There's something fitting about Unity Stoakes and Dan Kendall sitting across from each other at HLTH with microphones in front of them. For years, they've been on opposite sides of the interview dynamic, each building their own corner of the health content ecosystem. This time, they turned the conversation on itself.

"We're normally podcasting, interviewing other people," Unity said. "Now we get to have this conversation together."

What followed was a wide-ranging exchange about the state of health podcasting, the untapped potential of audio in healthcare communication, and why the rise of AI may actually be making authentic human voices more valuable than ever.

Dan Kendall has been a podcast listener since 2005, back when carrying an 80-gigabyte iPod felt like the future. By 2015, when he went looking for content about digital health innovation, he found almost nothing, except for one show: StartUp Health NOW.

"Yours was the north star for me," he told Unity. "I drank up every one of your episodes."

That gap in the market became the seed of Mission Based Media, and eventually the Health Podcast Library, a network dedicated to elevating, amplifying, and demystifying the use of podcasts in health communication. The premise is straightforward: people spend enormous amounts of time off-screen, commuting, exercising, doing chores, and that time is an opportunity to reach them with content that actually matters.

"How can we use that time to feed that soft tissue between their ears," Dan said, "and impact it in a really positive way?"

One of the most clarifying reframes in the conversation was Dan's insistence on shifting the mental model around podcasting. Most healthcare organizations think of launching a podcast as a big, intimidating undertaking. Dan flips it.

"You don't start a podcast. You add a podcast," he said. "You've already got something you're doing."

The infrastructure is already there, whether that's a sales conversation, a founder story, a webinar, or a community event. A podcast is simply a way to take what's already happening and make it portable, persistent, and personal. One approach he recommends for organizations just getting started: a tight six-episode miniseries. The genesis story. The founder's why. The problem you're solving. A patient or customer at the beginning of their journey. One in the middle. One on the other side. Then a wrap-up.

"That's your podcast, that's your season, that's your show," he said. "And then maybe you'll do a season two."

From there, every sales rep gets a postcard with a QR code. Every email signature carries the link. The content lives on Apple, on Spotify, on your website. And the completion rates, the percentage of an episode people actually listen to, often blow past what any video or social post could achieve.

"Apple considers 40% completion an engaged listener," Dan explained. "We see 70 to over 100% in the Health Podcast Network. I even wrote to Apple and asked: how can people complete more than a hundred percent? They said people are going back and listening again."

Last year, Dan organized the Health Podcast Summit, a free, all-online event that brought together 42 speakers across 37 sessions, nearly triple what the organizers initially anticipated.

The motivation was personal. As research budgets were cut and public health communication grew more chaotic, Dan felt compelled to do what he knew how to do: help people raise their voices.

"I got pretty disturbed about some of the things I thought might be coming," he said. "And I thought, how can I help counteract the amount of misinformation being spread on social media, the messaging being broadcast on traditional media? One of the things I know how to do is help people use podcasting."

The summit, available at healthpodcastsummit.com, covers everything from trust-building to omni-channel strategy to how organizations can use audio to reach audiences they'd otherwise have to pay a sales rep to educate one conversation at a time.

Both Unity and Dan have been watching the AI wave reshape content creation, and both arrived at the same counterintuitive conclusion: as AI-generated content proliferates, authentic human voices become more valuable, not less.

"AI is going to run out on what it can train on," Dan said. "That puts a higher premium on a real person's perspective. Not having an AI translate the mission of the company, but having the real founder express in her voice why she formed this company, why she wanted this to exist in the world."

For Unity, that signal reinforces something StartUp Health has been building toward for years. "If there was one word for the past few years at Startup Health, it would be some form of community and collaboration," he said. "In the age of AI, that becomes the defining opportunity, the thing that sets you apart."

The conversation that happens live, in a room or on a recording, between a founder and someone who needs to hear their story, still can't be replicated. Podcasting, Dan and Unity both believe, remains one of the most direct paths to making that connection at scale.

Unity ended the session the way any good podcast should end: with a call to action delivered in character. For everyone sitting on the fence about adding a podcast to their health innovation work, he had one piece of wisdom to offer, delivered in his best Yoda voice.

"Do or do not. There is no try."

To explore the Health Podcast Library and learn more about Dan Kendall's work, visit healthpodcastlibrary.com. To access the Health Podcast Summit sessions, visit healthpodcastsummit.com.