For years, we were trained to look, writes Vinta Nanda. Now, we are learning to listen—attentively, and without interruption—as India’s growing podcast culture creates space for depth, dialogue, and voices long flattened by noise.

India’s podcast culture is rapidly reshaping entertainment, journalism, and public discourse. From celebrity confessions to industry insights and cinematic memory, podcasts hosted by voices like Masoom Minawala, Siddharth Kannan, Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, Vickey Lalwani, and Bharathi Pradhan reflect a growing hunger for depth, dialogue, and authenticity beyond headlines.

For years, we were trained to look. At posters, at faces, at red carpets, at headlines screaming for attention. Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to listen. And now—almost quietly—listening has returned, not as nostalgia but as a necessity. The rise of podcast culture in India, particularly within the entertainment ecosystem (though not limited to it), feels like a collective exhale. Finally, there is space. Space to pause, to contradict oneself, to think aloud.

What excites me about this moment is not just the numbers—though some of them are staggering—but the shift in temperament. We are moving away from soundbites to conversations, from performance to presence. And audiences are responding in ways traditional media perhaps didn’t anticipate.

The video podcast, especially, has become a powerful middle ground. It borrows the intimacy of radio, the accessibility of YouTube, and the patience of long-form journalism. Most importantly, it trusts the listener.

When Women Are Allowed to Speak Fully

Take Masoom Minawala’s conversations. What stands out is not just who she speaks to, but how. Her interview with Mira Rajput Kapoor was quietly disruptive. Here was a woman often boxed into lifestyle labels, given the time and respect to articulate her thinking—about wellness, business, identity, and choice. What emerged wasn’t surprise at intelligence (that assumption itself is telling), but recognition. The clips travelled widely because viewers weren’t just watching Mira—they were listening to her.

Similarly, Masoom’s conversation with Shloka Ambani and her business partner Maniti Shah went far deeper than philanthropy-as-optics. The discussion around building ConnectFor—its systems, its scale, its challenges—shifted the lens from privilege to purpose. It didn’t feel defensive or performative. It felt thoughtful. And that’s the point: podcasts allow public figures, especially women, to be complex without being combative.

The Industry, Explained—Not Whispered
Then there are podcasts that decode the entertainment industry itself, without glamour or gossip. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar’s work sits firmly here. Listening to her interviews—particularly with Sameer Nair, and in other conversations with media leaders and platform heads—is like being allowed into a room that was earlier closed. These are not conversations designed for virality, but for clarity. They talk about money, power, failure, platforms, and pivots. About what television once was, what streaming promised, and what it actually delivered.

On another end of the spectrum lies Siddharth Kannan, who has arguably mastered the confessional interview. His space thrives on emotion—sometimes raw, sometimes rehearsed—but always intense. Actors, singers, television stars, reality-show personalities—names such as Kunicka Sadanand, Adhyayan Suman, and others—come to him to speak, often at length, about pain, betrayal, recovery, and reinvention.
This is a new kind of celebrity economy—one where vulnerability itself becomes content, and where telling your story before someone else does feels like survival.

The Insider Who Doesn’t Pretend Otherwise
Vickey Lalwani occupies yet another interesting space. His interviews are unapologetically insider-driven. He doesn’t pretend to be neutral, and perhaps that’s why audiences lean in. His conversations with film and television personalities—ranging from producers to actors navigating comebacks—often centre on the questions people already have but rarely hear addressed directly: career slumps, industry politics, fallouts, and reinventions.

Several of his interviews comfortably cross the million-view mark, especially when they involve figures who have been missing from the public eye or misunderstood by it. What podcasts allow Lalwani to do is slow down the gossip. Instead of headlines, there is context. Instead of anonymous whispers, there is a face and a voice.

And then there is Bharathi Pradhan—her long-form conversations, especially on platforms like Lehren Retro and other archival interview spaces, remind us that podcasts are not just about the present. They are about memory.
Her interviews with actors like Moushumi Chatterjee, Zeenat Aman, and other stars whose journeys have often been flattened into mythology, do something rare: they let cinema history breathe. Many of these videos have clocked viewership running into the millions, proving that nostalgia, when handled with insight, is not escapism—it is understanding.
Listening to Bharathi is like listening to cinema talk to itself. About ambition, about compromise, about gender, about time.

This Moment Matters
What all these podcasts, across styles and temperaments, point to is something larger: a growing space for dialogue that cannot be ignored any longer. This is not just an entertainment trend. It’s a cultural correction.
Audiences today are suspicious of polish. They want texture. They want pauses, contradictions. They want to hear people think. Podcasts—especially in India, where oral storytelling has always been central—feel like a return to something instinctive.
For media platforms, critics, filmmakers, journalists, and cultural observers, this is a moment to pay attention. Podcasts are not competing with traditional media; they are filling the gaps it left behind.