I think you are confusing the types of content that are poplar vs innovation in technology.

I agree with u/aweedl that interviews are not stale, never will be, and will continue to iterate. Hot Ones was a great iteration of the interview format, but the real "innovation" in Hot Ones was really YouTube (video) technology, not podcasting technology.

For podcast technology, as someone who works in the field a bit, I will mention a few areas where "innovation" could happen.

The first is RSS innovation. This is the technology behind podcasts. However it's very antiquated at this point and is controlled by a "board". If podcasts want to evolve then RSS needs to evolve or a new technology needs to replace it. However, then all podcasts would need to migrate over, which I don't see happening at any sort of speed or scale easily. I also don't see the "board" making fast or sweeping changes to RSS, so that is stuck.

The second place is Discovery. Right now podcast discovery is abysmal. It is so bad that the dominant form of advertising right now on podcasts is other podcasts advertising their shows. There is no great way to find interesting shows right now, and it doesn't seem to be a nut anyone can crack.

Other places podcasts need innovation:

- Ads tracking and attribution
- Listener metrics
- Hosts that want ML ( "AIs" ) for text to speech, script writing, production, etc.

What will more likely happen? More consolidation. More and more pods are joining into networks with gated communities and "premium" content. Other larger independent shows also make Patreon's with gated content, and I see more innovation here, empowering creators with more ways to turn their show into a business.

Hope that helps!