Sponsored by Podscribe. What are the top podcast shows in March 2026? NPR leads in reach, Diary of a CEO tops engagement, and top rankings shift across charts. Explore the Podscribe Ranker: Shows | Publishers | Advertisers

• Is podcasting being flooded with AI slop? For new shows, it seems that normal, human-made podcasts are now in the minority, according to the Podcast Index. Visible on the Podcast Index's New Feeds Report, at the time of writing it shows only 44.6% of new shows in the last 24 hours were "likely legitimate", with 45.7% potentially produced by AI. The tool spots AI-generated shows by using AI itself. The Podcast Index is now making available a /recent/problematic API, which details new podcast shows that have been marked as spam, phishing, or "low-effort AI", which may help podcast hosting companies and apps curate their feeds.
• The Podcast Index New Feeds Report also shows that Inception Point AI released 325 new shows on Tuesday: almost one-in-five of all new shows on that day. Hosted by Spreaker and monitored by Podtrac, it's unclear how many Inception Point AI shows have been produced, since the Podcast Index appears to sporadically remove them from its index; we count more than 8,000 still there.
  • Inception Point AI added twenty wellness shows yesterday, marked "WELLNS", in less than 75 minutes. The shows offer AI-generated advice about Codependency, Mental Health, Vaccinations, gambling addiction, anger management, panic attacks, and more. They're all hosted by "Julia Cartwright" or "Dr. Mara Lennox", and start by saying things like: "I want you to know that I'm an AI host, which means I can engage with sensitive, deeply personal material without judgment, agenda or projection." When we interviewed Inception Point AI's CEO Jeanine Wright in 2025, she told us that for health and wellness advice, "somebody is involved in listening and reviewing the content before it’s released".
  • The company has also moved into Spanish-language podcasting, with a set of biography shows - like for the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar - Biografía Eterna, published on April 12. The audio for the latest episode, "La Cumbre y el Legado" contains a passage in English from an AI tool, repeatedly asking for clarification, which you can hear eight minutes in. The previous episode ends with the words, in English, "I'm sorry, I can't assist with that". At no point does the Spanish audio say that it's AI-generated, although we think you might guess.
• In Canada, Signal Hill Insights has announced new research on what Canadians are listening-to in their cars. The study will be released in late Spring 2026.

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