How did Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers meet? Their show Las Culturistas wins Podcast of the Year at 2025 iHeartPodcast Awards

Las Culturistas, a podcast by Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers, recently got the 2025 iHeartPodcast Awards' Podcast of the Year title. During the height of SXSW in Austin, Texas, the annual awards show took place at The Moody Theatre on Monday night, March 10.

Podcast hosts Miles Gray and Jack O'Brien, were the show's hosts, and during the evening, celebrities such as Dennis Quaid, Ed Helms, Sophia Bush, and Kyle MacLachlan gave away awards.

Online voting by podcast listeners nationwide helped choose the winner of the coveted Podcast of the Year award. This time, the winners were Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers' Las Culturistas.

Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers initially met in university while they were both studying at NYU. Their friendship eventually led them to co-host the Las Culturistas podcast. On their podcast, Yang and Rogers have interviewed everyone from Will Ferrell to Mariah Carey.

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Las Culturistas won Podcast of the Year in 2025 iHeartPodcast award

Over the past year, the two hosts of the interview and cultural podcast Las Culturistas have welcomed a number of well-known guests, including Ariana Grande, Charl XCX, Dua Lipa, and others. Lady Gaga is scheduled to attend this week. In 2023, the podcast also took home the prized honor.

Over the weekend, Bowen Yang took Matt Rogers to the Oscars as well, where he told the media how proud he was of the SNL star. The two also took a moment to praise Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, who performed Defying Gravity at the awards presentation.

The podcast was formerly a part of the Forever Dog podcast network when it began in March 2016. Rogers and Yang talk about current affairs, pop culture, and their own personal lives every week.

In a lot of episodes, the hosts ask their guests, "What was the culture that made you say 'Culture is for me'?" to get them to talk about their early cultural experiences.

The hosts would also designate specific phrases as Rules of Culture throughout the episodes by repeating them collectively and allocating numbers to them.

The hosts and any guests are given 60 seconds to vent about a cultural aspect that irritates them during the I Don't Think So, Honey part at the end of each episode. The hosts then perform a quick song at the end of each episode.

They also call their audience members Kayteighs, Publicists, and Finalists in addition to their original term, Readers.

Since 2022, Yang and Rogers have hosted the Las Culturistas Culture Awards, a live spoof award event in New York City that takes place every June and includes live musical performances by Yang, Rogers, and other artists.

Meanwhile, three Icon Awards were also given out at the 2025 iHeartPodcast Awards. Sarah Spain, host of Good Game and a journalist who has won Emmy and Peabody awards, received the Social Impact Award for her outstanding sports coverage, articles about female players' fair pay, and other contributions.

After working on his highly regarded podcasts Hysterical, Missing Richard Simmons, and Surviving Y2K, Dan Taberski earned the Audible Audio Pioneer Award. The Innovator Award was also accepted by Daniel Alarcón, a Peruvian-American journalist and novelist, for his work on The Good Whale.

The World's First Podcast with Erin & Sara Foster won best pop culture podcast, and Planet Money won best business podcast. Julia Louis-Dreyfus's Wiser Than Me podcast won for best advice/inspiring. The winner of best overall host was Mel Robbins of The Mel Robbins Podcast.