearing the actual recording of those two people talking. So I still think that that is going to remain. And that is going to be true. And that's why I feel really excited to double down on this medium because there was a moment in 2025 where I was almost out and I've told you all about it here on the feed where I was like, I don't know if this is where things should go because I was feeling the same AI fear. But then I did some more digging, I was able to articulate these feelings and thoughts that I've articulated with you today. And I'm like, no, AI is not going to make human generated content go away. It's going to increase the demand for human generated content and it is going to be much harder to AI generate long form than it is short form. It's very easy to generate short form. It's only 30 seconds long, 60 minutes long. But to generate a 60 minute piece of content where people are fully engaged, they are fully all in and it's not obviously AI because again, I believe, I'm pretty sure that most humans feel the way that I do, that the second that you detect that something is AI generated, it's less valuable and it's less interesting to you and it's just going to be much harder. I really don't think we are going to be going to the movies and watching 2 1/2 hour AI generated movies. Maybe, maybe some. But I don't think it's going to completely replace human generated movies. I think the opposite is going to be true. I think it's going to create more demand for real claymation, for real analog effects where people are like this, didn't use any computers. Right. It's just going to bring us right back to where we were and what used to be interesting. And just to re emphasize that, I think that what most people are saying about how AI is going to affect social media is slightly off. Most influencers like me who talk about content and talk about publishing content and talk to creators are saying that AI is going to create so much short form content that the only way you'll be able to compete as a creator is by also creating an unbelievable amount of short form content by using AI to create an unbelievable amount of short form content. And I really don't think that that's true. I think that we are not humans are not interested in abundant things. Right? That's supply and demand. We like scarcity, we like when things are scarce. And the more obvious it is that a human expended effort onto a piece of content, the more scarce it makes that piece of content So I believe that the coming tsunami of AI slop is simply going to create more demand for human content. And we're seeing that now short form content is becoming more lo fi, so less produced. Actually, where the less produced it is, the better it does. Like, it's just people recording on a phone. It's becoming more storytelling based. And what is a story but a human experience? So, in summary, I 100% believe that it is worthwhile to continue creating long form content and continue podcasting in the age of AI. And I think it is going to become even more valuable to do so as AI slowly takes over everything. Because slowly but surely, AI will replace humans for everything except what only humans can do. And I believe that is have experiences, share those experiences via storytelling and have relationships and share those relationships. So that's how I feel. If you're someone who has hesitated to get into podcasting or even get into content because of AI, and you're like, it's not going to be worth it because AI is just going to replace everything soon. Yeah, I don't think that's going to be the case. And even if it does, it's worth it until it does. Right? Right. Believe it when you see it. So with that, I hope you have a Wonderful beginning to 2026. I hope you stick around with me here on Grow the Show this year. We got some cool stuff coming, man. I haven't been this invigorated and Grow the Show in a very, very long time. So definitely stick around. Happy 2026 and I'll see you in the next one.