The satellite radio corporation’s subscriber base has been shrinking over the past few years, but there seems to be a solution: Howard Stern. The self-described King of All Media has been one of the company’s mainstays since his show joined SiriusXM in 2006. The brand is hoping that a new three-year deal Stern signed yesterday can keep new listeners tuning in.

What’s the situation at SiriusXM?
In the third quarter of 2025, SiriusXM had 33 million subscribers nationwide, said the company in its earnings report. But this is “some 100,000 fewer than the year before,” according to The Associated Press. SiriusXM’s self-pay net subscribers — those who pay directly for the satellite subscription — also fell by 40,000.

These figures show that this has been a challenging year for SiriusXM, which started 2025 by losing 303,000 self-pay subscribers in the first quarter. But not all was gloom for SiriusXM, as it “reported third-quarter revenue of $2.16 billion, above analyst expectations but down 1% from the prior-year period,” said The Hollywood Reporter. 

How could Stern’s new contract help?
Stern will be “continuing his radio reign despite commanding an audience that’s far smaller than what he drew during his heyday,” said MarketWatch. Since Stern’s last contract, SiriusXM and satellite radio in general have seen a “slow but steady erosion of its subscriber base as listeners have switched to streaming-music platforms” like Spotify.

And while Stern’s listenership has been decreasing along with SiriusXM as a whole, he still commands a large chunk of the company’s platform. Stern’s show currently has a “mid-single-digit percentage of what he drew at his peak, which would put it somewhere around 1 million listeners per broadcast,” making him a valuable commodity, said MarketWatch.

This all comes as competition for SiriusXM increases. Many audio companies have begun a television ad push as the businesses “seek new audiences and ad dollars and more creators embrace video,” said Axios. But SiriusXM also still has other big properties under contract, including Alex Cooper of the Call Her Daddy podcast and the SmartLess podcast hosted by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes.

Roomba once looked like the future. Its maker, iRobot, filled American homes with small but affordable robots that helped keep households clean and cats endlessly occupied. But iRobot has now filed for bankruptcy, a victim of innovation and politics.

iRobot’s bankruptcy filing came after it “struggled to keep up with foreign rivals” and failed to withstand the “new costs of tariffs,” said NPR. Most new Roombas are manufactured in Vietnam, and the company owes $3.4 million in unpaid tariffs to the U.S. government. But the little robots have also been displaced by newer models at lower prices from rival manufacturers. 

Wasn’t Roomba a big success?
The self-guiding vacuum cleaner was most Americans’ “first experience with a home robot,” said The Verge. iRobot was formed in 1990 by MIT professors who had previously used their expertise to build devices used in Mars exploration, “mine detection, bomb disposal, and search and rescue.” The first Roomba launched in 2002 for $200 and quickly became a hit.

What went wrong?
The beginning of the end came in 2022, when Amazon “came knocking” with a $1.7 billion offer to acquire iRobot, said TechCrunch. European regulators had “other ideas” and threatened to block the deal. Amazon called off the purchase and iRobot’s stock price “nosedived.” Those regulators “removed the most viable path for a pioneering American robotics company to scale and compete globally,” said former CEO Colin Angle to TechCrunch.

But the Roomba may have also been a victim of its own success. Innovators are often “dethroned with alarming speed” in the consumer marketplace, said the Financial Times. Foreign rivals soon “flooded the market with passable substitutes.”

Tech legacy
“The best Roomba models were always the ones without a lot of flair,” said Kyle Barr at Gizmodo. Later models featured additions that “don’t necessarily make for a better robot vacuum.” Despite that, the Roomba deserves to be remembered fondly “even after iRobot is kaput.”

iRobot’s bankruptcy is a “tragedy for consumers, the robotics industry and America’s innovation economy,” Angle said to CNBC. But current Roomba owners should not fear their devices will be “rendered useless due to a lack of software updates,” said the Los Angeles Times. Chinese manufacturer Picea Robotics is buying out the company and says it will continue customer support.

A pilgrim carrying a St. Lazarus figurine crawls toward San Lázaro Church in El Rincón, near Havana, Cuba. Worshippers from across the country join the annual procession of the patron saint of the poor and sick, and many crawl as an act of devotion.
Yamil Lage / AFP / Getty Images

Contrary to speculation, the podcast industry is alive and brimming with thought-provoking content, as proven by this year’s new and returning releases. Here are some of the best entries of 2025.

Final Thoughts: Jerry Springer (Audible)
In this nine-part series, Slow Burn’s Leon Neyfakh goes all the way back to the trash-TV host’s beginnings, “marrying excellent journalism with some unbelievable source material, not least when it comes to Springer’s 1970s sex scandal,” said The Guardian. Listeners will come away “wondering what might have been had Springer better deployed his gifts,” said The New Yorker. (Audible)

Our Ancestors Were Messy (Coco Hill Productions)
This podcast spotlights Black history and puts a comical twist on headline-making gossip, scandals and pop culture from pre-Civil Rights Movement America. Host Nichole Hill tells juicy true stories, including a “Victorian-era love triangle that hit D.C. elites,” placing listeners “inside of a vintage scandal” while “fleshing out the characters involved with the skill of a novelist,” said Lifehacker. Hill’s storytelling is “descriptive, funny, conversational and crisp,” and she uses “amazing sound production that pumps it all into life.” (Apple Podcasts, Spotify)

Suspicious Minds (Agoric Media)
As AI chatbots have become more sophisticated, the fears attached to the technology have evolved. Brothers Joel and Ian Gold, the co-authors of the book “Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness,” have created this documentary series that “tackles issues around AI-fueled delusions,” aiming to understand “where they fit into humanity’s history of delusional thinking in general,” said Lifehacker. (Apple Podcasts, Spotify)