The “H3 Podcast” has been on indefinite hiatus since Oct. 23. Its crew says it won’t work on any version of the show that involves or pays Ethan Klein, and Ethan says he’s working to give up his ownership entirely.
Nobody involved has said what the show looks like next, including the staff, who say they don’t yet know what this means for their jobs.
Hila Klein set everything in motion on Oct. 22, writing on Instagram that she was “living a nightmare I can’t wake up from.” “My husband has been having an affair. I have been fed lie after lie for months,” she wrote, adding that Ethan had admitted to an affair lasting more than six months.
The couple met in Israel in 2007, launched h3h3Productions on YouTube in 2011 and have three sons. They are now separating.
Within a day, the crew posted on the show’s Instagram that they “stand with Hila and will support her every step of the way” and would not continue “with Ethan involved or profiting in any way.”
Ethan followed with his own posts. He said he’s working with Hila to “urgently” remove his ownership and financial stakes in their podcasts, their businesses and “any joint venture that I would profit from,” including Hila’s companies Teddy Fresh and Teddy Glow. “All of your support will go directly to Hila and the Crew without the concern of enriching me,” he wrote.
Most creator scandals follow the same cycle of an apology video, a few weeks offline and a quiet return to the same channel. Ethan is proposing to take himself out of the money so fans can keep watching without paying him.
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That’s an admission of how the creator economy works, where every view, membership and hoodie sale counts as a vote, and the crew had already made that call by refusing to work on any version of the show that pays him.
Whoever ends up with H3 gets a show that has run since 2016, airs four times a week and pulls about 12.5 million YouTube views a month. It wouldn’t be the first Ethan Klein podcast undone by an ownership fight, either. “Frenemies,” his show with Trisha Paytas, ended in 2021 after a dispute over revenue and production ownership.
Complex reported that it’s still unclear who will keep the podcast’s rights, and a “two-podcast solution” has come up as one possibility. Until any of that paperwork goes public, H3’s next episode has no date and no confirmed host.
