Articles
Essays and analysis on podcast craft, hosts, and the audio business.
The Page Aloud: How Six British Book Podcasts Decide What Reading Should Sound Like
Book podcasts have a strange problem to solve: how do you make reading — the most private of pursuits — sound interesting out loud? Six British shows have arrived at very different answers.
By Sarah Voss
Westminster on Air: How Six British Political Podcasts Decide What 'Civil' Sounds Like
Six British political podcasts, six different bargains struck with the listener. We compare cadence, format, ownership and the wildly different definitions of 'civil disagreement' each show has quietly settled on.
By Sarah Voss
The Download Mirage: What a Podcast 'Download' Actually Counts in 2026
A million-download podcast sounds enormous — until you ask which million, on what platform, by which standard. We unpick what the industry's biggest numbers actually count, and what they quietly leave out.
By Marcus Dell
The Lab Microphone: Six British Science Podcasts and the Craft of Making Research Sound Right
Science is the genre most hostile to audio: nothing to point at, a vocabulary that resists, a truth that keeps moving. Six British shows have each made a different bargain with the problem — and the bargains tell us how British science radio actually works.
By Sarah Voss
Sound to Sleep To: Inside the Quietly Enormous World of Sleep Podcasts
Sleep podcasts are third by hours streamed and command top-quartile CPMs, yet critics rarely review them. A craft-led look at six major shows, the production techniques that separate them, and why the genre's invisibility is its design.
By Sarah Voss
The Auditorium Era: How Britain's Biggest Podcasts Learned to Play Live
Touring is no longer a side hustle for Britain's biggest podcasts; it's a second format with its own craft, economics and disappointments. Six shows, six different bets on what a live feed should be.
By Sarah Voss
The Listener Living Room: Where British Podcast Audiences Actually Gather in 2026
Apple and Spotify never built proper listener communities, so British podcasts went and built their own. A field guide to the Discords, subreddits and Patreon rooms where audiences actually gather in 2026.
By Sarah Voss
Sister Acts: How One Hit Podcast Became Seven, and the Whole Industry Started Building Franchises
By mid-2026 the UK podcast charts are dominated by sister shows of sister shows. We look at how Goalhanger, Crooked and the NYT built the franchise model — and what it has done, for better and worse, to the craft of audio.
By Marcus Dell
After the Verdict: How British True Crime Podcasts Decide What's Theirs to Tell
True crime is the UK's biggest podcast appetite and its most uncomfortable. We compare how six shows — from RedHanded to Crime Analyst — handle the people they talk about.
By Sarah Voss
The Listener's AI Toolbelt: How a New Wave of Apps Lets You Skim, Quote and Argue With Podcasts
An editorial field guide to Snipd, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Apple, Castro and Podly — what their AI features actually do for an engaged listener in 2026, and which ones quietly trade craft for convenience.
By Sarah Voss
Six British Comedy Podcasts and the Awkward Art of Sounding Unrehearsed
British comedy podcasts depend on sounding off-the-cuff, but the shows that last have done so by being quietly, fanatically structured. We compare six — Off Menu, Fish, Buxton, Athletico Mince, The Bugle and Help I Sexted My Boss — on format, length and what each refuses to do.
By Sarah Voss
Six British History Podcasts, Six Theories of How to Tell the Past
Goalhanger's three flagship history shows share a parent and almost nothing else. A listener's guide to six British history podcasts — six theories of pairing, pacing and premise — and which one rewards which kind of audience.
By Sarah Voss
The Two-Presenter Formula: How British Podcasting Quietly Settled on Its House Style
The biggest podcasts in Britain right now share one structural choice: they're all double acts. We dig into why two voices became the UK's default podcasting unit, and where the formula starts to creak.
By Sarah Voss
The Insight Industrial Complex: How Six Business Podcasts Each Reinvented the Founder Interview
From Acquired's four-hour research dives to David Senra's solo biography monologues, business podcasts in 2026 share a topic but no longer share a form. Six shows, six theories of what insight should sound like.
By Marcus Dell
The Theatre Without Pictures: How Six Modern Audio Dramas Engineer Belief
Audio drama is having its loudest decade in fifty years. Six fiction podcasts — from The Magnus Archives to Audible's Sandman — show how very different sonic toolkits chase the same trick: making a listener believe.
By Sarah Voss
The Morning Cut: How Six Daily News Podcasts Decide What a Commute Can Hold
The daily news podcast is a format with brutal constraints: one story, one window, one chance. We compared six of them — The Daily, Up First, Today in Focus, Today Explained, Newscast and Global News — on the production decisions that actually distinguish them.
By Sarah Voss
Where Your Podcast Subscription Money Goes: Five Platforms Compared
When you tap subscribe on a podcast, your £4 vanishes into a platform machine before the host ever sees it. We compare Apple, Spotify, Patreon, Substack and Supercast — what each takes, what each gives back, and which shows pick which.
By Marcus Dell
How Football Got Loud: Six British Football Podcasts, Six Production Philosophies
From The Rest Is Football to Stick to Football, Britain's football-podcast boom is driven less by hot takes than by craft. We unpack the production choices that set six of the genre's biggest weekly shows apart.
By Marcus Dell
When the Camera Won: How Five Flagship Podcasts Made Peace With Video
More than half of US podcast consumption now happens on video-capable platforms. We compare how five flagship shows have rebuilt their craft around the camera — and what gets quietly lost when the microphone grows a lens.
By Marcus Dell
The Listener's Tool Belt: Six Podcast Apps Compared for People Who Take Their Feeds Seriously
Six podcast apps tried as a daily driver, one per week, with the same 42-show feed. A working listener's verdict on Pocket Casts, Overcast, Apple, Spotify, Castro and AntennaPod — and what none of them do well yet.
By Sarah Voss
The Music Underneath: How Six Narrative Podcasts Score Their Stories
Strip the score out of a narrative podcast and what comes back is often unrecognisable. We compare how Serial, S-Town, Heavyweight, Radiolab, Reply All and The Daily use music to do structural work most listeners never notice.
By Sarah Voss
The Mid-Roll Problem: How Dynamic Ad Insertion Is Quietly Reshaping Podcast Craft
Dynamic ad insertion was supposed to make podcast monetisation effortless. Five years on, it is reshaping how shows are structured — and the data shows listeners are voting with the skip button.
By Marcus Dell
The 90-Minute Problem: Why the Biggest Podcasts Keep Getting Longer
Flagship shows have crept from a tidy 35 minutes to two hours and beyond. We chart the drift across a decade of feeds, ask what listeners actually finish, and name which shows earn the runway.
By Sarah Voss
The Anatomy of a Cold Open: Eight Podcasts, Eight Ways to Hook a Listener
A stopwatch, a Saturday, and the first sixty seconds of eight podcasts — from The Daily to The Rest Is History. What the data revealed about music, hooks, run‑time and which production choices still earn the listener's next minute.
By Sarah Voss