Every few months, Greg Soros sets aside an afternoon to look at who is actually listening to his shows, and the answer rarely matches the audience he pictured when he started. More than a decade of podcasting has taught him to treat that gap as useful information. Listener habits drift. A host who notices early can adjust without losing what made the show worth hearing.
“You don’t get to pick your audience forever,” Soros says. “At some point they pick you, and your job is to notice who showed up.”
Adapting Podcast Content for a Wider, Older Audience
Age is one shift he watches closely, and the industry’s own research backs up what many hosts have sensed. According to Edison Research’s Infinite Dial 2026 findings, monthly online audio listening among Americans 55 and older rose from 52% in 2024 to 70% in 2026.
For Greg Soros, a change like that calls for small, practical edits. References a newer listener might not recognize are explained on the spot. He spends a sentence setting up context instead of assuming everyone heard last week’s episode. Audio levels get extra attention too, since he assumes plenty of people are listening in a car or through a single earbud, and muddy sound is the fastest way to lose someone who’s still deciding whether to stay.
“Insider shorthand feels friendly to the regulars and like a locked door to everyone else,” he says. “I’d rather hold the door open a little longer.”
Greg Soros on Making One Episode Work for Listeners and Viewers
Format is the second change. The same Edison findings report that 57% of Americans 12 and older have both listened to and watched a podcast. People slide between the two modes without much thought, sometimes within a single episode.
Soros builds for both. Anything that only makes sense on screen, like a pointed look or an object held up to the camera, gets a quick spoken description for the person who can only hear it. The recording space is lit and framed carefully enough that a viewer doesn’t feel like they’re watching a phone call. Titles and descriptions are written so they make sense in a video feed and a podcast app alike, which sounds minor until a great episode gets skipped because its title only worked in one place.
“If someone switches from watching to listening halfway through, they shouldn’t feel like they lost anything,” he says.
Staying Relevant Without Chasing Every Trend
Adapting has limits, and he’s careful about where they are.
Some changes in listener behavior last. Others fade within a season. He waits for a pattern to repeat across several review periods before rebuilding anything major, and a single spike or dip is treated as noise until it proves otherwise. The core of a show (its voice, its curiosity, the reason people subscribed in the first place) stays fixed in his approach. Episode length, release schedules, and formats are all open to adjustment.
“Listeners adjust to a new format faster than most hosts expect,” Soros says. “The thing that drives them off is a show that starts sounding like everyone else.”
Then the review is done, the notes get filed, and he goes back to writing the next episode for whoever turns out to be listening.
