In 2024, the world is unpredictable and inconsistent, but there are some things that don’t change. When anyone asks “who’s the most popular podcaster in the UK?”, or “in the USA?” or even “in the world?” then the answer is Joe Rogan.
Rogan, whose show The Joe Rogan Experience is often dismissed as conspiracy-loving tin-foil hat fodder (surprise! it’s better than this) bites, chews and spits out every other show in the world.
This was true when, in 2020, he signed an exclusive three-year deal with Spotify. And it was true when, in February of this year, he signed a new Spotify deal for $250m.
This new deal – and this shows the power of Rogan – was no longer exclusive, meaning that The Joe Rogan Experience can be found on Apple, YouTube and Amazon, as well as Spotify. At the moment, he has around 190 million listeners every episode.
And why am I mentioning this? After all, for a podcast reviewer, Rogan is like the tab that’s always open on your laptop, the sound of Farage yapping, the noise that never stops. You just accept he’s there, and concentrate on other, more interesting shows.
But this year, Rogan himself did an interesting thing. Just before the US election, he interviewed Donald Trump, for three hours (an average Rogan pod lasts over two and half hours; 90% of his interviewees are men).
The Trump show, episode 2,491, got 41 million YouTube views in three days. On X, it got 18.4 million in two days. And what listeners heard was a softer, more subtle, less bananas Trump.
On the Rogan show, Trump seemed chatty, low-key, almost reasonable. There is no doubt that Rogan helped Trump to win. So, yes, Rogan is important.
Rogan also asked Kamala Harris to come on his podcast, but she refused. Instead, she appeared on Call Her Daddy, the second most popular podcast in the US, and the most popular with women.
Hosted by Alex Cooper, Call Her Daddy is a very different show: Cooper preps hard, is often sexually focused, has a weirdly exaggerated way of speaking and the show is sharply edited. Harris and Cooper are busy, time-poor women, so they don’t have time for a three-hour record. Which is fair enough, but makes for a less relaxed listen. It was a jumpy, bumpy ride.
Anyhow, broadly, podcasts are moving towards the cosy Rogan chat-athon, the lengthy ramble, in interview form or as a commentary on current (or past) events. I have heard a lot of overlong shows this year: much reiteration, people making a point and then making it again, louder. The most popular shows in the UK could do with a sharper edit, and yes, I’m looking at you, The Diary of a CEO, The News Agents, The Rest Is Politics (sorry, Alastair).
Which brings me to Joe Rogan’s UK rival. In the UK, aside from Rogan, the biggest name in podcasting is scourge-of-the-Mail Gary Lineker. Not just for his own pod-hosting, which he does, with Micah Richards and Alan Shearer on The Rest Is Football, but for Goalhanger, the podcast company he owns with two other execs, Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport.
Goalhanger consistently has four or five shows in the UK podding top 10 The Rest Is Football alongside The Rest Is History (the real daddy), The Rest Is Politics, and The Rest Is Entertainment. Oh and a new show about spies, The Rest Is Classified, which smashed in at Number One towards the end of the year (I don’t think it will stay there). What conclusion can be drawn, other than Goalhanger can only think of one title?
Podcasts have found a new audience, and that audience is centrist dads. The chaps who’ve given up on music, who like to learn something while they’re walking the dog or waiting for their kids to finish football practice and who want confident middle-aged people (preferably men) to tell them stuff.
The top UK shows – all the Rest ofs, plus The News Agents – have centrist dad taste stamped all over them; also up there, for the young CDs, is Parenting Hell with Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe. This audience doesn’t mind how long the brocasters wang on. Centrist dads aren’t time-poor, plus they themselves are prone to making the same point over and over.
And what’s really interesting about all these bro-shows (and they are nearly all bros, with only Emily Maitlis and Marina Hyde allowed in, for being better at their jobs than everyone out there) is their move to live performance.
In October, The Rest Is Politics (Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart) sold out the O2; in December The Rest Is Entertainment (Richard Osman and Marina Hyde) took over the Albert Hall; The News Agents (Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel, Lewis Goodall) also played the Albert Hall in December and will be touring the country next year.
Having attended one of these shows, I can’t recommend them to you. The venues are designed for music, far too big to be cosy and podcasty and none of these hosts are stand-ups. Don’t bother.
My personal favourite of 2024 is a variation on the double-headed brocast: Miss Me, with Miquita Oliver and Lily Allen. Twice-weekly shows – one where Oliver and Allen discuss what’s going on in the world (though they tend to divert from this), the other where they answer listeners’ questions – lend themselves to hilarious, often scandalous stories from the pair, who have known each other since they were tiny.
They too, have a live show coming up, next April, at the Hackney Empire. It might work: Oliver has been presenting for years and Allen is hardly unused to a stage.
Aside from all that chatting, some interesting investigations. One of the best was To Catch a Scorpion, which recently won a British Journalism Award. In it, the experienced documentary-maker Sue Mitchell and Rob Lawrie, a volunteer who works in the Calais refugee camps, track down illegal people smuggler kingpin The Scorpion, and reveal the exact techniques used by the gangs that shove people on to flimsy dinghies that limp across the Channel.
The gangs offer various packages, like an exploitative travel agent: £800 to get you near a lorry, £8,000 for a dinghy spot. They speak to one guy who paid more to walk straight on to a passenger ferry.
A mini pod-trend has emerged of younger presenters going over old reality shows of the early 2000s. In 2021, we had the excellent Harsh Reality: The Story of Miriam Riveira, based around reality show There’s Something About Miriam, and since then, they keep popping up. This year there were a couple of treats: The Bachelor of Buckingham Palace and The Price of Paradise.
The first concerns an American series from 2013 called I Wanna Marry “Harry”, on which several lovely young ladies competed to win the romantic attentions of a then 29-year-old Prince Harry (spoiler: it wasn’t him), and the second, based on No Going Back, tells the often shocking tale of a woman who sells the family home and drags her husband and kids to what she buys instead: a tiny island off the coast of Nicaragua. Alice Levine’s droll, barbed presenting brings a quite bananas situation to life and – another spoiler – to death.
So: Rogan, reality shows and never-ending centrist daddery. That, apparently, is what we want. Happy New (Y)Ear!
