South Africa, Oct. 7 -- I came back from Podcast Movement New York with an uncomfortable thought: for the first time in years, I felt the rest of the world had caught up.

South Africa was ahead of the curve in parts of the podcast market, with big shows, a growing creator ecosystem and a market evolving quickly.

But what I saw in New York was a global industry moving rapidly into video, artificial intelligence, automation and more sophisticated ways of building and monetising audiences.

That should matter to South Africa. Not because we need to copy what is happening elsewhere, but because we have an opportunity to build differently before the rules harden around us.

1. Podcasting is becoming bigger than audio

Podcasting itself is ch...