Podcast burnout is a common phenomenon. You start with an idea, invest heavily in it, and over time the workload that comes with it takes its toll and the project is quietly abandoned. We’ve all been there; you are not alone.

Research estimates that around 200,000 new podcasts are created every year, yet by the following year, only 2,000 are still around. Furthermore, 90% of podcasts don’t make it past three episodes.

The Content Treadmill: Manual Production Burnout

Podfade is real and there are plenty of reasons for it: lack of time, limited energy, or disappointment with initial performance. What starts out as a passion project, hobby, or creative outlet, becomes something exhausting and time-consuming, with nearly half of all podcasts losing momentum and “fading” out.

Recording, editing, publishing, and marketing all take longer than expected, and they need to be repeated for each episode. Combine this with the anticlimactic realisation that most podcasts don’t blow up overnight, and you hit the ‘10-episode slump’. This is where the initial excitement wears off, you’re out of ideas, and you’re left wondering why you started in the first place.

The AI Advantage

Large language models (LLMs) like Gemini and ChatGPT can drastically cut down time spent on prep, brainstorming, and scouring the internet for trending topics and angles that haven’t already been exhausted. Instead of spending crucial hours researching themes and planning episodes, AI can do this for you, retrieving engaging hooks, questions, and topics in seconds. This forms the backbone of an AI podcasting workflow that prioritises time and efficiency.

You can utilise AI across the entire podcast workflow, from initial brainstorming and episode outlines to promotional content, effectively automating podcast production without losing creative control. A primary component of every good podcast is conversation, therefore inviting the right guests and asking the right questions is critical to podcast success. 

Prompt-based tools make this possible through podcast prompt engineering, helping you craft professional outreach messages for potential guests, write compelling adverts to discover niche contributors, and generate engaging interview questions that add layers to your content and move conversations beyond the same old surface-level talking points.

We recently updated our Podcast Guest Academy course to include an entire module on using prompts in LLMs to improve your interviews. Check it out here to start transforming your podcast with AI today.

"10 Counter Intuitive Interview Questions in 10 Seconds": How AI Can Elevate Your Interview

Today, mastering AI is necessary in order to use it effectively. Language models like ChatGPT and Gemini are easy to use and results are usually what you’re looking for, but there are ways to harness these tools and steer them in the right direction to get exactly what you need. And it's all in the prompts.

With the right prompts, AI can be trained to think like a producer, creative director, or podcast host, offering advice, brainstorming content, and even generating images. This can halve your preparation time, cut costs, and keep your podcast content seamless and professional, while supporting smarter content batching for podcasters who want consistency without the burnout.

In podcasting, natural, energising, fluid conversation is paramount to driving engagement and success. This means your guests, and your questions, need to be carefully thought-out and tailored. This is where AI can really help, giving you more time and headspace to navigate the interview as a human - and a pro. Tools like Radio.co’s AI Playbook guide you through crafting the perfect prompts for LLMs, helping you outline sharper interviews and more meaningful conversations. 

Use the Playbook to streamline your interview content. This in-depth course covers the entire process: from interview structure and question formulation to professional guest handling and technique. With it, you can generate interesting, context-specific, even counter-intuitive interview questions that keep your guests challenged and engaged. 

If you’re just starting out, our Podcast Guest Academy is a perfect prerequisite to the Playbook. With a recently added module on how to use prompts in LLMs to leverage your interviews. The Guest Academy course gives you a solid foundation before moving to the AI Playbook to expand your knowledge.

When Interviews Fall Short

Let’s take a look at a moment when a guest interview missed the mark - and how AI could have prevented it. 

In 2018, Joe Rogan interviewed Elon Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience, at a peak moment in Musk’s cultural relevance. The interview was expected to discuss AI, space, and the future of technology. Instead, many of Rogan’s questions were abstract, unstructured, and open-ended. This led Musk to answer vaguely, often rambling or drifting into tangents, leaving listeners puzzled. 

The lack of question planning and design meant that while the interview had great potential to be a deep unpacking of Musk’s ideas, this did not happen. With AI prompts and assisted planning, Rogan’s broad questions could have been refined into sharper, more deliberate ones, resulting in improved clarity and depth.

Playbook Example Prompts:

• “What’s a respectful way to challenge [expert’s] opinion on [controversial aspect of topic] without being confrontational?”

• “What are some relatable, everyday-life examples of [topic] that my guest can use to explain it simply?”

• “Suggest a smooth way to transition between serious and lighthearted moments during an interview about [topic].”

Multi-Channel Output: Content Repurposing

Content repurposing is vital to keeping your content and its message alive. Podcast episodes on their own don’t tend to stay relevant beyond the first few weeks. Think: new episode release, a burst of listens, and then content quietly slips into the archives.

Repurposing your content for different platforms helps keep your content evergreen, extends its shelf life, and creates more opportunities for audience connection and engagement - this is an essential aspect of podcast productivity in 2026. It meets users where they already are, often on platforms where they may never have come across your show otherwise.

• Blog Posts

Written content on your website or blog can transform audio into a visible, searchable, and shareable asset that supports SEO and drives conversions. You can transcribe your podcast using AI tools like Descript, Exemplary AI, Podium, and Castmagic to generate episode transcripts and longform articles, turning your audio into a built-in AI show notes generator and content engine.

• Email Newsletters

Email newsletters land directly in your listeners’ inboxes, strengthening that personal connection. Tools like Descript, Castmagic, Podium can help summarise episodes, generate show notes, draft newsletters, and identify pull quotes.

• Social Media Posts

Repurposed short-form video and audio clips are often where a podcast reaches its widest audience. AI tools like Opus Clip, quso.ai, Descript, and Headliner offer automatic cutting, captions, and platform optimisation, turning a single episode into multi-platform assets in minutes.

Podcasting doesn’t need to consume your life in order to be successful. Utilise the ever-expanding range of technology and prevent podfade by crafting an AI podcasting workflow that supports production without compromising on creativity. Less time battling with idea fatigue and managing busy schedules and more time orchestrating powerful interviews for your audience.

Radio.co’s AI Playbook is designed to guide you in building this workflow - providing you with expertly-crafted AI prompts that cover playlist and image generation, question brainstorming, and content creation and repurposing.

If you’re ready to take a break from the content treadmill, the AI Playbook is a great place to start. Contact the team today to get things moving - and secure an exclusive discount.