A show whose newest episode is more than 365 days old as of the report date. Shows between 91 and 365 days are counted as stale. Editorially finished limited series are excluded from both rates, because a completed series is not a failed podcast.
The Podcast App · Data
Podcast Health Report
How many podcasts go quiet — measured monthly across editorially curated, Apple-verified shows, with the full dataset free to download and cite.
Sample: 790 shows across 82 curated lists (779 ongoing; 11 editorially-finished limited series are excluded from dormancy rates). Data as of 2026-08-08; edition 2026-08. Download the CSV.
Headline numbers
The state of curated podcasts
9%
of ongoing shows have not published in 90+ days
5%
have been silent for over a year (dormant)
85%
published within the last 30 days
779
verified ongoing shows in the sample (as of 2026-08-08)
Industry-wide statistics famously say most podcasts die young — Podnews' analysis found 90% stop after three episodes. This report measures the opposite population: shows established and good enough to be editorially recommended. Even here, a measurable share goes quiet — and the gap between categories is the story.
By category
Funded categories keep publishing; hobby categories go quiet
| Category | Shows | Stale (90+ days) | Dormant (1+ year) | Median days since episode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Other | 12 | 0% | 0% | 5 |
| Sports & Games | 100 | 2% | 1% | 4 |
| Business & Money | 117 | 3% | 3% | 4 |
| Society & Learning | 119 | 5% | 2% | 2 |
| Life & Relationships | 58 | 9% | 9% | 4 |
| Technology & Science | 91 | 9% | 3% | 5 |
| Health & Fitness | 165 | 10% | 6% | 5 |
| Arts & Writing | 79 | 19% | 11% | 8 |
| Lifestyle & Leisure | 38 | 34% | 16% | 9 |
Business, investing, technology and news podcasts — categories with professional publishers, ad markets and newsroom backing — sit at or near zero dormancy. Hobbyist-led categories show staleness rates many times higher. The clearest single pattern in the data: whether anyone is paid to keep the microphone on.
By genre
Genre detail (minimum six shows per genre)
| Genre | Category | Shows | Stale (90+ days) | Dormant (1+ year) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| hiking | Lifestyle & Leisure | 8 | 75% | 62% |
| creative writing | Arts & Writing | 8 | 50% | 38% |
| yoga | Health & Fitness | 8 | 50% | 25% |
| cooking | Lifestyle & Leisure | 8 | 38% | 12% |
| parenting | Life & Relationships | 8 | 38% | 38% |
| investigative journalism | Society & Learning | 7 | 29% | 14% |
| public speaking | Business & Money | 7 | 29% | 29% |
| anxiety | Health & Fitness | 12 | 25% | 8% |
| machine learning | Technology & Science | 12 | 25% | 17% |
| side hustles | Business & Money | 8 | 25% | 12% |
| solo travel | Lifestyle & Leisure | 8 | 25% | 0% |
| writing | Arts & Writing | 16 | 25% | 25% |
| fiction | Arts & Writing | 9 | 22% | 0% |
| depression | Health & Fitness | 11 | 18% | 18% |
| education | Society & Learning | 12 | 17% | 8% |
| film making | Arts & Writing | 12 | 17% | 8% |
| photography | Arts & Writing | 12 | 17% | 0% |
| climate change | Technology & Science | 7 | 14% | 0% |
| morning commute | Lifestyle & Leisure | 7 | 14% | 0% |
| travel | Lifestyle & Leisure | 7 | 14% | 0% |
| baseball | Sports & Games | 8 | 12% | 12% |
| cybersecurity | Technology & Science | 8 | 12% | 12% |
| kids | Life & Relationships | 8 | 12% | 12% |
| sleep | Health & Fitness | 16 | 12% | 6% |
| weight loss | Health & Fitness | 8 | 12% | 0% |
| storytelling | Arts & Writing | 10 | 10% | 10% |
| longevity | Health & Fitness | 11 | 9% | 0% |
| psychology | Society & Learning | 11 | 9% | 0% |
| true crime | Society & Learning | 11 | 9% | 0% |
| adhd | Health & Fitness | 12 | 8% | 0% |
| biohacking | Health & Fitness | 12 | 8% | 8% |
| fitness | Health & Fitness | 12 | 8% | 8% |
| science | Technology & Science | 12 | 8% | 0% |
| space exploration | Technology & Science | 12 | 8% | 0% |
| sports | Sports & Games | 12 | 8% | 0% |
| relationships | Life & Relationships | 16 | 6% | 6% |
| running | Health & Fitness | 20 | 5% | 5% |
| ai artificial intelligence | Technology & Science | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| basketball | Sports & Games | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| business | Business & Money | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| career advice | Business & Money | 7 | 0% | 0% |
| comedy | Other | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| crypto | Business & Money | 8 | 0% | 0% |
| culture | Society & Learning | 8 | 0% | 0% |
| dating | Life & Relationships | 11 | 0% | 0% |
| entrepreneurship | Business & Money | 11 | 0% | 0% |
| fantasy football | Sports & Games | 8 | 0% | 0% |
| finance | Business & Money | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| gaming | Sports & Games | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| golf | Sports & Games | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| health | Health & Fitness | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| history | Society & Learning | 11 | 0% | 0% |
| investing | Business & Money | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| language learning | Society & Learning | 11 | 0% | 0% |
| leadership | Business & Money | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| marriage | Life & Relationships | 7 | 0% | 0% |
| mental health | Health & Fitness | 7 | 0% | 0% |
| mindfulness | Health & Fitness | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| music production | Arts & Writing | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| news | Society & Learning | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| nfl football | Sports & Games | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| nutrition | Health & Fitness | 8 | 0% | 0% |
| philosophy | Society & Learning | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| politics | Society & Learning | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| productivity | Business & Money | 8 | 0% | 0% |
| real estate | Business & Money | 8 | 0% | 0% |
| retirees | Life & Relationships | 8 | 0% | 0% |
| self improvement | Society & Learning | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| soccer | Sports & Games | 8 | 0% | 0% |
| space | Technology & Science | 8 | 0% | 0% |
| startups | Business & Money | 12 | 0% | 0% |
| technology | Technology & Science | 8 | 0% | 0% |
| tennis | Sports & Games | 8 | 0% | 0% |
| the future | Technology & Science | 8 | 0% | 0% |
Publishing recency
When curated shows last published
| Most recent episode | Share of ongoing shows |
|---|---|
| Published within 7 days | 62% |
| Within 30 days | 85% |
| 31–90 days ago | 6% |
| 91–365 days ago | 4% |
| Over a year ago | 5% |
Methodology
How these numbers are made
Sample. Every show on this site's curated recommendation lists. Each entry is pinned to an Apple Podcasts collection ID, so identity is exact — no name matching, no scraping ambiguity. Shows without a resolvable Apple entry are excluded rather than guessed at.
Dates. The newest-episode date comes from Apple's catalog
(releaseDate) via batched lookups. We validated feed-scanning as an alternative and
rejected it: prefix scans of large or non-chronological feeds produced false dormancy verdicts.
Definitions. Stale: no episode in more than 90 days. Dormant: none in more than 365 days. Complete series: editorially finite works (documentary seasons, finished serials) — reported separately and excluded from failure rates, because a finished story is not an abandoned show.
Known bias, stated plainly. This is a curated sample and therefore survivorship-adjusted by design: it understates industry-wide dormancy and is best read as "how often do even recommended shows go quiet." The per-show CSV includes every collection ID so any row — and therefore every aggregate — is independently checkable.
Use this data
Cite or reuse
The Podcast App — Podcast Health Report, {edition on page} edition.
https://thepodcastapp.dev/data/podcast-health-report (CC BY 4.0; per-show CSV with Apple collection IDs available on this page.)
Journalists and researchers: the dataset is free to use with attribution. For questions about methodology or custom cuts of the data, contact us via the support page.
FAQ
Questions about this report
Every show is pinned to an Apple Podcasts collection ID and dated from Apple's releaseDate field via batched catalog lookups. We do not scrape feeds for this report: feed prefix scanning produced false dormancy verdicts in our validation, so the Apple catalog is the authoritative source.
Industry counts measure every feed ever created, where most shows died after a few episodes. This sample is the opposite extreme: shows good enough to be editorially recommended on curated lists. Dormancy here measures how often even recommended, established shows go quiet — a survivorship-adjusted view the raw industry numbers cannot give.
Categories with professional publishers behind them — business, investing, technology, news — show near-zero dormancy, while hobbyist-led categories like hiking or crafts go quiet at many times that rate. The gap between funded and passion-driven podcasting is the single clearest pattern in the data.
Monthly. Each edition re-verifies every show against the Apple catalog, updates the tables on this page, and publishes a new dated CSV. The page URL stays stable so citations do not break; the edition marker and as-of date below the headline numbers tell you which month you are reading.
Yes — cite the page with its edition date, and link it so readers can find later editions. The full per-show dataset behind every number is downloadable as CSV, including Apple collection IDs so every row is independently checkable.
A show that migrated feeds keeps its Apple collection ID in almost all cases, so it stays correctly dated. Shows that truly relaunched under a new ID would appear as their new identity; the curated lists are re-verified monthly, which catches renames quickly.
We maintain these curated lists for our free podcast player, and the same verification pipeline that keeps dead shows off our recommendation pages produces this dataset. Publishing it keeps us honest — every recommendation page links back to data anyone can check.
Sources & related reading
Context from across the industry
- Podnews — analysis of podcast longevity ("90% stop after episode three")
- Podcast Industry Insights — active-show counts for Apple Podcasts
- Listen Notes — podcast statistics and new-show trends
- Buzzsprout — platform statistics
- Edison Research — The Infinite Dial (listener-side data)
- Our free Podcast Health Checker — run the same verdict on any show
- All datasets from The Podcast App