Before the Music Drops: Six British Podcasts and the Quiet Craft of the Cold Open
The cold open — that interval of voice-only audio before the theme tune drops — is the most rewritten, most-replayed, most-fought-over part of any modern British podcast. Seven flagship shows, compared on craft.
The 1.5x Problem: How Britain's Biggest Podcasts Are Quietly Engineered for the Speed Listener
Roughly four in ten UK podcast listeners now play shows above 1.0x. We measured the words-per-minute and engineering choices behind eight British podcasts to see which were quietly built for the speed listener — and which were not.
The Quiet Stack: How British Podcast Teams Are Actually Using AI in the Edit Suite
Most British podcast producers won't tell you what's on their second monitor at 1am. We pull apart the AI tools quietly sitting between the raw recording and the polished file — and ask which decisions hosts still insist on making by hand.
The Producer Credit: Who Actually Makes Britain's Biggest Podcasts (and Why the Show Notes Won't Tell You)
Every podcast ends with a name read fast over the outro music. We open up eight British shows and ask what an exec producer, a producer and an assistant producer actually do — and why the credit you don't notice is the one shaping what you hear.
The Chapter Mark: How Britain's Biggest Podcasts Are Building a Second Table of Contents
Episode chapters — those little timestamps tucked under the play button — are quietly becoming the most useful metadata British podcasts ship. Here is how eight of them are using them, and where the craft falls apart.
Hours In, Minutes Out: How Britain's Biggest Podcasts Decide What to Cut
Every podcast you hear is the survivor of a longer conversation. We map the raw-to-finished editing ratios of eight British shows, from The Rest Is Politics to The Infinite Monkey Cage, and what the cuts tell you about the craft.