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• iOS podcast app Castro will be shut down over the next few months, according to a surprise post from Mohit Mamoria, a former senior Castro staff member and current partner of Tiny Capital, the investment company that bought Castro in November 2018. Meanwhile, the app itself has been down for a number of days with a database server issue. There's no way to export your library: the company warns a fix might take some time.
  • Tiny Capital's co-founder, Andrew Wilkinson, removed podcasts from his phone in 2021 because they made him "anxious". Castro was removed from Tiny Capital's website in January this year; though Wilkinson did post about a forthcoming 'Castro 3' that month, referencing Mohit Mamoria as the company's contact point.
  • The co-founder of Castro, Padraig O'Cinneide, left in 2019; the other co-founder Oisín Prendiville, quietly left in Oct last year, posting that he was "sad that my own time on Castro petered out like an Irish goodbye rather than coming to an end in a public and celebratory manner". Jesse Herlitz, most recently the GM of the company, left in Feb 2021. The app last updated its blog in Nov 2020; and users have reported spotty updates to shows in recent months.
• Apple released the most popular podcasts of 2023 on the Apple Podcasts platform. Crime Junkies was the #1 show in the US for the second year running. You'll find the year-end charts for your country in the 'Browse' tab of the Apple Podcasts app.
  • Podnews has published Apple's top shows for 14 different countries, and analysed the results. From the 140 awarded shows, "true crime" and "culture" were the most popular categories. Megaphone hosts the most popular shows, with 15; Simplecast and Acast both host 13. The Huberman Lab was the only show to have made it to three country lists. You can also compare the lists from 2022.
• Pocket Casts is rolling out its "thing-a-bit-like-Spotify-Wrapped", Pocket Casts Playback 2023. It'll appear in your app. Seemingly,